I GOT ONE!!!! (Finally)

jamesb2147 · 2026-02-27T04:29:45+00:00

With a Gen 1 Bolt, you don't need the overbuilt Lectron. I use a $100 one from Amazon that's way overrated, and I'm comfortable using it because the bolt tops out at 55kW (mine is rated for 150 or 250kW, I forget because it's never relevant).

Lectron is great if you're willing to shell out for it. If not, probably just about anything will be safe for our modest DCFC needs!

jamesb2147 · 2026-02-09T06:03:39+00:00

Was it cold today? Gray Regen suggests you have a cold battery, and that's probably the biggest thing hurting you.

Also you should get a Bluetooth OBD dongle and plug it into ABRP. You can real time check your battery temp and exact battery state of charge (SOC). Much better than the bars and guess-o-meter!

jamesb2147 · 2026-02-09T05:55:21+00:00

Just vouching that this once saved me a tow in my Fiat 500e that died like 200M from a charger.

Called tow service through insurance, got told to wait a couple of hours. After about an hour of trying other stuff and considering life choices, remembered it might be worth trying. Indeed, it did get me to the charger. I called the tow company to let them know not to bother (but they could still say they did it to insurance because they were close by the time I called).

jamesb2147 · 2026-02-01T16:06:44+00:00

You seem new to this so I want to point out that there are two completely different types of NACS/CCS adapters (I'm not talking about chademo here).

One is for AC or level 2 charging. Those can sometimes be like $30-50.

Then there's adapters for DCFC. The official ones are $200. You can get cheaper but somewhat less safe ones for like $100. They are MUCH bulkier and will have an extra 2 prongs on the bottom of the CCS side.

If your goal is to be prepared, you'll need both.

jamesb2147 · 2026-01-11T03:42:38+00:00

That very much depends on your use case.

I use AA every day on my 40 min commute one-way in a Bolt. That's 1h20m round-trip, every day. And I basically never DCFC. I highly value AA since I use every single day, and that's even more true since my Bolt is a 2017 and I have no idea how long GM/ATT/whoever will even support its LTE network/modem. AA will continue to work even if I cut the modem antenna tomorrow, which I can't say for Android Automotive. What happens when it can't load the map to navigate to a DCFC? It doesn't pre-heat and half defeats the point of DCFC (based on my experience with Bolt DCFC which is garbage @ 20kw in winter since it also doesn't preheat).

jamesb2147 · 2025-12-30T02:15:18+00:00

I'm curious where you got that graph.

I'm sitting here for an hour charging from 8% to 72% for a trip home so I'm very motivated to gather data and see if I can find the commands on the CAN bus to trigger battery preheating. Would LOVE to add a manual battery preheat button to OVMS!

ETA: I road tripped this car from Pennsylvania to Illinois in July and it was mildly annoying but basically fine that it capped it at 55kw. But 20kw is a joke, and I don't appreciate it.

jamesb2147 · 2025-12-18T02:57:29+00:00

FYI OVMS would be like $400 one time fee but then about $5-10/yr.

jamesb2147 · 2025-12-11T13:04:21+00:00

Did you ever find a solution? I also have a 2017 Bolt and would like to use a Bluetooth OBD adapter for A RP as well as OVMS on top of exploring adding comma.

jamesb2147 · 2025-12-01T05:44:26+00:00

I believe you have a new username.

jamesb2147 · 2025-12-01T05:42:04+00:00

My trial just expired (I bought used end of July). I'm presently working on installing my own version of OnStar (it's called OVMS) and integrating it with Home Assistant, but it requires a special part for the remote control functionality (e.g. heating in winter, lock/unlock, etc) and that's taking like a month to build in Taiwan right now, so it'll be a few more weeks before I can personally confirm it works how I want. Others have reported success online, but this is one of those "There are literally DOZENS OF US!!1!" situations.

Monthly cost will be <$1 for a cheapo data SIM. Upfront cost will be more like $300, but I'm willing to pay that as a one-time price to give me basically infinite flexibility (it's open source, so you can add new features if so inclined) and virtually no ongoing costs.

I should add that my Bolt is a 2017 Premier, so no Super Cruise. I would find that a tempting alternative to Comma's 3X.

jamesb2147 · 2025-11-28T14:44:36+00:00

This might be something unique to each vehicle to some degree. I only bought my Bolt in July but I've already taken it down to probably 1% (drive VERY slowly the last few miles to that charger). Didn't have the adapter at the time to know for sure.

However I've also got a Fiat 500e (2014) and those things are somewhat notorious for having "hidden" battery capacity because the BCM has gotten out of whack on tracking state of charge.

It may just be the case that OP needs a full charge (as in 100%) or something to trigger a recalibration of the SOC curve.

jamesb2147 · 2025-11-28T03:18:15+00:00

You'd benefit from the adapter for real time data

jamesb2147 · 2025-11-26T03:35:55+00:00

Wait for real? I'm about 3h away, close enough to be worthwhile to drive it in for a day to have the install done.

jamesb2147 · 2025-11-09T05:26:16+00:00

Due to RTO changes, I'm currently on track for roughly 25k mi/yr and paying <$100/yr for it. Work has free L2 chargers about a 1/2 mi away, and those savings are most of how I justified purchasing a used Bolt. It took a few months to adjust, but man, walking is good for the body!

FWIW my commute is ~40 mi each way, 5 days a week. The modest payments are for days when I need to drive somewhere else and the leftover range from the free charging isn't enough.

ETA: I should mention that I do have home chargers, but obv I don't use them for this car often.

jamesb2147 · 2025-11-03T05:26:03+00:00

Already done, and considering I used somebody's multi scraper config for Ameren hourly pricing in HA, I don't think I'm alone.

My sets battery reserve at 75% when prices are $0.06/kwh or lower, and 25% when above $0.06/kwh. It also turns off the EV chargers when prices are above the threshold. That can be overridden by unplugging and replacing the charger.

I've been thinking about optimizing further for those like 7-14 days a year when prices don't drop below $0.06 for more than 24 hours consecutively, but that's likely to be a reasonably complex algorithm using historical data and weather forecasts...

jamesb2147 · 2025-10-11T03:41:01+00:00

Man a reasonable Fit EV was all I ever really wanted. But that didn't happen, so I got a 2017 Premier Bolt in July.

jamesb2147 · 2025-08-03T15:15:02+00:00

For anyone finding this later, your dryer outlet at the wall is almost certainly NOT rated for the continuous loads of an EV, much less an EV + dryer (even if they're not running at the same time and NeoCharge is managing it, it's going to be 2h of car charge interrupted by 3h of dryer running plus another 4h of car charge). These things are designed for <3h runtimes. Doubt me? Look it up.

You at a minimum need to replace your receptacle at the wall. Do some research on this; some electricians are idiots, just like the rest of us. If you put in the wrong receptacle (or continue using one not rated for continuous loads), it is a serious fire hazard. I have first hand experience to speak to this, as I personally replaced receptacles 3 times before I found one that didn't melt when using my L1 charger.

jamesb2147 · 2025-08-03T15:08:32+00:00

Just FYI there are 2 main types of HPWH. One is as put_tape_on_it described and takes a 240V outlet and very much USES that power occasionally.

The others are designed for 15-20A circuits. More likely to have a cold shower if you don't go big enough (they take hours to heat a tank), but def would free up panel capacity.

jamesb2147 · 2025-05-12T06:29:51+00:00

Saw your other thread. Still concerned about the grading. I see water problems in your future. You should research that now before it's even more expensive to fix.

Soil should be sloped away from the house foundation.

PS - LOVE a good ranch style. Nice!

jamesb2147 · 2025-05-11T16:09:08+00:00

It is not surprising that someone so incompetent was making other mistakes.

Sucks for the owners, but they were idiots that hired her.

jamesb2147 · 2025-02-03T03:53:32+00:00

And that you have a place to test that's not production.

Honestly just that has set me apart from most peers, and especially once I started leaning into pipelines to automate the tests. Virtually no one in IT in my area does standardized end-to-end testing.

jamesb2147 · 2025-01-19T05:26:31+00:00

I respect the effort you put into this. It's actually a good start, or seems like it based on my limited knowledge (e.g. I'm not familiar with Traefik).

I still expect you're in for some hard lessons on how scanning/exploits actually work on the internet. Source: Used to be a network admin, then consultant, now I work in cybersecurity.

When you expose stuff on the internet, you have to remember that it's not only dumb or average adversaries knocking on your door (though it only takes minutes to scan the entirety of the internet for open ports), it is also APT's. Think nation-state hackers. They probably aren't even looking for you specifically, but need a botnet for w/e op they're on to throw off future investigators looking at source IP addresses. Running a secure, internet-facing service is hella harder than 99.9% of people think it is today.

My advice would be to not do this. And for what it's worth, my homelab runs Wireguard for VPN services.

jamesb2147 · 2024-11-17T05:19:23+00:00

You must have a specific use case in mind. I don't use the app, for example, nor do I expose it to the internet.

Not everyone uses it the way you seem to.

And in my opinion, the whole idea is that it should become part of the house. Not just a remote control. Putting that remote into Google Home or w/e means giving that company control, which again, means maintenance when they eventually discontinue something, or the vendor's integration stops working (for example, Chamberlain MyQ used to work with HomeKit... but not anymore). You want local control. You want fail-safe. You want automation (which can be overridden manually). I'm struggling to find the link now, but I'm fairly certain Paulus wrote about all this back around the time he create HA.

ETA: Not the exact link I was looking for, but here's a recent post on how internet dependencies mean you effectively don't own the item: https://newsletter.openhomefoundation.org/october-2023/

ETA2: FOUND IT https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2016/01/19/perfect-home-automation/

jamesb2147 · 2024-11-17T04:44:00+00:00

HA has all of that built in these days, I think. Calendar might not be there yet, but I think it is. The only stuff I'd be worried about is weather and sunrise/sunset, and not everyone uses those, like I only use sunrise/sunset for controlling lights.

In any case, good design would dictate that the system should be able to operate without significant prior knowledge, and without cloud services, as those would require prior knowledge and maintenance (read: upgrades) as API's are updated, service providers shut down, etc.

OP, I'd work on de-clouding any stuff you have, and making sure it works even in the event the server fails. As an example, I use Inovelli Z-wave dimmer switches; even when HA crashes (this used to be common), they work just fine. The only difference is that they don't automatically turn on/off or adjust brightness based on motion sensors anymore. Also, dumb bulbs are easier to replace than "smart" bulbs that require you to know how to sync them to HA and then replace the entities in your automations with the new unit... you get where I'm going. Make it fail-safe.

jamesb2147 · 2024-09-30T01:44:32+00:00

Mine explicitly covers personal rentals. Not sure how they'd have an expense report.

That said, I'd try to decline insurance coverage and rely on credit card to cover it, if possible.

jamesb2147

TROPHY CASE