Interested in an unofficial Apple Watch app?

[Fantasmos]

I am referring to logging into my Porsche account

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[electricsidecar]

After a week of features I’ll be switching gears today to writing a new Nuts and Bolts article. https://electricsidecar.substack.com to subscribe. Are there any topics you’d all like to read about?

 

[electricsidecar]

New newsletter post is out: "Designing for the long tail"

 

[B61]

I see, sadly in this case your iPad isn’t able to upgrade to iOS 17 so it won’t be able to install updates from Electric Sidecar either

I just noticed that from time to time data are refreshed on iPad even if there are error messages, so it looks that old version still works…somehow

 

[electricsidecar]

We're traveling for a bit, so I'm starting to build a new feature called "Storage mode" into the app.

Storage mode puts the app into an ultra low power mode, reducing vehicle pings and disabling the ability to start climatization (which can otherwise be accidentally done via Electric Sidecar's interactive widgets).

Storage mode also affects trip logging. If your default vehicle is in storage, then trip logs will no longer associate any ongoing trips with that vehicle.

Charging is also a topic of concern for those storing their Taycans, so I am working right now on adding support to Electric Sidecar for Porsche's timers and charge profiles concept. When you enter storage mode, Electric Sidecar will automatically disable any timers / profiles and then set a default profile that maintains a preferred charge on the vehicle (50% will be the suggested default, but there's varying opinions on what the right charge should be ).

The app will also remind you to plug the vehicle in and over-inflate your tires if you're planning on being away for an extended period of time.

This feature's taking a little bit longer to build due to all of the moving parts — stay tuned!

A few other quality of life improvements going into this update as well:

You can now tap and drag along the battery history chart to see the exact battery level at any time.

The watch app's tire pressure page now makes much better use of the screen real estate:

And Apple watch corner complications now support conventional vehicles by reporting fuel remaining.

 

[electricsidecar]

How storage mode shows up on the watch:

 

[taycan2024]

You‘re a 100x developer.

 

[ciaranob]

How storage mode shows up on the watch:

Excellent idea and implementation - something Porsche themselves should have been keyed into when developing their own app as surely effects 90% if not all of it's user base. Great stuff.

 

[electricsidecar]

I don't want Storage Mode to make any changes that can't be easily undone / understood, so I'm working on a visualization + editing workflow for charging schedules.

A sneak peek:

The numbers chosen are contrived; will be curious to see what peoples' charging schedules look like in practice!

 

[electricsidecar]

Removing the targets from this view to make it a bit clearer what's going on. This list will be in the details section for vehicle scheduling. On the main vehicle page I'll have a single widget showing the car's current schedule based on location, and in that view the target charges will also be shown.

Aside: I've never found Porsche's naming to make much sense in terms of understanding what timers/profiles actually do, so in Electric Sidecar I'm going to try to avoid using names with the intent of the UX being self-explanatory. When needed though, I'm considering referring to "profiles" as your "charging schedule", and "timers" as "targets". Still noodling on this though; if you have strong opinions on this I'd love to hear them!

 

[electricsidecar]

Using the vehicle symbol for "now" is hopefully a bit more intuitive given that "now" has to be converted to the vehicle's timezone in order for this chart to make sense:

 

[electricsidecar]

Working on the main vehicle page widget for the charge schedule. Adding some little info tips below that help explain what the current schedule means in practice.

 

[dws_ch]

Working on the main vehicle page widget for the charge schedule. Adding some little info tips below that help explain what the current schedule means in practice.

This view combined with the info tips is really useful, it makes much clearer than in the MyPorsche app, what charging timer & target mean. Really good work!

 

[electricsidecar]

There seems to be another ongoing outage with Porsche Connect today. I've set up a statuspage to start monitoring these outages as they're becoming surprisingly frequent: https://electricsidecar.statuspage.io/

https://status.electricsidecar.app/ will be the main URL once DNS/SSL certs propagate.

 

[electricsidecar]

This view combined with the info tips is really useful, it makes much clearer than in the MyPorsche app, what charging timer & target mean. Really good work!

Glad to hear! I feel like I'm still learning how all of these modes work together as well so it's a good way to gain some understanding myself

I've noticed there seem to be some hidden API properties related to what I'm guessing is the Porsche home charger; if someone has one of these and would be open to sharing some of the readouts you get I can try to make sure they're surfaced in the UI as well.

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