[gdirwin]

How to access Elithion or Zilla via an Android tablet (instead of having to connect a PC via USB/serial cable):

I bought 2 serial-bluetooth adapters from here:
http://www.rovingnetworks.com/products/Bluetooth_Adapters

About $59 each. These ones allow the baud rate etc... to be set via the serial port, via bluetooth, or to be defaulted to 9600 via external dip switches.

The software also allows the bluetooth device name to be customized, and the PIN to be changed (important - don't want drive-by changes to my controller!).

I then installed a spp bluetooth serial terminal app for android - there are a bunch of them that are free... I use "Blueterm", "Bluetooth SPP" and "Sena BTerm". It is nice to find one with a usable "esc" key...

Zilla setup with 9600 baud - Elithion setup with 19200 baud - both work great. Now I can see what's happening from my Android phone.

The reason I did this was I got stuck once. The BMS will give an error for an over-charge condition (ie charger fails to stop) or for an over-discharge condition. I trigger on the error signal to create a ground for a relay - ie if there is an error, you cannot charge (this is not good for an over-discharge condition). I suppose I could wire in a switch to the relay to force the ground (and allow charging) - with the Android/bluetooth serial option I can now remove the error and start charging... Way better than those Palm solutions for Zilla too....

I would love to see Android apps that make better use of the Zilla/Elithion data stream via bluetooth - a removable dash android tablet would be great in my car!

 

[gdirwin]

Forgot to add that the bluetooth-serial adapters need 5V power. The Elithion RS232 port supplies 5V out, so it works, but the Zilla (which connects to the serial port via an adapter cable from the telephone jack connector on the Zilla) does not supply 5V.

I solved this by wiring together 2 small barrel connectors - one end plugged into the bluetooth adapter to the Elithion (which gets 5V) and the other end into the bluetooth adapter for the Zilla (which shares the 5V signal from the bms). I was initially worried about different potentials, offsets, loop currents etc... but it all seems to work well (one or more of the devices must provide isolation it seems).

 

[gdirwin]

So you just need monitoring? (I highly doubt you'd need to set things up while driving)

For the Elithion (only if it's PRO) Why not just use Torque for Android + Bluetooth OBDII dongle:
http://lithiumate.elithion.com/php/torque.php

Not sure of anything for Zilla though, it's not CAN.

Great idea - I missed this... I already have an OBDII-bluetooth adapter (cheap $15 device from fleabay) which works with Torque on my Android device...

Do you know if the Elithion BMS CAN network can share the CAN bus of the car? Has this been done? I am not a CAN guru - how would you access each device (assuming only 1 bluetooth connection to the cars OBD port is necessary)?

I see it requires a new version of the BMS firmware - will have to plan for an update... I may even want to buy a spare Elithion base unit - will have to look around for pricing...