My MX Module arrived today (I went to the post office to pick it up in person vs dealing with the gamble of it arriving in my mailbox either on time, or before 9PM) and I got it running today, it's working 95% awesome!
Got a $13.50/month (cheapest possible option) text-only plan for the phone I'm using.
If anyone has any questions I can answer them perhaps His last visit here was about a week back and I see he last posted about this project in June over at SpeakEV. That's when he posted the app freely available in Alpha form on the Play Store. Gladly paid my $12 for it today.
EDIT: I talked to Brian in the Volt Owners FB group, he's still poking at things but understandably has some other priorities right now, but it sounds like he has some updates and new features coming eventually - I'm looking forward to it! . Brian, I hope you haven't lost faith in the community here because of lack of support for this or something. I think that if more people understood it better and realized it's really a cheaper (and more functional, the best part!) alternative for OnStar it would gain more traction. In my case, with OnStar hardware in my car that doesn't even work anymore here in Canada, this sure beats paying the dealer $350 for the new hardware update.
I'd love to see a few more things included if you get back to poking at this again:
- Ability to manually override and start charging immediately if the vehicle is plugged in but on time delay charging (OnStar does this). Ability to STOP charging as well and return to the programmed charging schedule would be a bonus!
- The "turn on the chargers and top up the phone if power is low" feature would be awesome, but I have a workaround for that. See below.
- The ability to turn off ERDTT via a command to MyVoltStar instead of using the MyVoltHold app separately. I noticed today that if MyVoltHold (which FWIW works awesome through the MX, good riddance ERDTT when I don't want/need it!) is left running in the background that MyVoltStar seems to loose communication with the MX module and then won't work, so one needs to remember to kill the app after using it. I know some day I'll forget to kill MyVoltHold and will be unable to communicate with the car.
EDIT: I ended up setting up a macro that kills MyVoltHold when the phone loses power (therefore assumes I've turned the car off) and boots up MyVoltStar to be ready to accept commands, problem solved..but would still love to see ERDTT disable/Hold Mode become a part of MyVoltStar natively, even if it's via an in-app purchase upgrade or something. One app vs multiple apps makes things potentially simpler.
Also, is it possible to get proactive feedback FROM the car like OnStar - charge completed, charge interrupted, etc?
Dare, my solution for the power issue this - I plan to simply run a small fused circuit directly from the 12V AGM battery in the trunk (or rear fusebox) up to the passenger compartment area and then use that for a constant 12V source of power for a standalone charger used solely for the phone running MyVoltStar - no issue that way. Your idea of using a powerbank has merit as well but the issue there is that it too will need to be charged once it's depleted, and my experience is that they take FOREVER to charge up, so you'd need to driving for potentially 3-4 hours to get them recharged depending on the size. Some also won't charge when something is plugged into them as well. I want this to be as little hassle as possible without really needing to interact with the phone at all in the end so the permanent-power solution is easiest for me.
