Content by stevedee in January, 2026

So this might be of interest. I don't have a system battery problem, but I've been pulling data from the car via the API this evening and noticed this... Note that the time between samples is 10 minutes, so you wont see the second-by-second complete picture of what is happening. But look at...

The are plenty of Hall Effect devices that would possibly be suitable for measuring current drain, some costing less than £5. So we'd need to make some kind of temporary clamp to hold it around the battery +ve cable. Electronics: a small intelligent device (Arduino, Raspberry Pi & so on) with...

Piccadilly Blue (real name: Soul Blue) looks like this... Charging to 100% takes disproportionately longer than charging to (say) 50% as illustrated in the charging curve/chart, which you will find in posts (somewhere) on this forum. When charged to 100%, a car should be driven, not left...

We have the Carmats odourless mats, and ours are ...odourless.

One unexpected joy of my S5, is that I like to stream Radio Caroline from an app called Transistor on my phone over Bluetooth. The unexpected bit is that I can get back into the car days later, & the car system just starts the app & plays Caroline. No idea how it does that. I'm not using...

I made some progress yesterday, extracting some of the data I need from my S5... No joy yet with; Car Status (parked/ready/driving) but this is a nice-to-have, Charge Limit (which needs to be the limit set in car) and Plug status (not sure this is working properly). And yes, my Efficiency...

If you like charts & graphs, you will find some interesting stuff in the Public Charging Infrastructure report for 2025, downloadable from the Electroverse website (STATS page); https://assets.electricjuice.octopus.energy/x/09e0aa80ad/electroverse-charging-infrastructure-insights-december-2025.pdf

I'm just looking for a simple monitor, when at home or on the road. Its looking like I'll run some Python code & WireGuard (VPN) on a RaspberryPi, using this as a server to provide some basic data remotely (simple web page), without the need to log in. Info may include; Charging Active, SoC...

I just got a reply from Octopus regarding linking Electroverse billing. Looks like a tech issue:- I'm sorry, but you're not able to link energy accounts as a payment method at the moment - we're working hard on getting that feature back up and running, but don't have a timeline we can promise...

Oh yes, I've just checked that screen & mine is also Soul Blue!

There is a 'reverse engineered' project on Github to access data using the MG API called: saic-python-client-ng Much of the work and coding examples relate to other MG models, which was a surprise to me when they didn't really work with the S5. So I had to iterate through a collection called...

So, I did say that this analysis was very crude ...and how did you find out that my grandchildren were in a safe-house on the Isle of Lewis, TimothyN? It was difficult to decide on a pence/mile. I could divide 7p/kWhr by 2 or 4 or somewhere in between. There will be times when you may need to...

Wow! What a great idea, I'm on it!

I don't have a problem with that Ian. Two of my hobbies are analysing data and winding people up!

As we get older, I expect my wife and I to drive less. And if we don't get banned, or consider one another too dangerous to continue, I wondered at what point it would no longer make financial sense to carry on buying & driving a car. So this analysis is both very simple & crude, but I thought...

This is our charger with 7.5m cable & no holster... Typical retail cable cost seems to work out about £10/m when looking at charger prices. Re: tethered/untethered, we were advised to get an untethered charger, but I was not convinced. So I'd love to hear arguments for & against. It seems to...

Yes, we got ours from Carmats.co.uk and are very happy with them; got an upper boot but not a lower boot mat.

Can we have a Dirty Car thread? I think the photos would be far more interesting than seeing clean ones.

I didn't want any external cable run to the charger, so the installer was great; he drilled a hole high enough so the cable comes out behind the charger. I asked him not to fit the holster as I couldn't see the point. I think 7.5m does wrap neater than 10m, & after breakfast I'll post a photo...

We have 2 devices running iSmart, but you have to reenter the password if switching devices & can only have one device connected at a time. I don't think iSmart is essential, but guess its handy (like this morning) to de-ice the front & rear windows & wing mirrors, and to turn on the heated...

If you are a home owner, its a no-brainer. Have a Hypervolt 3 Pro fitted outside your garage & enjoy the convenience of keeping your nice new S5 topped up to 80% & ready to go when you need to use it, with the minimum of hassle. You've just spent/will be spending a lot of money on your car, so...

I was talking to Al (my imaginary friend) & he/she/it says that people have reported that this option doesn't always show up in the app/website, so suggested I email them to sort it for me ...let's see if anything happens. I'm not a new Octopus customer. Looking at a few Trustpilot reviews, it...

Now that's interesting, because I'm with Octopus & have Intelligent Go tariff, but when I used my Electroverse card recently it was charged directly to my credit card. Have I boobed in the way I've set this up?

I'm beginning to think it might just be a random number generator!

I'm actually considering writing "MG car keys" on the outside of the tin! I have no intention of standing between my car and a 'loop' carrying madman, who doesn't care whether I live or die. Its insured.

I've no idea what the 'secret' is to driving economically. We drove back south after Christmas, with a lot of start/stop driving on the M6 & M5, but I 'showed the car the whip' from Oxford down to Bognor, cruising at 70mph. I expected that the mls/kWhr figure would be dreadful, but it returned...

Just to be clear, this is where we keep the key when the car is parked outside the house, not in use...

I agree, I can't see how someone could steal your car under these conditions. From my testing I think the key on an S5 is passive until its woken up by a low frequency field (~125kHz) from the car; look at a few YouTube videos where the aerial used is a large floppy loop of cable. Once the key...

That's good! I tell any ICE owner that asks, that EVs are rubbish! ...because the faster they sell EVs, the quicker & higher our tax liability will increase. Let's just keep it a secret between ourselves. :cool: