Cycle Analyst Trip Analysis Software (now Online Sharing!)

[justin_le]

I will give it a try to adjust the output of the android/iphone app to this formats.

Hopefully it's pretty easy. The CA data is exactly as transmitted, and the GPS data currently needs to be in NMEA text format as recorded by the analogger, really just the $GPGGA string once a second. How is the GPS coordinate data pulled on the Android, and is it available in a very fixed sampling rate (ie 1Hz) or would one need to look at the timestamp of each fix point to be sure of the time? It would be nice if we made the web-app functional with GPS data pulled from stand-alone GPS receivers and smart phones, so we'd be happy to work this in.

 

[bart1006]

I will give it a try to adjust the output of the android/iphone app to this formats.

Hopefully it's pretty easy. The CA data is exactly as transmitted, and the GPS data currently needs to be in NMEA text format as recorded by the analogger, really just the $GPGGA string once a second. How is the GPS coordinate data pulled on the Android, and is it available in a very fixed sampling rate (ie 1Hz) or would one need to look at the timestamp of each fix point to be sure of the time? It would be nice if we made the web-app functional with GPS data pulled from stand-alone GPS receivers and smart phones, so we'd be happy to work this in.

I am now abroad for work so can't check it. But i thought it is now managed in a thread and i am looking every second if there is new data available from the CA and if so i get the gps information. If it is not connected or there is no new data i leave them blank but that is easily adjustable.

Do you have a example file ofthe gps data/file?

 

[justin_le]

Do you have a example file ofthe gps data/file?

Attached is an example of a CA and corresponding GPS file as recorded by the Analogger. As indicated though, most of the GPS NMEA sentences are currently being ignored except for the one with the lat./long. data.

 

[justin_le]

Alright guys, time to check out the latest batch of enhancements here:
http://www.ebikes.ca/tripanalyzer/index.html
If you had it loaded previously, you might want to refresh the browser to clear any local caching.



Now, when you zoom in on a section of the graph, you can see the corresponding route segment in blue on the GPS map, and on the right pane is a set trip statistics over this region. Like the elevation gain, avg %grade, average wh/km, % regen etc. It should work fine both with 1Hz and 5Hz data rates.

We're still working on having it show an elevation plot as well, that should be ready in the next update. We're also working on a toggle switch so you can choose between a distance or amp-hour for the 'X' axis. Showing the plot versus Ah is very useful for creating battery discharge graphs with the CA data where you don't have a speedo hooked up. Any other key stats overlooked people would want to see here?

 

[drew12345]

This is really cool. I played with it a little last week. I'll have to check out the latest changes.

I think a cool feature would be a play mode that will go from beginning to end. If you have garmin, they have this on their website.


Another feature would be ability to embed on the forum so others could see.

I can't remember but is temperature and throttle input available?

 

[justin_le]

This is really cool. I played with it a little last week. I'll have to check out the latest changes.

Do please! We are curious to get some user feedback.

I think a cool feature would be a play mode that will go from beginning to end. If you have garmin, they have this on their website.

That's an interesting concept that should be easy to implement, although it would probably be more enjoyable to watch if we had more gauge style displays rather than numeric readouts. If you hover the mouse over the graph on the bottom and move left and right it does the same thing, showing your location on the map move along the route with all the numbers updated.

Another feature would be ability to embed on the forum so others could see.

That won't be very easy since we decided for now to have it keep all the trip data local to your machine, so it isn't hosted on a server anywhere. Would you generally prefer to have us host of the data files so that you upload them online then they are stored on our server? There could be some potential fun with that, and then we could also do some big picture analytics on massive sets of ebike trip data. But it's a different level of undertaking.

I can't remember but is temperature and throttle input available?

Right now it's only showing data that's consistent on V2 and V3 CA devices, so the additional columns for temperature, throttle voltages, human watts etc. are being ignored. But it will be easy to enable all those once we decide on how to cope with so many datasets to graph.

 

[Ken Taylor]

Do please! We are curious to get some user feedback.

Not being a Cycle Analyst owner, I'm not sure if I count as a user but I'm curious where you are going with this. In particular, is this heading towards a professional service? If it wasn't being offered by the endless-sphere sponsor and leading ebike instrumentation supplier I'd be interpreting it as a fun and cool hobby project.

I think I see some of the same thought processes I went through a few years ago but with a different conclusion. I was working with coaches who wanted live, particularly power, data during training see http://blog.urremote.com/2012/02/adventures-tracking-bicycle-racing-why.html. Nowadays, it is available as a Garmin service. As an interface for presenting data we had a play with Google Earth, as you did, and decided for analytic purposes it wasn't sufficient, as it seems you did, and then got interested in a web interface, as you did.

When drew12345 says

This is really cool...If you have garmin, they have this on their website.

I think he touches on the reason it would be hard to provide a competitive web service. If a user views this as an ebike service then they are likely to be impressed because it has a lot to offer over CSV files analysed with a spreadsheet. However, if they look upon it as a bicycle analytics website then the competitors are Garmin, Strava etc. The analytics on these sites is excellent, with vast resources deployed to continuously improving them.

... and then we could also do some big picture analytics on massive sets of ebike trip data. But it's a different level of undertaking

Exactly, and it has to look as good as the best cycling sites to be competitive in the winner take all world of the web. An alternative is to upload ebike data to an existing cycling analytics site. Are you considering that?

 

[MattyCiii]

Do please! We are curious to get some user feedback.

Please add a "Km/miles" toggle, for us yankees who never upgraded our measurement system.

 

[justin_le]

Do please! We are curious to get some user feedback.

Not being a Cycle Analyst owner, I'm not sure if I count as a user but I'm curious where you are going with this. In particular, is this heading towards a professional service? If it wasn't being offered by the endless-sphere sponsor and leading ebike instrumentation supplier I'd be interpreting it as a fun and cool hobby project.

Hey Ken, that's kind of what we are trying to figure out as well, which depends a bit on the total interest levels for something like this. At the very least I have a debt to everyone who's purchased a CA and analogger to provide some useful software tools to help scrutinize and play with their data, but I really fancy a broader web based platform for overall EV analysis. So some place where people could post their trip usage charts and open up the floor for direct graphical comparison between different EV systems, and also if there was an EV race (like pike's peak) then we could compare different race vehicles side by side. A little bit like Strava but for EV tech heads and without the whole social media flavor.

I think I see some of the same thought processes I went through a few years ago but with a different conclusion. I was working with coaches who wanted live, particularly power, data during training see http://blog.urremote.com/2012/02/adventures-tracking-bicycle-racing-why.html.

Hey wow, that is a very comprehensive and interesting piece, and really illustrates the kind of useful analytics that are possible with the data logged in this instrumentation. To anyone following this thread and wondering why? I recommend having a read of Ken's article there. Real time live data as you were after there isn't really as necessary in an EV context, but the the kind of post trip details that you point out and how that affects race strategy in terms of human watts output, I can see many parallels in our world of ebikes.

For instance I know a lot of people who don't use their throttle until after pedaling up to speed because supposedly they've been told that throttling off the line wastes a huge amount of power. But I'd wager a bet that when you look at all the net watt-hours used on the average ebike trip, your initial starting acceleration after each stop will only account for a tiny fraction of that, and that throwing away this most useful aspect of the ebike away (getting quickly up to speed) doesn't buy much in return.

When drew12345 says

This is really cool...If you have garmin, they have this on their website.

I think he touches on the reason it would be hard to provide a competitive web service. If a user views this as an ebike service then they are likely to be impressed because it has a lot to offer over CSV files analysed with a spreadsheet. However, if they look upon it as a bicycle analytics website then the competitors are Garmin, Strava etc. The analytics on these sites is excellent, with vast resources deployed to continuously improving them.

Well we're about 0.05% the size of Garmin, so there's no point comparing and competing on that level. But given that currently there is nothing in terms of online ebike/EV trip analysis tools I think we could still make something relatively compelling for this emerging community and see what comes of it. Figure we can devote half time for a single junior programmer over the next 3-4 months and let that dictate the initial scope?

An alternative is to upload ebike data to an existing cycling analytics site. Are you considering that?

No that hadn't really crossed my mind. Do many of the existing sites offer arbitrary data fields that could be used for showing volts, amps, watt-hours etc. or are they generally restricted to the standard biometrics like heart rate etc? We could always spoof data and have the amps be in the heart rate column and such, though this approach would miss out on a lot of very EV specific computations, like % regenerative braking.

Anyways, we should have some additional updates (like the km/mi switch over, and more options on the 'X' axis) by the end of this week.

-Justin

 

[justin_le]

Please add a "Km/miles" toggle, for us yankees who never upgraded our measurement system.

Done!
http://www.ebikes.ca/tripanalyzer/index.php

Right now you need to set the units when you click the submit button. It won't look any different other than that the display units will say mph and wh/mi etc. But soon we'll have it so that you'll then be able to toggle the display graph too. So you can import a file in miles, then switch it to display in km, and visa versa.

Also, the screen layout and file upload process has been changed a bit so that it's all on a single page.

 

[justin_le]

Alright guys, it was a trickier than expected but we've now got the elevation data loaded from the GPS file, interpolated to the 5Hz rate of the CA, and then displayed on the graph as well. This is now going to open up the door to the very fun studies and comparisons since so much of the ebike analysis concerns performance going up and down hills. There hasn't been a whole lot of feedback about what people want to see so I'm going to go ahead and make the trip analysis tools that I want to satisfy my own curiosities, and hopefully that will meet the needs of others too!

Feel free to check it out if you have logged CA and GPS data: http://ebikes.com/tripanalyzer/index.php

So here is a section of our ebike trip down the coast to maker faire last spring, on the Oregon coast. You can see that the speed is pretty much pegged at 40kph as we had the CA3 speed limit set to this point. You can also see the current levels going upwards of 25A on the uphill bits, and down to -10A on the downhill sections. I had my controller setup with proportional regen via the throttle signal so it was able to maintain a speed limit both motoring and braking.



You'll notice too that there are rather large up and down oscillations in the current signal, often as much as +-10A, which completely correlated with small changes in the speed of +- 0.5kph. So even though nominally the CA's speed limit did a great job of keeping the speed pegged regardless of the grade and my pedal efforts, the PID loop was not tuned very ideally, and the overall, and all those corrections and overcorrections cost some efficiency compared to if the motor was powered with a more steady thrust.

You'll notice too that we've added a numeric input for the section range if you want to study a very exact section of the trip more precisely than you can do by dragging the section view sliders. And there is also a pair of buttons to toggle the display between imperial and metric. At the time of upload you need to indicate if the file is in km or miles, but once uploaded you can then freely change this back and forth. Here is the same graph from above switched to miles

 

[justin_le]

http://www.ebikes.ca/tripanalyzer/index.php

Load it now with the data from a V3 Cycle Analyst and you will have a 2nd row of data fields to plot, including the termperature sensor, throttle input and output voltages, and human power/torque readings


If you load a a log file from a V2.X CA device, then this 2nd row of buttons is hidden and not available.

And now, we can see profiles of motor temperature along with input power and trip elevation. You folks doing motor cooling mods have no excuse not to be analytic with the before and after effects of any supposed improvements!
View attachment 1

With all this extra data it can take a little bit longer for a file to load, and every time you select or unselect an item to plot it can take a while for the graph to update. With small files it's not too bad, the one that I have a screen capture from here is a 96km section through the redwood state park, all logged at 5Hz rate, and that results in some 75,000 data points for each set that needs plotting.

If you notice it starting to get bogged down, there is a "clear trip" button on the bottom right that will flush out all the cache and memory

 

[justin_le]

Option to choose your 'X' axis as Time, Amp-hours, Kilometers, or Miles:


Choosing the plot vs. amp-hours is fun with regen setups since then the graphs get to squiggle backwards during all the negative current sections....

 

[Ascoro]

Very nice work with the web app Justin, I got my logger today and have tried it out already on a short ride tonight. Awesome!
Can't wait to try it out with some decent rides.

The Google Earth representation is rather underwhelming, I can see why you made your own.

Someone mentioned earlier the ability to 'replay' but what would be cool is to be able to replay tracks, or parts of, on a third screen section made up of gauges / visual displays. I can't think what practical purpose this would serve, but it would look neat!

EDIT: Just a note, the web app doesn't work in IE11 - can't 'select' the text files. Works fine in Chrome.

 

[Alan B]

Very nice work Justin. Now I'll have to set up to gather some data...

 

[justin_le]

Very nice work Justin. Now I'll have to set up to gather some data...

Yes, please do! I've been hoping by now that we might have had more people testing this out and sharing screen captures of various graph data and results analysis to help us decide how we hone in and refine things to better show the analysis summaries people are after.

At the moment there is definitly an issue with IE running the javascript which we are looking into, and also when you switch to the Ah or Time axis after loading a new set of data files that is smaller than the previously loaded dataset, it ends up still appending the end of the larger data in the array. That should be easy to have cleaned up, just letting you know in advance.

 

[justin_le]

Very nice work with the web app Justin, I got my logger today and have tried it out already on a short ride tonight. Awesome!
Can't wait to try it out with some decent rides.

Thanks, and yes if you want to post the log files for the longer trips here, especially if you are recording motor temperature data etc. that will be fun for us to play with. The one thing to keep in mind is that if you go into the CA's setup menu on your trip while you have the analogger turned on, then the CA will stop transmitting data for this period and the CA and GPS log files will go out of sync. So if you do end up going into CA setup and changing settings, then best afterwords to turn off and on the analogger so that it stars a new pair of files that are at the same starting sync. You can then merge them later in notepad or whatever into a single file easily enough if you want to view the whole trip stats on one screen. (Multiple file merging during the upload is one other thing we have on the dev. agenda).

Someone mentioned earlier the ability to 'replay' but what would be cool is to be able to replay tracks, or parts of, on a third screen section made up of gauges / visual displays. I can't think what practical purpose this would serve, but it would look neat!

Yeah, think it serves just the practical purpose of looking cool and generating a lot of "oh wow" factor. For now this is not really what we are after, but maybe later just some plain eye candy will be on order.

 

[Ascoro]

Thanks, and yes if you want to post the log files for the longer trips here, especially if you are recording motor temperature data etc. that will be fun for us to play with. The one thing to keep in mind is that if you go into the CA's setup menu on your trip while you have the analogger turned on, then the CA will stop transmitting data for this period...

I don't have a temp sensor, but my mate just ordered a couple yesterday from you with his logger. We were going to share one logger, but when he saw the data online he decided he needed one of his own, lol! I guess what amazed me most from my first test ride with the logger, was just how much my (LiFePo4) battery sags under power - 50% more than I thought.

Thanks for the heads-up about going into the CA menu mid-trip. Would switching between the preset modes have any similar effects? I use your 3 way rocker to select the mode, not via the menu.

 

[Ascoro]

A way to easily trim files would be great. I wanted to append two logs together, but also remove bits at the start and end of each set so as not to show residential stops for privacy, so I can share the files. I eventually worked out how to trim the GPS log to match the CA log based on the $GPGLL sentence and multiplying / dividing numbers of lines by 5, but it was a little time consuming to do. Appending was straightforward.

Tonights poor effort at a ride, into a 30+kmh headwind and impending rain. There's a bush reserve near where I live, so will be good to monitor rides through there.

I have a NuVinci hub and you can see how smooth the speed, current, and pedal cadence are going up the hill on a rough track in this small section.

 

[justin_le]

EDIT: Just a note, the web app doesn't work in IE11 - can't 'select' the text files. Works fine in Chrome.

OK, try it again in IE11 and let us know if it works now.

 

[Ascoro]

OK, try it again in IE11 and let us know if it works now.

Yep, sure does

The numerical scale adjustment box is a good idea, by the way. Should position it to the right though, as that's the scale it affects.
Also, if the box is left empty then no stats are displayed. Perhaps force a minimum value that this can be?

 

[justin_le]

The numerical scale adjustment box is a good idea, by the way. Should position it to the right though, as that's the scale it affects.
Also, if the box is left empty then no stats are displayed. Perhaps force a minimum value that this can be?

Hmm, can you clarify exactly what you are doing? I'm having a hard time reproducting this. The section range boxes seem to behave just fine when a blank value is left in them (being taken as a request for zero), but when we put a blank value on the running average box then indeed the graphs disappear.


The rolling average feature is a function that is included in the graphing library, we left it in there for now but I'm not very convinced of its value. It applies an average to all the graphs on the plot, which is useful for a couple stats like human watts that tend to be pretty jumpy, but for most of the graphs this is just concealing information you'd want to see. Here's the same graph as above with a 20 point rolling average:

 

[Ascoro]

but when we put a blank value on the running average box then indeed the graphs disappear.

Yes, this. I thought it was just messing with the Y scale on the right, but after reading the following I think I will have to get my data analyst mate (he who removes screws that shouldn't be removed) to explain its usefulness to me...

The rolling average feature is a function that is included in the graphing library, we left it in there for now but I'm not very convinced of its value. It applies an average to all the graphs on the plot, which is useful for a couple stats like human watts that tend to be pretty jumpy, but for most of the graphs this is just concealing information you'd want to see.

Another little 'nice to have' feature would be a button to reset the section range boxes back to full extents instead of dragging / typing.

I went for a ride with a mate on Sunday afternoon, we have fairly identical ebikes (except his is an Alfine 11sp whereas mine is an N360). He's new to the ebiking, and where I only used 4.5A for the trip he used 6.6A. I sent him my log file to review afterwards, and he could pick it apart to see where and how I was getting my efficiencies from. Already it has got him thinking about how he rides, and now the pressure is back on me to install his logger for him.

 

[justin_le]

Another little 'nice to have' feature would be a button to reset the section range boxes back to full extents instead of dragging / typing.

That's not a bad idea, consider it 'on the list'. Right now we're still working on an upload and share functionality. We'll implement as an "upload selection" button, so it will upload just the data from the selected region of the trip and provide a URL so that anyone can view it. Then there is no need to send files back and forth.

I went for a ride with a mate on Sunday afternoon, we have fairly identical ebikes (except his is an Alfine 11sp whereas mine is an N360). He's new to the ebiking, and where I only used 4.5A for the trip he used 6.6A. I sent him my log file to review afterwards, and he could pick it apart to see where and how I was getting my efficiencies from. Already it has got him thinking about how he rides, and now the pressure is back on me to install his logger for him.

Hey awesome, this is great to hear. I wish there was an easy way that we could have it compare two trips side by side on the same graph, but unfortunately getting the sync and alignment would be really tricky. So for now, if you want to compare two independant rides you'd need to load each one in its own browser tab or window, and toggle back and forth to see how they compared in different segments of the trip.

 

[Ascoro]

We'll implement as an "upload selection" button, so it will upload just the data from the selected region of the trip and provide a URL so that anyone can view it. Then there is no need to send files back and forth.

Excellent idea, that will be useful.

Hey awesome, this is great to hear. I wish there was an easy way that we could have it compare two trips side by side on the same graph, but unfortunately getting the sync and alignment would be really tricky. So for now, if you want to compare two independant rides you'd need to load each one in its own browser tab or window, and toggle back and forth to see how they compared in different segments of the trip.

Exactly what we planned to do, and should be sufficient. We'll also pull both datasets into Excel and do some comparison plots that way. The possibilities are endless...

We bought a couple of cheap Bluetooth heart rate monitors, and if I could find a decent app to actually record the data and not just show the current rate, then that would also make for an interesting overlay. Had any thoughts of adding Bluetooth to future versions of either the CA or logger for bio-sensors like this?