Ohme - Intelligent EV charger 4+

Missed an opportunity

Having just listened to a podcast which talked about this app and it’s use to control EV charging from your home supply in conjunction with a very special control cable. The problem I have with this and any app that from day one has no support option in place to enable any constructive comments to be made directly to the developers. The item of comment for this is you have to create a live account to just access past page one and second without providing it with details regarding the special cable it is not possible to see the content of the details screens this is regarding the times and details of the EV to be charged. My suggestion is to have a visual demo on the front screen to enable the user to have a visual of the details required at the time of setup of all screens.
DFG a new potential customer for duel fuel account but not before I see how it all works to save me money.

Far too difficult

I have been using this app for a year, with an Ohme charger and the Intelligent Octopus tariff. Setting things up is the first challenge - plug and play it isn’t. There’s a very good Facebook group that offers support, and Ohme has now published a detailed how-to guide, but this isn’t for people who aren’t comfortable with technology. The second challenge is reliability. Set up to access car data from the manufacturer, the system is prone to failure. Admittedly, these failures may be down to the car or carmaker, but I have had charging issues when other apps using this data work and the Enode website shows no downtime for the car data source. There is a way to charge the car without this connection, but the Ohme charger apparently can’t get data from the car on the initial state of charge. I get that this is a beta version but Ohme chargers are sold to the general public, not a group of testers, so I feel that a more practical version of the less sophisticated (less integrated) version should be built in as standard. Until then, this is a classic case of the perfect (fully integrated dream) being the enemy of the good (something that actually works reliably).

Vast improvements, still a way to go

First, credit to the very hard working developer(s) who have transformed the app over the past year into a genuinely useful tool. The ability to download charging data is a game-changer - although I have to set an alarm for 1st January to download it, as that’s the only day on which complete data for the previous calendar year can be obtained! Yes it’s still a bit ‘eccentric’. Next feature requests would be 1) the ability to save ev’s, as we are now daily swapping between vehicles and 2) the ability to change tariff (for example when using the cable at a temporary location); once authenticated to Octopus there’s seemingly no way to undo that. Weird bug that one. Thanks for listening!

Developer Response ,

Thanks for sharing your feedback. We'll let our Dev Team know you'd like to have the option to export your charge history. If there's anything else we can help with, please email help@ohme-ev.com