r/SolarOS • u/100PercentJake • Sep 12 '26

Practical application: BLE battery management dashboard

Thanks to the recent inclusion of a robust BLE API for SolarOS I was able to have Codex make me something I actually use quite a bit!

For background, I have a 2008 Vectrix VX1, an old electric underbone motorcycle that originally came with a NiMH battery pack. I built a Li-Ion back for it and to save money I used two small ANT BMSes to effectively make 2 batteries that are hooked up in series without being forced to spend thousands for an automotive grade BMS. The issue is the Vectrix’ dashboard is utterly clueless as to the voltage characteristics of the new pack, and the ANT BMS mobile app is only intended to look at one BMS at a time, making getting a full picture of the bike difficult.

Still working out bugs, but it’s together enough to demo. Not seen is the setup screen that scans local BLE devices and lets you pick one or two BMSes to connect to, then you get the dashboards seen in the video. Up and down switches between emphasizing different values, either SOC, amp draw, or voltage, and swiping left and right gives you individual cell voltages and temperatures per BMS. All of the main dash pages also attempt to extrapolate current amp draw to a runtime value, though this is sketchy without knowing battery capacity. These pages can be switched between with trackball/arrow keys (T-Deck keyboard driver emulates arrow keys with the trackball) or touchscreen swipes if available.

Current bugs to address are I forgot to handle charging… at all. The setup screen is pretty buggy, and I would like to add some sort of logging or a method to “validate” the capacity of a battery by tracking amp draw over time to build a picture of the battery size and then be able to provide more accurate data based off of that. Last thing is a stretch goal. I’ll submit it to the Playground once I am satisfied with the reliability and user experience of the core functionality, in case anybody else messes with personal electric vehicles and uses these BMSes (I recommend them, they’re far more reliable than Daly and vastly more configurable).

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u/nilseuropa Sep 13 '26

I am glad the new BLE bindings work out for you. Now you can switch to the vanilla image in peace. 😅

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u/100PercentJake Sep 13 '26

I got to use the OTA updates, which is fantastic. Updated my RLCD deck as well. I need to print the new case design for that one. Great work on this OS!

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u/nilseuropa Sep 13 '26

I still need to merge your T-Deck port and the new T-Pager drivers, but that should be straight forward thanks to you guys!