Octopus Intelligent Go

[Simon66285]

Hi
I’m an EV newbie but finding I’m getting lots of problems charging my tourer.

I’ve switched to octopus intelligent go and have an Ohme home pro charger

The three apps (vw, octopus and Ohme) just seem to be overriding each other and I’m waking up to loads of error messages from all three and a car that’s partially charged but not to 80% and not always all within the off peak period

Is there a straightforward way to simplify this please as it’s driving me round the bend

Thanks

[mikejl]

To meet the IOG terms you must let them control either the charger's or the car's charging schedules. Set both the car and charger to charge immediately (no schedules), and give control of one of them to Octopus via the app.

Whenever you plug the car in it will start charging, but after a short while Octopus will see it, stop the charge & set its own charge schedule. If you're concerned about the car charging at peak rates whilst waiting for Octopus you can pause charging in the car immediately after plugging in. Octopus will still see the car & do its stuff.

[Simon66285]

Thanks, I’m definitely linked up but will try cancelling all schedules elsewhere. Presume that also means setting the VW app charge level to 100% (and cap it at 80% in the OIG app?)

[mikejl]

My experience is that you can cap the charge level in car & Octopus app. Charging will stop at whichever is lowest..

If you set a higher limit on Octopus, then they will allocate more time for charging, which may give you off-peak rates outside of the normal 11:30 - 5:30, but recently they’ve taken to shuffling the schedule several times a night and I don’t know what they will do when the car stops accepting charge, so I wouldn’t rely on it. They may just cancel the additional time that they had allocated.

[CraigJ]

Hi, just following this thread and have similar questions. Octopus engineer came out to install my Ohme home pro charger last week and set up the ohme app on my phone, making sure all the settings buttons within the app to lock the charger down and approve plug ins were switched on. I also did the test charge via the octopus app so thats all set up, it recognises my car as a device . Now the problems -

1- i plug the car in when returning home and then octopus app recognises its plugged in and sets a schedule for that night, usually starting at 23:00 or 23:30 going through to 05:00. But i find after schedule start time the car hasnt started charging and i think its because i havnt approved the plug in via ohme app. If i do that then the charging starts - so should i turn that approve button off in the ohme app so that octopus can just get cracking at 23:00? If so whats to stop people using it? Or, do i simply press yes to approve plug in when first connecting it up, and trust that it wont just start charging because Octopus schedule over rides?
2 - when i open the VW app to check if car is actually charging or not after pressing the approve button in ohme app, i can see that the car is showing as unlocked even though i know for sure it had been locked since being parked up. Why is this happening and has anyone had the same issue?

Charging level in the car itself is set to 80% on the central screen, and same in the octopus app. No schedules/routines set up in the ohme app.

Thanks for the advice!

[Adamyorkie]

I am having similar problems, but I think mine is caused by my 12v battery so I'm going to get that checked. As whenever it has worked overnight and I get error messages from both Octopus and VW app if I try to check my car or do anything in the app it says 12v battery charge is low, which is starting happen daily now

[LongMynd]

I've been using IOG for months very satisfactorily on our ID.3
Now that we have also an ID.7 I want to link that car to IOG instead.
I deleted the ID.3 and started the set up procedure again. When I connected to the Volkswagen app IOG saw both cars. I touched the ID.7 and it immediately said that I was set up and ready for Octopus to control the car charging.
N.B. I did not do a test charge and was not even offered a button saying "Test Charge".
Despite the up beat message from the app, I don't think it is properly paired. The Octopus app thinks that the car is not plugged in, but it is.

I have double checked that I do not have time preferences set on the car.

Any tips?

Thanks everyone,
Charles

[LongMynd]

Update:
I contacted Octopus who told me to disconnect the car and attempt pairing it once more. The instructions she gave were exactly what I had been doing but I repeated the exercise for the fourth time. I was still not offered a test charge but I left it plugged in anyway.
By 23.00 I was going out to the car to set up a manual charge when I noticed that Octopus Intelligent Go had set a schedule.
Overnight the car charged as requested.
Did Octopus do something? Did VW do something? Was I simply trying to pair it with IOG before VW had set it up properly (I had had the car for less than 24 hours when I started this game)?
Hey Ho. Charles

[Simon66285]

I’ve got a similar problem but not quite the same. I previously had a Pro S which I’ve had to give back due to finishing work. I’ve now got a Pro tourer on OIG and an Ohme Pro charger

It worked all ok on the previous car. It seemed to be working fine on new one but it always seems to stop charging in middle of night, well short of the 80% target.

Car is fine if I charge it at a public charger

Any suggestions please?

[RichR]

I have to say that having Octopus control the charger not the car is much more reliable if you can do that - the number of chargers they support is growing. I had all kinds of issues with it controlling my Enyaq (pretty much identical to a VW ID.x in this regard), until I changed my charger to a Zappi as I was having solar panels installed. My issue was mainly that I have little to no mobile signal at my house, so the car couldn't be reliably contacted to check its state of charge.

It's a beta service after all though, so there are all kinds of unexpected issues with situations they haven't encountered or been informed about.