Intelligent Octopus schedule charging not working!!

[BornMike]

I spoke to technical at Octopus who told me to turn off smart charging in the Octopus App but when I plugged into the charger the App said I needed to turn it on!!
Now reading UniqueUser1 advice, I should turn off smart charging in the Octopus App and set charging times, only in my Cupra Born, to say 23:30 till 5:30 and that Octopus will charge at that time at the cheap tariff??
Wold that be correct?

[BornMike]

I spoke to technical at Octopus who told me to turn off smart charging in the Octopus App but when I plugged into the charger the App said I needed to turn it on!!
Now reading UniqueUser1 advice, I should turn off smart charging in the Octopus App and set charging times, only in my Cupra Born, to say 23:30 till 5:30 and that Octopus will charge at that time at the cheap tariff??
Would that be correct?

[Daveion]

Mine is working fine via PodPoint and Intelligent Octopus via the App ok. UniqueUser1 workaround looks to use the charger as a dumb charger and control the charge via the car SW. Any electricity you use between 1130 and 0530 will be at the cheaper rate. We are running all appliances in our laundry room now from 1130 at the cheaper rate.
I've charged my car a few times with the Octopus App schedule off and manually started it via the Cupra App at 1130. That has also worked fine providing the PodPoint schedules are turned off.

[UniqueUser1]

I spoke to technical at Octopus who told me to turn off smart charging in the Octopus App but when I plugged into the charger the App said I needed to turn it on!!
Now reading UniqueUser1 advice, I should turn off smart charging in the Octopus App and set charging times, only in my Cupra Born, to say 23:30 till 5:30 and that Octopus will charge at that time at the cheap tariff??
Would that be correct?

That’s correct yes. My other comment was a workaround if the octopus scheduled charging still wasn’t working for you. Have you spoken to Octopus about removing the car from the account and re-pairing? The key thing to remember is not to have conflicting schedules. Either a schedule set on your car, the charger, or via the octopus app.

[BornMike]

I would like to thank you UniqueUser because following your instructions I can now plug my car in at any time and with the charge times set in the vehicle it charges, brilliant, thanks again.

[UniqueUser1]

I would like to thank you UniqueUser because following your instructions I can now plug my car in at any time and with the charge times set in the vehicle it charges, brilliant, thanks again.

No problem, glad it’s working out ok for you.

[rogeranderson]

Up until today I have had no problems so far with my Zappi, Cupra Born and Intelligent Octopus. I set the Zappi to fast mode. When I plug in the car I select "charge now" on the Zappi and then on the dashboard I select "stop charging". I do this to avoid paying higher electricty rate until the Octopus schedule kicks in and the charging pauses automatically (although I have tested this works). Generally within a few minutes the Octopus charging schedule is created and works as planned by morning.

This has all worked fine until today. For some reason I have tried plugging in the car twice and it just will not setup a charging schedule. I've even let the car sit charging to see if that can get it to kick start but nothing.

The difficulty is it is so hard to determine where the broken link is when you are troubleshooting. There seems to be no easy way to tell if Octopus can communicate with car or not.

[rogeranderson]

Up until today I have had no problems so far with my Zappi, Cupra Born and Intelligent Octopus. I set the Zappi to fast mode. When I plug in the car I select "charge now" on the Zappi and then on the dashboard I select "stop charging". I do this to avoid paying higher electricty rate until the Octopus schedule kicks in and the charging pauses automatically (although I have tested this works). Generally within a few minutes the Octopus charging schedule is created and works as planned by morning.

This has all worked fine until today. For some reason I have tried plugging in the car twice and it just will not setup a charging schedule. I've even let the car sit charging to see if that can get it to kick start but nothing.

The difficulty is it is so hard to determine where the broken link is when you are troubleshooting. There seems to be no easy way to tell if Octopus can communicate with car or not.

Think I know why mine didn't activate. When I looked at the map on the Cupra app, my car was not showing outside my house but maybe 1km away. Not sure why that happened but after driving today and going home everything worked again.

[RKJM30]

If this helps, I have been trying to deduce how the Intelligent Octopus interface works with the Cupra Born. In doing so I have set up Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 and included the following integrations:
1. Cupra WeConnect
2. Octopus Energy
3. Octopus intelligent Tariff
4. Hypervolt charger

Seeing the parameters (entities) of each of the device integrations helps to see what might be happening with Octopus’ logic.

The set up I am using is as follows:
1. Hypervolt charger set to behave as a dumb charger. This involved removing all schedules and turning off all delay starts (including the random delay at start of charge).
2. Set up Intelligent Octopus using integration with My Cupra (not an integration with the charger - some chargers like Ohme will accept an integration directly with the charger instead of an integration directly with the car).

The parameters which I believe Octopus read from the My Cupra app integration are:
1. Car Location - Home or Not Home
2. Plugged in status - Plugged in or Not Plugged in
3. Current state of charge in %
4. Max allowable charge limit in %

The controls that Octopus use through the My Cupra integration:
1. Start Charge
2. Stop Charge

The above information has been deduced from the behaviour of the system over the past 12 months and is not sourced from Octopus, so might be either incomplete or slightly inaccurate.

Again, by deduction, I believe the system logic works as follows:

Octopus checks approximately every 30 minutes to see if the car location is both “at home” and “plugged in”. If not then it sleeps for another 30 minutes.

If the status has changed to at home and plugged in since its last check, then it will send a “stop charge” command and determine a charging schedule (if the charging schedule starts immediately then it will not stop the charge). At the start of the charging schedule it will send a “start charge” command through the my Cupra integration. At the end of the charge window (or when the battery reaches the octopus set charge limit) it will send a “stop charge” command through the My Cupra integration.

This all means that if Cupra’s system is down (I.e. it is not possible to connect to the car through the My Cupra app) then the start/stop charge commands cannot get through.

Things that will stop the system working correctly:
1. If the car does not report that it is “at home” - this can only be determined through alternative interrogation of the my Cupra app (I.e. Home assistant)
2. If the Cupra backend is down (this occurs on a fairly regular basis approx every 6 weeks, but is improving)
3. The car is not connected to the internet (normally through 4G- determined by connecting to the car through the my Cupra app)
4. A schedule set up in the car or charger will probably interfere with the charging.

It might be possible to diagnose where the system is not working from these deductions. I hope it helps, please do update here if it does or if these deductions are not correct.