OTA Connect User Guide

Update engine shutdown calibration on an ECM

As an OTA Campaign Manager, you are responsible for sending updates to devices owned by Premium and Standard customers in Europe. Your team has found the following bug in devices owned by your Premium French and German customers: engines keep automatically shutting down after a minute to save energy. Now, for these customers to be able to keep their engine on when waiting in their vehicles and stay warm, you need to send a bug fix to the effected Engine Control Module (ECM). Luckily, you can do this with an OTA update.

Test software in your pre-production environment

To test software updates, the Software Manager created a pre-production environment. You are a member of this environment and can follow the quality of the developed software versions. The Software Manager also provisioned a test device and set it to automatically receive any new software version uploaded to the pre-production environment.

The new version is configured to update the software on the Engine Control Module (ECM) in the following way:

  • Extend the engine idle time as much as possible to allow the Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) to keep the driver comfortable during extreme weather conditions.

  • If the temperature falls below 7.2 degrees Celsius or rises above 35 degrees Celsius, the updated software overrides the engine shutdown.

After the testing, you need to send this new version to customers who selected the Premium support type.

Set up your production environment

In the project production environment, the Head of the embedded team has already provisioned all devices owned by customers with Premium and Standard subscription across Europe.

Now, you can group these devices to target them in different campaigns.

Upload custom device fields

To easily group devices, you can create the following custom device fields: Trim level and Country.

To create the custom device fields:

  1. In a CSV file, create the following three columns: DeviceID, Trim level, and Country.

    DeviceID;Trim level;Country
  2. In the DeviceID column, list all of the devices provisioned in your production environment.

  3. In the Trim level column, specify the type of subscription for each device: Premium or Standard.

  4. In the Country column, specify the region where each device is registered: France or Germany.

  5. Upload the CSV file to the production environment.

Now, you can create a device group based on your custom device fields.

Create a device group

Your new software update is aimed at French and German devices with the Premium subscription type. You can create the French and German Premium smart group that is based on the following clusters:

  • The first cluster contains the filters listed in the table below.

    Table 1. The filters in the first cluster

    Filter

    Type

    Value

    Market

    Contains

    Germany

    Trim level

    Contains

    Premium

  • The second cluster contains the filters listed in the table below.

    Table 2. The filters in the second cluster

    Filter

    Type

    Value

    Market

    Contains

    France

    Trim level

    Contains

    Premium

You should see matching devices that show up in your group. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that the group contains exactly 1,000 devices. This is useful to know when you track the progress of your software updates.

Now, the Software Manager can upload the software update tested in the pre-production environment.

Create a software update

In the new software update, the Software Manager decides to target only one control unit, the Engine Control Module (ECM), and upload the update as the new version of the last update, ECM-RL7815-FRTOS. When creating a software update, the Software Manager specifies the information listed in the table below.

Table 3. The software update details

Software update name

Improve Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) in extreme weather conditions

Description

Update the Engine Idle Shutdown Timer Calibration on the ECM.

Control unit type

ECM

Software from

ECM-RL7815-FRTOS

Version from

1.0.0.

Version to

1.0.1.

Now, you can deploy this update to the device group that you created.

Create a campaign

As an OTA campaign manager, before you launch a new campaign, to make sure that the offline devices get the latest updates when they connect, you need to cancel all the ongoing campaigns that contain the older versions of the ECM-RL7815-FRTOS software. Then, you can create a campaign and name it HVAC improvement for German and French Premium devices. You can set this campaign to deploy the Improve Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) in extreme weather conditions software update to the devices targeted in the French and German Premium smart group.

You can also configure a notification for end users. The text of this notification is then sent to the OTA Connect client software version that runs on the device.

Example 1. Notification

Our care team has released a new software update that improves your vehicle’s heating and air conditioning in extreme weather conditions.

To install this software update, your engine will shut down for about 15 seconds.

Do you want to download and install this software update to your vehicle?

You can monitor devices that detect and download the new software update.

Monitor the campaign

Now that you have launched the HVAC improvement for German and French Premium device campaign, you can check what percentage of 1,000 vehicles have successfully installed the software update. This might take a while since not all the vehicles will connect and install the software update at the same time. Additionally, some end users might decline to install the update, and in a few cases, the update might fail to install for various technical reasons.

To get a good overview of the campaign progress, on the Campaigns tab, navigate to the HVAC improvement for German and French Premium device campaign, and then click it. The section with campaign details expands. You can see what has happened with the campaign. Suppose that you see the following statistics:

Table 4. Campaign status report

Status

%

Number

Failed

2%

20

Successful

83%

830

Installing

9%

90

Not applicable

6%

60

Control units on most devices can install the software update. A few devices are still installing it or have not connected yet. There are also a few devices that have not installed the software update — either because they are not applicable or the software update has failed for whatever reason.

Troubleshoot the campaign

Some of your devices failed to install the software update, so you may want to search for the installation report.

To get the installation report:

  1. On the Campaigns tab, navigate to the HVAC improvement for German and French Premium device campaign, and then click it.

    The campaign details section expands. The section contains the campaign statistics and a list of failure codes.

  2. To get more information about each failure code and see the affected devices, in the Export device statistics column, next to the needed failure code, click the export button (Icon).

    You get a CSV file with the following details on the failure: the ID of the affected device, failure code, and failure description.

The failures in the HVAC improvement for German and French Premium device campaign occurred due to the following reasons:

  • Users rejected the software update.

    Since the software update is not safety-critical, ignore the devices that have this error.

  • A control unit has a technical defect.

    For example, you get the following failure code: Assign BOOT Service Unavailable. The ID of the device that has this failure is JTHFF2C26B2515161. To get more details:

    1. Go to the Devices tab.

    2. Search for the device with the ID JTHFF2C26B2515161.

    3. Click the device.

      The page with the device details opens.

      You notice that the ECM on this device has not successfully installed updates for the last six months. In this case, it would be good to contact the vehicle owner and ask them to visit a local dealership for further diagnosis.

You can also query the historical installation records for all update operations to see if there are control units on other devices that have consistently failed to install updates in the last six months.