Voyage Systems: Megan and Minnie
Rumors have already spread that I and Roman (@rpasichnyk) are working together. Today, it is my pleasure to officially announce that we have started a company called Voyage Systems. Our mission is to make state of art telemetry devices for personal electric vehicles.
We have been sitting with heads down for more than a year and here’s what we came up with. Let me introduce our two hot girls… I mean, our new products – Megan and Minnie.
Minnie
Minnie is an evolution of the Metr Pro CAN – an advanced BLE module for the VESC platform. It comes with all Metr features, such as ride logging, over the air updates, secure BLE, support for Metr LTE, and more. Two CAN bus connectors are provided for daisy chaining. An external GPS module can be connected via UART. Many different GPS modules are supported.
Minnie has 16 MB of built-in flash memory and doesn’t require an SD card for ride logging. That makes it an equivalent of the Metr Pro CAN with the shield module. In addition, there’s Wi-Fi for faster data transfer. Anytime a known W-Fi network is within reach, ride logs can now be uploaded directly to the cloud without even opening the mobile app.
Megan
In a nutshell, Megan is DAVEGA and Metr combined into a single device. This is even reflected in the name which evolved from meGA (metr + DAVEGA).
If you have used DAVEGA and Metr before, Megan will feel familiar. The screen layout is very similar to DAVEGA and the mobile app is the good old Metr (for the time being). We preserved a lot of what we believe already worked well and we added some new cool stuff as well – customizable screens, lightning fast screen switching, and better smart BMS support to name just a few.
Megan still comes with an aluminum enclosure, which received a fresh design from @LR-designs and we think it looks amazing. The enclosure houses a GPS module, placing it conveniently where it gets good sky view. Buttons were reduced from three to two. This is more than enough since all configuration is now done through the mobile app and the buttons are basically only needed for screen switching.
Display size was increased from 2.8" to 3.2". The bigger display makes a significant difference in readability, especially on those bright sunny days that make all the numbers look dim. With the bigger display, the housing profile got slightly bigger as well. However, Luke also managed to make it a lot thinner, so overall it feels less bulky than DAVEGA.
To connect the Megan to the VESC, both UART and CAN bus can be used. When upgrading DAVEGA to Megan, you can re-use the already installed UART cable, which will make the upgrade a breeze. CAN bus connection then makes it possible to keep the VESC UART ports available for other devices.
Metr app
For the time being, both Megan and Minnie are used with the good old Metr app that has received some updates to be more useful for the new devices.
In the long term, we want to develop a brand new mobile app with a more polished UI that is easier to use even for inexperienced users.
Product comparison
Doing a thorough comparison of Megan and Minnie with DAVEGA and Metr is not easy since the new products received many small improvements that cannot be covered in a few sentences. However, to give at least some perspective, the following table summarizes the main differences.
16 MB of the built-in flash memory on Megan and Minnie is good for approximately 10 hours worth of ride logs with the normal fidelity.
New features and improvements
Performance
While the Megan may look like it’s running only slightly modified DAVEGA firmware, that’s not true. We completely rewrote it from micropython to C++ and that brought substantial performance gain. This is most noticeable on screen switching. See for yourself:
Customizable screens
Using the Metr app, the primary Megan screens can now be customized to show the exact data you want to see while riding. Not only that. You can also personalize all the colors, including switching to a light background, which helps on sunny days.
Wi-Fi
Both Megan and Minnie run on the ESP32-S3 chip, which features 802.11n level Wi-Fi. Since the Wi-Fi has a much faster data transfer than BLE, both uploading ride logs and updating firmware can now be completed quicker.
In addition, ride logs can be configured to be Wi-Fi uploaded to the cloud automatically anytime a connection is available – all without even opening the mobile app. Credentials for up to three Wi-Fi networks can be stored.
Daly BMS support (hopefully)
This something we are still working on. Daly BMS-es are popular, affordable, and most importantly, can be communicated with over CAN bus. Since with both Megan and Minnie, we can establish a direct CAN connection to the BMS, we should be able to integrate with the Daly BMS, same as we already do with the Ennoid BMS, FlexiBMS, and DieBieMS.
Edit: It’s done!
Misc
- New status bar showing status for:
- Available flash memory
- BLE
- Wi-Fi
- Metr LTE
- GPS
- Current time displayed on screen. (Once GPS fix is acquired.)
- Pairing code displayed on screen.
- Parts lifetime tracking configured in the mobile app. Available for both Megan and Minnie.
- Terminal screen.
Availability
Minnies will be available through shop.voyagesystems.eu starting from August.
Megans are currently only available for testers. We expect the first units to arrive in the eshop in Autumn 2023.
Follow us
We have a website and social media accounts. Currently there’s not much but we’ll be adding pictures and more info gradually so please follow us if you’d like to get more updates.
web: https://voyagesystems.eu/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voyagesystems.eu/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@voyagesystems
FaceBook: Voyage Systems
Special thanks
We have local stars testing for us and they provide a ton of useful feedback. Thank you @xsynatic, @philo, @Oliver, @ShutterShock. You guys rock!
