openinverter forum

My Charger Journey

So the two of you who actually have read this entire thread, may recall that I started out with a Tesla Model S charger. Yes I installed a EVBMW.com open source DIY circuit board in it, somehow removed the OEM million pin connector off the original board and resoldered it to the new board. To this day I have no idea how I pulled that off, and would not attempt it today, and even got it working.



So why did I not install that 35 pound beast in the truck? Why did I decide not to use it? Well, when I bought it I thought Tesla is Best? I also thought it would be a hoot to pull up in my beater to a Tesla charging station and shock them pretentious owners by charging my truck at "THEIR" stations. Well, little did I know that's not how it works and you can't charge with a Tesla charger at a Tesla station without the Tesla. Also the charger is really three charge modules in parallel in one box and that's great if you are in Europe and have 3 phase power in your home, but here in the States we do not, we have Single Phase and if anyone thinks we have more we can thumb wrestle.

So I went out and bought a Chevy 1st gen charger, and a 2nd gen charger, and a Tesla Model 3 charger and a BMW 530e charger.

... enough about you and more about me:

So I am using the widely popular in EV Conversions 1st gen Chevy Volt Charger and it works great. It speaks CAN and that is documented and supported. It also charges the regular car battery in addition to the big high voltage traction battery pack. It's younger brother the 2nd gen Chevy Volt charger speaks PWM and though folks have got it working on their test benches I have yet to come across people running them in their vehicles successfully, please correct me if I am wrong.

I bought the Tesla Model 3 combo unit because it is two things in one: it is a charger and a DC-DC converter in one box, and that means less cooling hoses to plumb, and less engine bay clutter. It may even have built in EVSE chargebility in it I don't know. I am slowly trying to build up the courage to use it.


The BMW 530e charger was designed by aliens and they sent us the instructions on how to use it via a balloon but we decided to shoot it down!

"Level 1 - aka 120 volt 12 amp AC" Homegrown Charging

So although the 1st gen Chevy Volt onboard battery charger is made out of metal, is water cooled, and happens to be bolted up to your vehicle, it is still just a brick, a overgrown AC adapter if you will, no different than the one for your laptop. So I just simply lopped off the OEM connector off it's AC cord and fandangled a standard dime a dozen 120 volt 15 amp NEMA (pronounced: "American") plug on it, and called it good, and I charged the truck with it for a month or so

but you already knew that

and Bob's your mother's brother

"Level 2 - aka 240 volt still 12 amp(ish) AC" Homegrown Charging

The conversion from 120 volts to 240 though clever was super easy! So forgive me but I can only speak about electricity outlets in the States. Charging at 120 volts has its perks, you can find a standard 110 /120 volt outlets everywhere, but when you want to charge faster, your choices of outlets narrow.

In the "American" homes we have a choice of three outlets:

• 1. 3-prong clothes dryer outlet

• 1b. 4-prong clothes dryer outlet

• 3. 3-prog cooking range/oven outlet

Let's start off by eliminating the range/oven one first. It would be nice to use this 240 volt 50 amp circuit but lets face it, the kitchen is way too far to reach from the garage and we don't recommend extension cords for this level of current. Also most of the time the ovens are hard wired into the wall anyway so there is no oven plug easily accessible to unplug and plug our vehicles in.

So that left me with the clothes dryer, and regardless if mine was a 3-prong older style of the 4-prong newer kind, I had to first replace my 120 volt plug with a 240 volt one.

20 Amp 250-Volt NEMA 6-20P 3-Prong Industrial Grade Havy Duty Male Plug - from Home Depot


and this is where things have to get worse before they get better...

great, now I spent money and time on a plug that left me unable to charge on either Level 1 or Level 2

So first I bought this 4 in 1 AC Power Adapter on AMAZON to be able to charge at Level 1 again

15 Amp Household AC Plug to 20 Amp T Blade Adapter:

• 5-15P to 5-20R

• 5-15P to 6-15R

• 5-15P to 6-20R

• 15A 125V to 20A 250V

and then to finally be able to charge at Level 2 I bought this AC WORKS 30 Amp 3-Prong Dryer Wall Outlet Adapter also on AMAZON

DIY EVSE OPTION... Not An Option, for me!

so after minutes upon minutes of haphazard research I realized that it is going to take much more than an Arduino board and some stolen GitHub code to fool a public charging station into allowing Dusty to drink, and I didn't want to subject you all to any more of my soldering skills nor did I want to learn Slovenian, as this is the only thread on our forum I could find on the topic:

DIY EVSE dangerously simple/development use

more on this later

on a serious note, a lot of the stuff I found was about building/standing up your own EVSE charging station to charge your OEM EV at home type of thing, which is the opposite of what I am trying to do, I want to just drive up to a regular Public Charging station and plug in my EV Conversion Chevy truck and have it charge.

So I am trying to understand EVSE (pronounced: "a docking station for cars", lol)

yes there is a lot going on there, but among them two things primarily Proximity Pilot and Control Pilot (which might as well been called Gizmo 1 and Gizmo 2, as the names are completely cryptic to me):

1. Proximity Pilot aka Charge Cable Detection

Simply put this tells the car it is connected to a charging station, PERIOD.

Complexly put:
Proximity Pilot (PP) serves as a charge cable detection and current limitation. The Proximity Pilot is implemented differently in Type 1 and Type 2 plugs. For Type 1 plugs only, the Proximity Pilot also takes care of mechanical locking and sparkleless disconnections.

QUETSIONS:

I don't get why getting a Proximity signal is important to us EV Conversioners as I manually put my truck into charge mode by turning my ignition key to the left aka Accessory position, I don't need no Proximity signal, I know I am at a charging station and I am manually asking / telling my vehicle to charge. Does that make sense to you all? And I get the safety aspect of it, that it prevents dumbasses from driving off with their cars still plugged in, but that's no different than driving off with the pump nozzle still in the fuel tank filler hole, and I have yet to drive off with one of those in 35 plus years! I am thinking somehow in some way this Proximity signal is in turn fed back to the charging stations, but aint that what the next thing the Control Pilot is for?

I recommend doing what the OEMs do: Just fiddle with it all until it happens to work, and then tell everyone you're following the standard.

celeron55 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 2:57 pm I recommend doing what the OEMs do: Just fiddle with it all until it happens to work, and then tell everyone you're following the standard.

Thanks for defining the lingo as you dig through all of this! Now we need some wiki-fu master to sweep your posts up into the wiki brain.

I have seen adapters like this for people that charge rv’s and scooters at
public evse, https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004570389194.html

Not sure how well they work, probably similar to a dumb resistance across the cp and pe pins.

so all this EVSEing was giving me a headache and I just had to rest my brain for a while and do something with my hands

one of many trial fidaments


and here we add the VCU

I really didn't want to put holes in this firewall especially after days of welding the ones that were originally there all up, but I think I can live with two, and I might could mount the oil pump and water pump relays on this side using one of them acorn nuts

I may be the only guy I know who doesn't mind wiring, my wife calls it my therapy ...

A couple Wiring Top Tips from a wiring semi amateur

1. you can always make the wire shorter (not so much the other way)

2. not all crimpers were created equal, treat yourself to a quality crimper, one tool at a time as you need it, don't go out an buy a set of 19 different wiring tools, 18 of which you will never need

3. these are NOT proper wire strippers, I don't care that your neighbors uncle wired his entire house with one of them when he was only 13 years old


4. Never Ever Never use these hard plastic shielded terminals, if I catch you I will drown your goldfish, now go throw yours out, I'll hold...

it's getting there, and I don't mean to sound pompous, I have literally been shortening some of these wires a foot at a time, and once I install some sort of EVSE charging solution module thingie I will do one more pass and thin it out some more now that we have the EV Fuse Block / VCU mounted in Siamese Formation

that green thing is a 5 pin relay that turns off my charger when in Drive Mode, it may be going away, again based on what charging solution I end up with

Gregski wrote: ↑Wed Oct 04, 2023 1:00 pm A couple Wiring Top Tips from a wiring semi amateur

1. you can always make the wire shorter (not so much the other way)

2. not all crimpers were created equal, treat yourself to a quality crimper, one tool at a time as you need it, don't go out an buy a set of 19 different wiring tools, 18 of which you will never need

3. these are NOT proper wire strippers, I don't care that your neighbors uncle wired his entire house with one of them when he was only 13 years old


red wire strippers.jpg


4. Never Ever Never use these hard plastic shielded terminals, if I catch you I will drown your goldfish, now go throw yours out, I'll hold...

wire terminals.jpg

When I was an apprentice alarm engineer my senior mate used to always say "Yer better lookin at it than for it"

He had a good point.

2. Control Pilot

So we pull up to a public charging station, plug the car in (assuming all the credit card account info jives) then what happens?

Well, the charging stations sends 12 volts to the car on both the Proximity Pilot and the Control Pilot pins.

Our plug in the States has 5 pins (pins are just connector thingies) 3 are used to send power and 2 are used for communication. Our focus is on the 2 communication pins, the Proximity and Control Pilots.
the magic happens on the Control Pilot pin simply using all hardware in the form of resistors and diodes, as the vehicle signals the charging station using different volts between 0 and 12, think smoke signals

• 9 volts means we plugged in and want to charge

• 6 volts means start charging

In addition to establishing the handshake if you will above, the charging station uses PWM to communicate still on the Control Pilot pin to the vehicle how much current it can pull, but that's some VooDoo for another day.

If we are dumb enuff to try and unplug it in the midst of charging [some] handles have triggers which while pressed will use the Proximity Pilot to signal the charging station to stop the charging so that we can remove the handle from the vehilce [safely]

so I have all of this 1st Gen Chevy Volt Gizmology I just need to fool it into charing

So it looks like we need a J1772 EVSE Interface / Controller "Thingie"

here are the ones I had to choose from

SOURCE	GIZMO	PRICE	COMMENTS
EV West logo small.png (8.65 KiB) Viewed 31149 times	EV West j1772-active-vehicle-control small.jpg (4.73 KiB) Viewed 31149 times	$45	J1772 Active Vehicle Control Module AVC2 - For Public Charge Stations This product is also compatible with the European Mennekes connector and L2 charging stations.
Modular EV Power seems defunct but sells on eBay	Electric_Car_Company AVC2 small.jpg (7.17 KiB) Viewed 30995 times	$56	J1772 Active Vehicle Control Board - AVC2.r this is the .r version that includes a resistor incase your outlet connector does not have a built in one, the instructions tell you how to test for that
evshopfr-logo-1639646684 small.png (9.05 KiB) Viewed 31150 times	EVShop evse-interface-j1772 small.jpg (7.79 KiB) Viewed 31150 times	€49 $60	EVSE Interface J1772 works with both Type 1 connectors (USA, Japan, etc) and Type 2 (Europe, Australia, etc)
ZEVA logo small.jpg (3.18 KiB) Viewed 31113 times	ZEVA Interface small.jpg (4.85 KiB) Viewed 31113 times	Not Sure Where To Buy This	EVSE Interface (J1772) The ZEVA EVSE Interface allows you to charge your EV from standard AC (L1 and L2) charging stations using the SAE J1772 standard. It works with both Type 1 connectors (USA, Japan, etc) and Type 2 (Europe, Australia, etc). See caution from Tom below
Vero Electric Logo small.jpg (2.47 KiB) Viewed 31148 times	Vero Electric Simp Charge small.jpg (7.28 KiB) Viewed 31143 times	$80	SIMPCHARGE J1772 CHARGE CONTROLLER The SimpCharge EVSE Controller interfaces with offboard Level 1 and Level 2 J1772/Mennekes AC chargers to allow your EV conversion to charge at public charging stations.
OpenEVSE logo.png (8.19 KiB) Viewed 31138 times	OpenEVSE Controller small.jpg (7.36 KiB) Viewed 31132 times	$130	OpenEVSE v5.5 - Universal EVSE Controller The OpenEVSE PLUS v5.5 is a Universal Electric Vehicle Charging Station Controller. It is ideal for use Worldwide for SAE J1772 and IEC Type 1 - 2 Charging Stations. Update from me in the future: Per Tom this is for the EVSE charger station side and will not work for us on the car side to talk to a public station

Gregski wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 1:13 pm So it looks like we need a J1772 EVSE Interface

here I the ones I had to choose from

OpenEVSE is the EVSE side not the vehicle side of things.

The SimpEVSE is a "passive" device I would say as it does not calculations or controls itself. More of a translation box. Can be permanently powered and used to wake up the rest of the vehicle when a plug is inserted, Proximity detection. Very low current consumption, just a few mA.

The EVshop EVSE Interface J1772 is a just the ZEVA product that went opensource not branded as such. Should have a few more features like talking over canbus to tell you the CP current limit. I do not know how much current this devices draws and if it can be left permanently powered.

Edit(just reviewed the code for the ZEVA EVSE interface)

It only outputs the available power onto the canbus not the AC current limit or voltage or the plug state.

Edit 2(reviewed schematics)

ZEVA EVSE is connected to the MAINS Would strongly not recommend.

tom91 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2023 1:54 pm OpenEVSE is the EVSE side not the vehicle side of things.

The SimpEVSE is a "passive" device I would say as it does not calculations or controls itself. More of a translation box. Can be permanently powered and used to wake up the rest of the vehicle when a plug is inserted, Proximity detection. Very low current consumption, just a few mA.

The EVshop EVSE Interface J1772 is a just the ZEVA product that went opensource not branded as such. Should have a few more features like talking over canbus to tell you the CP current limit. I do not know how much current this devices draws and if it can be left permanently powered.

thanks Tom, can you elaborate on the SimpEVSE being "passive" as I emailed VERO Electric and specifically asked if it will allow me to charge at a public station and here's what Reider had to say:

"...You will be able to charge at almost all charging stations, including Tesla destination chargers (with a Tesla to J1772 adapter). Any charger that is J1772 or Tesla and not a DC fast charger is compatible."