openinverter forum

Well ain't that something....

So the LIM goes looking for a friend when it sees 5% pilot.

Don't get too discouraged. Try charging on some other charging station models and flesh out any other issues. Who knows maybe you'll stumble into a clue this way.

Can we get some SPI/PCAPs from the 2019 LIM charging on the Efacec? Would like to see how this one behaves vs the 2014.

Maybe it's a hardware issue and the CP signal is malformed / cabling has to high attenuation for higher frequencies / Ionity hardware uses other EMI components than the other charging stations, which is not as robust with your vehicle side / other unwanted high frequency carriers / oscillations.
Just good enough to let the LIM detect the 5% pulsewidth, but not good enough to let the PLC happen. Probe the CP signal with the scope and spectrum analyzer and compare it with other sucessfull charging session initiations could help.

CCSknowitall wrote: ↑Thu Jul 01, 2021 4:32 am Can we get some SPI/PCAPs from the 2019 LIM charging on the Efacec? Would like to see how this one behaves vs the 2014.

The 2019 LIM was in a 2019 i3 kindly loaned for a non-intrusive CAN logging session not in Damien's vehicle.

davefiddes wrote: ↑Thu Jul 01, 2021 9:54 am The 2019 LIM was in a 2019 i3 kindly loaned for a non-intrusive CAN logging session not in Damien's vehicle.

Oops I meant the other newer LIM Damien actually owns, might have been a 2017, not 2019.

Yeah I have a week 50 2017 LIM that should be using the "newer" firmware.
Had to do a 100 mile trip today so used the opportunity to do some "tuning" on the ccs state machine. Dave has also done some mods that I have just merged and will test in a few days.I might have to tweak your timers Dave as some stations don't like waiting in precharge I seem to recall. Anyway thanks again for helping out.

Can now terminate charge from either the station or the car in such a way that each waits for the other to do its bit before moving to the next. Tested.

SOC calc working (close enough) and now displayed on station.

Car now waits in initialisation upon 5% pilot until plc comes up and station reports ready. This means you can plug in the car, mess about finding your rfid card or phone app and not have the car time out or go to a state it shouldn't.

No need to worry about me giving up. 8 cars and 12 years later it would be a bit late:) I am taking a break from Ionity testing for a bit. I have a nasty feeling about my cheap Aliexpress ccs socket being the root cause. Sadly due to an upcoming house move I have $0 to spend on an oem socket which I probably should have done at the start:)

Neat!

Yeah. Can believe that the timers might need some tweaking.

I've been prodding the i3 Ionity CAN capture and trying to understand whether there's anything significantly different between how the i3 does it vs. Stm-vcu. Not sure if I'll get anywhere but at least I'm picking up some SavvyCAN skills.

Perfect. One tip for the captures. What I do is make a list of the ids I need e.g. 0x3e9, 0x2f1 etc. Then load the log in the frame sender and select these ids. Tick use original frame timing and play back the full log. Now save your log window and you have a log of just the ids you need. Now hit interpret frames and overwrite mode. Load your new log back into the frame sender, clear frames, hit use original timing. Now you can play the charge process out in real time , slowly or single step. You can even open two instances of savvycan and do this with two logs to see the differences. e.g. the circontrol units are super lazy in init stage versus the others.

Great, now I see CAN messages in my sleep. Apart from that I've not made any particularly profound discoveries.

The change in Subpoena behaviour I made yesterday could be improved. The i3 controller appears to use the LIM message 0x272:FC_Contactor_State to change to ChargePhase::EnergyTransfer rather than the crude delay I implemented. It should be easy to put a patch together to do this.

The other observation/query I had was around the change to lim_state 0 which used to keep set the ChargePhase to Standby but now goes straight to Initialisation. This creates a different behaviour to the i3 controller. I don't think it has a bearing on the Ionity compatibility as the VCU code didn't do that at the time this was last tested.

I couldn't see anything in the CAN logs to indicate what might have gone wrong with Ionity. Not seen anything useful in the SPI registers that might give a hint. Guess that it must be something electrical or signal integrity related.

Is now the time for someone else to integrate with their vehicle to help with testing?

IDK if any of this is new info or helpful Ill admit I am just coming into this, However I believe I2SE makes the PLC interface chip for the LIM. I have found some decent info on their website including a link to the QCA 7000 drivers on Github. perhaps they would help to understand just what the PLC module is saying. Also, reading through the J1772 specification the required Ethernet messages are clearly listed Im not sure how much overlap there is between CCS in europe and J1772 based fast charging there is. All that being said these intech guys sell a PLC breakout board with SPI/UART for around 40Euro that could be integrated into a VCU I am willing to bet its a similar situation in the LIM. So if one were to buy a unit then ask for support that could shed some more light on the lim
Also, I see there is a unit called the charge module S that has native CAN support. I may investigate that route as most of what I do is in the J1939 realm.
Hope some of this was useful and not redundant.
https://in-tech-smartcharging.com/produ ... amp-mini-2
https://in-tech-smartcharging.com/asset ... 4_rev5.pdf
https://in-tech-smartcharging.com/produ ... munication

~Brandon

The change in Subpoena behaviour I made yesterday could be improved. The i3 controller appears to use the LIM message 0x272:FC_Contactor_State to change to ChargePhase::EnergyTransfer rather than the crude delay I implemented. It should be easy to put a patch together to do this.

But these changes could easily fix timeing things.
I think the state machine changes should be indeed 'event driven'.

@davefiddes you have done more then enough heavy lifting on this project and it is indeed high time that others get involved. That is if the community here want this to succeed.

I'm very happy to keep providing assistance on the SW side. I've lots of ideas on how to improve as we go forwards but it seems that the guts of the solution is there now. I wish my own conversion project was further along and I could join in on the HW side too.

The more installs there are the easier it will become and the better the compatibility.

Thanks as always Dave. Re your latest code I need to fix the CCS_Contactor bool as it not working at the minute:)

Sorry. I thought I'd thought it through. Is it reporting the correct contactor state in the UI or is it just getting stuck?

No I'm sorry. Idiot as usual. I didn't have it working previously but just saw that you fixed it. Will test at a charge point this week.

Whew! I'm sure there's still plenty of opportunity for new bugs...but hope it works when you get there.

I've been giving some thought on how things can be tested automatically to avoid regressions like this. Difficulty is doing it in a neat way that doesn't introduce a bunch of new bugs. Could save a lot of driving about and charging though.

Had a quick test today at my local service station. Efacaec worked fine AFTER I changed state 0 back to being standby instead of initialisation:) All other parts worked perfectly including soc display on station and end charge from station.

That's excellent news. Quick, ship it!

I don’t have a high voltage EV conversion project ready for field testing but I could try the LIM setup with a mobile 400V battery. How far is the voltage measure and contactor control board? Are you already using the custom voltage measure board?
Would also like to try the setup with inlet lock actuator.

bitterandreal wrote: ↑Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:28 pm I don’t have a high voltage EV conversion project ready for field testing but I could try the LIM setup with a mobile 400V battery. How far is the voltage measure and contactor control board? Are you already using the custom voltage measure board?
Would also like to try the setup with inlet lock actuator.

Indeed. Now that we have proof the LIM solution works we need to take a look at the eco system. I have the LIM but still am short on a car and the rest of the parts. I think that we need the LIM breakout board then we can increase the amount of testers.

Based on my project's progression and my personal budget, I likely will be able to begin testing in late September. Hopefully others can help before then, but if its still needed in September, I'm more than willing to drive all over North Carolina to do testing.

I’ve got a virgin (new, uncoded) LIM, connectors and VCU/housing and am ready and willing to do some testing and logging if there’s hardware ready. If that helps.

Bryson wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 12:47 am I’ve got a virgin (new, uncoded) LIM, connectors and VCU/housing and am ready and willing to do some testing and logging if there’s hardware ready. If that helps.

Mhhhh that' might be a challenge I think. The LIM doesn't know it's VIN or the car configuration right now, Charger type etc. the solution might be doable though (grab copy of tools and a i3 etc.)

Or the LIM is not that 'smart' and gets it's data all over CAN and will be happy to translate ...

EV_Builder wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 6:40 am
Mhhhh that' might be a challenge I think. The LIM doesn't know it's VIN or the car configuration right now, Charger type etc. the solution might be doable though (grab copy of tools and a i3 etc.)

Or the LIM is not that 'smart' and gets it's data all over CAN and will be happy to translate ...

Damien noted that the LIM can be configured with ISTA software! So there's definitely a route, I'd love to see how that's done.