EV-Peak CQ3, Q6400AC and others schematics - FW support, FW modification

[Martin Laža]

Hello everyone,

as mentioned in my last post I have CQ3 charger from EV-Peak with Nuvoton M0516LBT chip. As far as I have strong HW development background and few IMAX B6 repairs done, I was not surprised with similarity to IMAX B6. But there are differences, see schematic.

Basic characteristics:

- 4 channels 100W each (with internal AC supply) - up to 10A current

- 400mA balance current (10R load)

- Nuvoton M0516LBT based charger

- 12MHz external crystal

- 5V logic

- common ground on the PCB for all channels

- 5V reference connected to AVDD

- Similar topology to standard chargers

- different pinout on the MCU for functional pins

Extra functional pins on the MCU:

- MCU_BUS_PIN - connected to all MCUs in charger - function unknown

- FAN_ENABLE_PIN - controls fans

- SMPS_DISABLE2_PIN - separated function from SMPS_DISABLE_PIN

- V_EXTERNAL_2.5V_PIN - reference 2.5V from TL431 - function unknown

- OUTPUT_VOLTAGE_POLARITY_PIN - status of the battery polarity

- LCD_BACKLIGHT_VALUE_PIN - PWM control for LCD backlight

Differences to IMAX B6:

- no -BATT pin voltage measurement

- on MUX are measured balance channels, GND reference voltage and +BATT voltage against common ground

- battery output voltage (+BATT vs. -BATT) is measured on MCU - OUTPUT_VOLTAGE_PIN

- external temperature is measured on MCU - T_EXTERNAL_PIN

- LCD backlight could be controlled by PWM - LCD_BACKLIGHT_VALUE_PIN

- in general CQ3 has different approach to battery conditioning ( polarity protection and voltage measurement (diff. opamp vs. two voltage dividers in IMAX))

Schematics remarks:

- not complete - just main functional parts are present

- bolt/italic are new signals

Open questions:

TL431 function in schematic? - connected to AIN3 - V_EXTERNAL_2.5V_PIN

Other chargers from same family with similar schematics?

How complicated is the modification of the software? (I have some experience in C, but not in C++) 

- current pin assignment is clear and straight forward

- how to handle new pin functions?

- how about battery voltage and polarity check?

- fan?

- LCD backlight?

Can someone help here to spread the power of Cheali charger to other platforms?

With regards

Martin Laza

Czech Republic

[Martin Laža]

[Paweł Si]

2016-05-24 15:38 GMT+02:00 Martin Laža <xlaz...@gmail.com>:

Hello everyone,

as mentioned in my last post I have CQ3 charger from EV-Peak with Nuvoton M0516LBT chip. As far as I have strong HW development background and few IMAX B6 repairs done, I was not surprised with similarity to IMAX B6. But there are differences, see schematic. 

Thanks for the schematic!!

definitely ;)

With regards

Martin Laza

Czech Republic

I've added a new branch to the project:

https://github.com/stawel/cheali-charger/tree/ev-peak

it has only the keyboard and lcd implemented (without backlight)

could you check if it works?

you need to compile the source:

cheali-charger$ git checkout ev-peak

cheali-charger$ ./bootstrap-arm

cheali-charger$ cd ./src/hardware/nuvoton-M0517/targets/ev-peak-cq3/

cheali-charger/src/hardware/nuvoton-M0517/targets/ev-peak-cq3$ make

if you are using a st-link2 you can also flash from here:

cheali-charger/src/hardware/nuvoton-M0517/targets/ev-peak-cq3$ ./progStLink2.sh

[Martin Laža]

Hi,

great info! I will need fully forking charger on the weekend. But Next week I will proceed with with MCU unlocking and flash.

Martin

Dne středa 25. května 2016 22:55:21 UTC+2 cheali-charger napsal(a):

[Vjekoslav Balas]

I just purchased the CQ3 charger and wandered whether you maybe knew how it can
be connected to a pc for logging. According to the Ev-peak website pc communication is possible
using an adapter and they have a PCMonitor software. Ev-peak don't answer me and the seller indicates
this is a mistake and it is not possible. I have a UART to USB adapter.

[Joshua Garde]

Hiya - I just wanted to give an update on this topic. I have one of the newer versions of this charger and I was looking to flash it with cheali-charger so I recently tore it open. The newer models use a NUC029LAN instead of the M0517. Thanks to the the schematic that Martin posted up years ago and the work that was already done porting for the M0517, I managed to get a build running on the hardware after a month of work. There's still testing and features that need to be implemented, but I think that we're finally well on our way here. The branch is currently on my own repo, but I haven't had time to do proper documentation on instructions for flashing the device or for building; though a lot of the work parallels the process for the M0517. I'm hoping to get proper calibration data sorted out soon as the values in the configs are just placeholders.

Checkout the branch here: https://github.com/joshgarde/cheali-charger/tree/nuvoton-NUC029

Thanks for your schematic Martin! Again without your comprehensive schematic, I would've spent another month just tracing out the PCB.

[Joshua Garde]

Hi everyone,

Thought I would provide another update now that a bit more progress has been made. I've successfully ported the main portions of cheali-charger over to the CQ3 and the new hardware! The only part not currently working is the buzzer which I can likely sort out pretty soon (it seems that whatever device the NUC029 was utilized in used an active buzzer instead of a passive buzzer seen in the atmega32 port). There were several differences from the Nuvoton NUC029 hardware which made this port more of a debugging session than an engineering session.

I'll be opening a pull request on the main repo as soon as I get this code field tested a bit more.

[Joshua Garde]

Apologies, I meant to say the hardware in the M0517 port compared to the hardware utilized in this NUC029 port.

[Joshua Garde]

Woot! The first PR is now live - feel free to review it and give me your feedback. There's still a lot more development/testing to be done for this hardware, but I now have a build that's "stable"! The PR isn't to be merged just yet until everything else on the to-do list is completed.

https://github.com/stawel/cheali-charger/pull/316

[Formaster]

Hi Josh, I have the newer version of EV-Peak CQ3. What do you think, is there any possibilities to control the charger via pc-uart?

[Joshua Garde]

Hi - so the CQ3 actually has all the hardware necessary for a serial connection. On the front, those four 3 pin connections that aren't labeled on the case and not mentioned on the manual, are actually UART pins for each channel. The first two pins are RX/TX (forgot the order) and the last one on the right is GND. EVPeak has software on their website for controlling the charger from the UART, but I haven't tried it. In theory, you just need a UART converter board (5V b/c that's what the internal logic runs at) and to download their software, but the lack of mention on EV-Peak's behalf makes me think that the feature wasn't fully fleshed out.

As it currently stands, cheali-charger isn't really built with UART control in mind either, but I'm thinking of eventually porting some support into cheali-charger to work with the exiting utility.

[Formaster]

Hey, thanks for the rep Josh :) Thought these are the UART connection and waiting for the CP2102 converter which ordered. I have already downloaded and think it will only be suitable for monitoring. I found a smart guy who made a unique Java program to Control many different devices. This is more than interesting.

In theory, any device control could be added to the devices folder, but I don't know how to create the commands in the txt file. Unfortunately, I don't have the original firmware either. If you take a look it, I'll be very grateful or if you could share the original firmware, that would also help me get started.

cheers