OpenEVSE plus DIY goes to charge ... without EV

[vehiculeselectriques]

Hi from France,

I'm needing help with an OpenEVSE plus DIY project for a Nissan Leaf
kit soldering was not a problem

with 240V grid connection LCD indicate
OpenEVSE version 2.0.b7
Self test (briefly)
one ? (seems) click from relays
then it goes right now in charging mode with timer counting and level 2:16A indication ...
but there is no EV connected !

question: is it not supposed to wait for an EV before going to charging mode ?

I checked and 235V AC is present at openEVSE EV plug, i can stop the timer (and charge) with push button
but >
once pluged on the Leaf the plug detection light on dashboard goes on but no charge (blue led at top of dashboard stay off)
despite openEVSE is indicating >Charging<

i re re check every thing all seems ok to me, i'm lost...
thanks for your help and advise
Phil

[lincomatic]

Does your J1772 cable have both a pilot and proximity wire?  If you connect the proximity wire instead of the pilot wire to you OpenEVSE's pilot connector by mistake, it will go straight into charging after self test.

Sent from my iCrap

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[Nicholas Sayer]

Amplifying on what lincomatic said, I've seen two different color codes for J1772 cabling, and they're conflicting. In one case, pilot is orange and proximity is blue, and in the other the pilot is blue and proximity is red.

For EVSEs, the proximity line is not needed, so you can cut it short, but if you had cut it short and it was the wrong one, that would have been bad. I usually leave it long and tape the end to prevent it shorting anything.

For the Hydra, you do connect both. If your plugs don't have a proximity line, you can do without it, but it's better to have it (the Hydra can pass along inlet proximity transitions with it).

[dra...@wb6pwj.com]

I once saw this problem. It turns out that there is a whole series of P6KE16 transorbs. The correct one is not polarized and has no bar.

If it turns out that you have the ones with a bar you can use 2 back to back. That is what is in the non polarized version.

[vehiculeselectriques]

Thanks for so fast and informative answers, i appreciate your help solving my charger problem

As you can guess on the picture included, what i suppose to be the pilot wire has a "PC" sticker and is some sort of "green",
the other plug signal wire is black color and i wired it to ground (but tried without it and no change in result)

seems the transorbs i have does not have bar visible

thanks again
Phil

[Nick Sayer]

Three of the wires in the J1772 cable should be AWG 10 gauge - much larger than the rest. Of those, the green one is ground.  The other two are hot lines. 

If you have only one smaller wire, it's the pilot, regardless of color. 

If you have two, use a VOM to check the resistance to ground on each. The open circuit wire is the pilot, the other (with a resistance that changes as you push the latch button on the plug) is proximity. 

Sent from my iPhone

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[chris1howell .]

Looks like you have two wires from the J1772 going to ground. The large green/yellow one is correct. The small black one also going to ground may be the pilot. It should not connect to ground.

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[Nicholas Sayer]

I can't see or make out what's connected to the pilot connector on your DIY board.

It's a two-pin screw terminal. The lower of the two (in that picture) should be connected to the ground bus, the upper to the pilot line of your J1772 plug.

The black line coming from your J1772 plug is connected to the ground bus. That's probably incorrect. The green/yellow wire is undoubtedly the ground. The black one is smaller and is either the pilot line or the proximity line. If it's the only wire in the J1772 cable that's that small, then it's the pilot line. It should be connected to the pilot terminal on your board.

[vehiculeselectriques]

Thanks all,

i made a mistake with google group and send my message to someone ? ...

so here it is resumed:

i checked the plug wiring and the pilot is the green tiny wire.
the proximity wire is a blue wire which is connected to PE ground plug through 150ohms and 480ohms if latch button is pressed.
Turn that this blue wire is extended on the openEVSE side by the "now famous" black wire and cut short on the EV plug end of the charging cord. (see pictures please)
i don't know if its ok but seems it's useless from openEVSE side ?!

so now i'm sure pilot line is wired ok to his terminal on the PCB but i'm still with the direct charging mode problem :^(
EV plug seems correct to me

Do you still have some ideas ?
thanks for your friendly help
Phil

[Nick Sayer]

So leave that black wire disconnected. Connect the green wire from the plug to the "top" pin of the pilot screw terminal on the DIY board. Run a small (22 AWG) wire from the "bottom" pin of that same connector to the ground bus.

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<P1090946web.jpg><P1090948web.jpg>

[vehiculese...@gmail.com]

thanks, i already had another small wire to ground and with pilot wire on the right terminal pin...

the result is still the same, we are back to begining, OpenEVSE goes directly to charging mode and Leaf doesnot accept the charge

have a nice week

Phil

[lincomatic]

As drayer suggested, have you tried powering it up w/ the pilot wire disconnected from the PCB? Does it still go straight to charging mode?

 

From: open...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of vehiculese...@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, March 2, 2014 11:49 PM
To: open...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: OpenEVSE plus DIY goes to charge ... without EV

 

thanks, i already had another small wire to ground and with pilot wire on the right terminal pin...

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[vehiculese...@gmail.com]

i tried with pilot wire disconnected, no more straight charging mode
the LCD first line fast alternate Ready/Charging indication

same for backlight alternately flashing 2 colors and relays going madly ON/OFF

second line say "EV not connected"

[lincomatic]

If the car is not connected and connecting the pilot wire makes it go into charging mode, then either you are connecting the wrong wire, or your cable is defective. Test with an ohmmeter between the pilot wire and ground. It should be open circuit.

 

The status going to EV not connected is correct. I don’t know why your relays are chattering madly, though. If you have access to an oscilloscope, get a photo of the pilot trace and send it to us. Something else is also wrong.

[vehiculeselectriques]

Hi,

ev not connected tests
pilot to ground is open circuit
if pilot wire is not connected to OpenEVSE pilot terminal then the relays go mad ON/OFF dance and the LCD show ev not connected
if pilot wire is as it should be so on the pilot side indication on the PCB terminal OpenEVSE goes directly in charging mode

here it is the strange pilot to ground mesured signal 
thanks
Phil

[vehiculeselectriques]

Hi,

did someone have an idea about this problem ?

thanks,

Phil

Le dimanche 2 mars 2014 16:31:08 UTC+1, vehiculeselectriques a écrit :

[chris1howell .]

Hi Phil. That certainly is not normal. If this is happening with the pilot wire disconnected, then the circuit needs to be looked at. I would check that the solder joints on grounds have flowed correctly on all pilot components. The grounds are part of the ground plane so they require more heat than other joints.

 

I would also check that the LF353 OP amp was placed in the correct location and is in the correct orientation. and that the correct capacitors (blue) were uses for the D117E DC/DC converter.

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[vehiculeselectriques]

it goes into chargin fmode when the pilot is connected

if the pilot is not conented it shows EV not connected and goes into relays fast ON/OFF dance

I mounted the PCB very carrefully (triple check) using the tutorial and BOM for this board so i don't think there is something wromng here...
 seems i'm going nowhere with my Open EVSE

anyway thanks for your help,
Phil

[chris1howell .]

Something is not right. With pilot not connected the board is isolated so the issue must be local to the board, relay on/off dance is not the correct behavior.

 

The most likely source of the problem is in the pilot circuit:

 

pilot power source - DC/DC converter D117E, 2 2.4k resistors (R12, R13), 2 - 1uf capacitors (C5, C6), 1 - 2.2uf (C13) capacitor

pilot opamp - FL353, 2 - 100k resistors (R8, R9), 649 resistor (R1)

Pilot measurement - 56k resistor, 100k resistor and 200k resistor (R5, R6, R7)

 

I would check that the components are correct and the grounds are soldered well.

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[Nick Sayer]

Since it’s fouling up with nothing connected to the pilot, then what I would do is check the three resistors that form the divider network that converts the +/- 12 volt pilot into a 0-5v input to the microcontroller. There’s a 200k, 100k and 56k resistor. On the DIY 30A board, they’re R5, R6 and R7. Make sure that each value is in the correct position.

200k = red black yellow
100k = brown black yellow
56k = green blue orange

With nothing connected to the pilot, that line *should* be a constant +12 volts. Since the controller is bouncing the relays around, it may be periodically getting a +/- 12 volt square wave.

In either case, the pilot read-back pin (ADC1, pin 24 on the controller) should be fairly close to +5 volts (or close to 0 for the portion of the square wave that’s -12 volts).

If this doesn’t help, then the next step would probably be to load test firmware on it. I’d like to see what the pilot line voltage is for both the +12 and -12 output, and what the ADC is saying the numeric value is in both cases.

If you’re not fluent in the Arduino IDE and/or have an ISP programmer handy, that might be easier said than done.

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[vehiculeselectriques]

thanks Chris but seems from your components ID we don't use the same circuit

pilot power source - DC/DC converter D117E

 > OK

, 2 2.4k resistors (R12, R13) > R2 and R3 are 2,4k on mine (red yellow red gold)

 2 - 1uf capacitors (C5, C6) >

 BOM on mine is here http://code.google.com/p/open-evse/wiki/OpenEVSE_DIY_Plus_spec
indicate C3 and C5 as 105 marked and 1µf value,  C6 is 2,2µf on my circuit

, 1 - 2.2uf (C13) capacitor 

>> on my board it's C6 and marked 225 (tiny blue cap)

pilot opamp - FL353, 2 - 100k resistors (R8, R9),  649 resistor (R1) > Ok

Pilot measurement - 56k resistor, 100k resistor and 200k resistor (R5, R6, R7)  > Ok

thanks Nicholas,

i strictly respected the bom from the page link indicated

i dismounted allfrom the board for checking it and with only the 230V grid connected it goes directly in charging mode timing.
Then i measure 2.96Vdc  from ground to pilot and atmel PIN 24 is 3Vdc
i don't understand why
i have a parrallel port Atmega ISP (74HC244 IC) if it's realy the only way to find out though not really used to playing with it

here his best picture ihave to let you see if something jumps up ?

thanks for your help i appreciate
have a nice day
Phil

[vehiculeselectriques]

Hi,

no comments ? i find nothing wrong with my board but for sure the pilote signal is not good !

kind regards,
Phil

[Nick Sayer]

For me, the next steps would involve uploading test firmware. I’d write a sketch in Arduino to put a square wave on the pilot output, then have it print the max and min pilot read-back values from the A/D converter in a tight loop.

I’d then put the pilot signal on a scope to see what was going on.

To do that, you need the Arduino IDE, plus the OpenEVSE sketch and the LiquidTWI2 library. You also need an ISP programmer of some sort and you need to modify your boards.txt file so that it can function with no boot loader and program with ISP. Instructions for that are on the wiki.

If with nothing connected besides the scope you get anything other than a +/- 12 volt square wave, then you need to look at the pilot generation circuitry, which will involve the +/- 12 volt DC-DC converter and the LF353 op amp.

The read-back should average (it will vary somewhat) a minimum near 0 and a maximum near 1023. Chris would have a better idea what values to expect, but I believe the resistor network is intended to scale -12 up to 0 and +12 down to +5 volts.

If the read-back values are whacky, then check the pilot feedback resistor network and the capacitor between Vref and ground on the ATMega328p.

That’s about all I have left to offer, I’m afraid.

[chris1howell .]

You are welcome to mail  the board to me and I will do a full evaluation and repair (if necessary) at no charge. I do not think the issue is software 2.0B7 is very stable and widely used.

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[Nick Sayer]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply there was a software problem. The test firmware is intended to test the hardware he has. 

Sent from my iPhone

[vehiculeselectriques]

thanks for your kind offer Chris though it will not be necessary as i'm an idiot !

The problem is solved and was a ... not soldered pin on the LF353
yes i'm really ashamed, thanks for your kind help and accept my apologise

OpenEVSE LCD indicate ready and EV not connected, perfect !

have a nice day and take care of your soldering skills, seems mine is still to be perfected...
Phil