Oh wow, a blast from the past. There is a non-calibrated meter in the socket, and the meterin box communicates with the charge point. It simply detects if there is a discrepancy between the meter readings, so bypassing the internal meter will get you in trouble ;)
This is a classic "Camel" design (FYI: a camel is a horse designed by a committee). This all-powerful "solution" for charging a Tuk-tuk, aka "city car", was designed by bureaucrats for bureaucrats and approved by bureaucrats. Whether or not profitable to manufacture, the large NRE (mostly software and packaging) was likely a grant from political type bureaucrats. Genius!
That is an embedded MID meter, you can tell based on the "M " marking. Measuring electricity is a much harder problem than you'd initially think, it usually takes ~1 year normally just to go through the certification and fix all the tests that it would initially fail. The standard is written such that it's practically impossible to certify a EVSE like this as an MID meter since it assumes you're making a standalone unit. Those meters are designed for edge cases (e.g. DC current tolerance, bad power factor, immunity to transients), and it is NOT trivial to design, test, and certify. Even big players get it wrong sometimes and certify using "3rd grade" test houses that do not care, and when you test it per the standard it obviously fails. I don't believe there is a single MID certified embedded meter in an EVSE quite yet, although that may change soon.
@@mikeselectricstuff by "standalone unit" I meant that the MID standards has many assumptions about what a "meter" should look like. E.g.: DIN rail mounting, certain mechanical characteristics related to input/output terminals, *input power consumption*. That last one is a big one, I don't remember what the specific requirement is but it's in the order of 3W. The EVSE unit consumes more than that obviously so if you were to certify the entire thing as an MID meter it would fail that test. That is only a few examples, but there are many more. You may argue with regulatory/test houses til the cows come home about what clauses apply and which don't, but it better be worth the 100s of k$ and many months to save a little bit of space in the box.
@@sparqqling Sadly though, not elimination - a significant amount of pollution comes from the tyres and any parts that move. We should all learn to levitate ;)
London has the most amount of charge points of any city within Western Europe. And makes up for almost 1/3 of total U.K. charge point distribution. Heard of this during the Mayoral question time yesterday. Interesting really, but also needed cleaner air and environmental sustainability. EV overall do make sense in the large urban area.
@@beamer.electronics Levitate, that requires even more energy. Maybe we should get hollow bones to levitate, until than cycling, the underground and trams are the way forward!
I'd be willing to bet that microcontroller is running Linux, and that the code that provides all the functionality is written in a high level language like Python. Not that I have anything against Python, but for some reason a lot of these companies seem to prefer using an expensive microcontroller so they can hire a cheap Python programmer, instead of hiring an expensive C programmer even though that would drastically cut the cost of the microprocessor board, and it would mean they could sell more of their product because of the lower price.
Yeah I agree that once you leave the prototyping stage you should go with c. My guess is that it's just easier to debug and and issue firmware updates to these things.
Part of me wonders what contents are stored in the eMMC of that i.MX6 module. Probably an embedded Linux operating system, but the applications and configuration files inside could be worth exploring.
The control pilot does allow for digital signaling, by first using a duty cycle of 3-7% and presumably have a timeout to wait for the EV to respond before reverting to standard J1772.
This is a great channel. I really like to look at the good assortment of electronics you show. Interesting stuff, not just boring consumer electronics.
For a low volume product like this NRE will be the major cost anyway, so using off-the-shelf makes perfect sense. You'll have to make several thousands to get anything (more) custom to be economical.
The charge point wouldn't necessarily need its own mobile connection, it could use the cable device as proxy for communication (with end-to-end encryption). That way it's even cheaper! Given the requirement that the charging has to work without any mobile link whatsoever, it is quite a challenge to design a moderately secure system though. I imagine that either each device has a universal key to unlock all charge points (and is responsible to protect that), or the downloaded authentication "ticket" is tied to a specific charge point and date/time range to avoid simultaneous use.
As always - interesting tear down Mike, the way things are going I wouldn't have thought you will be short of material from the rapidly changing EV world in the foreseeable future, the tech is changing almost daily it would appear.
I saw this at trade shows years ago too, thought it was an odd idea and over-engineered at the time, but not to that extent! Can see what they were going for, low hassle plug and play with secure metering, but there must have been simpler ways to go about it even then.
Also if this is several years old then it was released in an environment when so many things were heavily subsidized. If the customer can get a £300 subsidy to pay for the thing then they already are 0 out of pocket so spending more time to reduce the price just delays the release. And some subsidies are even pools of money so when they are gone they are gone. That means there is an element of urgency. Get the product to your customer before the subsidy runs out. There are DCFCs in my area from a decade ago which are clearly massively expensive due to each having a dedicated transformer next to them that is about 1.5m on a side. Plus a huge concrete pad under it. This was clearly unsustainable from a cost perspective but they got them out the door first and picked up the subsidies to cover it. Glad things are more streamlined now. We never would have had the uptake we have now without a couple generations of design improvements.
problem with metering inside the chargepoint is to split between users and document that start meter reading and end meter reding for every transaction. the cable is fixed to one user only, so the meter count is continuous
A carpark solution could be including a wifi chipset and require a router and 3G connection just for this purpose to be set up the display as a whole seems pointless, any information it could give you you can just pull from a website, probably making the entire SBC pointless as well im sure you can get integrated secure ARM, wifi, bluetooth and 4g modem modules now, slap in a shunt and capacitive divider, do OTA updates, throw in a few bits and bobs and get the cost down to $50-75US Edit: Just throwing wifi or bluetooth endpoints around and sticking a wifi or bluetooth modem in the thing could not just reduce cost low enough to give these away with subscriptions but also reduce the big chunky box to a black rubber blob
It's a work in progress. UK Local Authorities can obtain Government funding to pay for the civils work involved in fitting grids in pavements, so that a charging lead can pass under rather than over it. The installations allegedly take around 40 minutes. Many Local Authorities are oblivious to these grants, and may need their ar$e$ kicking to raise awareness. The funding *is* there, they just need to apply for it. But of course for that to happen, they need to hear requests for them.......the same applies to street light EV chargers. The funding is there, they just need to apply for it..... Employers here in the UK can also apply for a grant to pay for the installation of chargers at the workplace. Although again, many may not be aware of it.
I've often wondered how robust EV manufacturers are at honoring a dynamically changing CP PWM (to balance the load across multiple vehicles on the street). From what I've found online in the past, smart EVSE that adapt to solar panel output have encountered problems with certain vehicle brands throwing a shoe when the PWM duty cycle varies. Also, it is worthwhile noting that the CP PWM represents maximum charge rate; if, say, the vehicle is consuming 1kW when the CP PWM says 7kW is possible, the lampposts are squandering unused power that could otherwise be sold to another vehicle. Given this, it seems possible, if not likely, that they must be metering (but not at revenue grade) within the lamppost module to ensure that this doesn't happen?
Then those cars are violating the DIN standard that they claim to be certified to. If you are compliant with the DIN standard then you *must* respect changing CP, otherwise very dangerous situations could develop.
Not specific to this device but the concept of using the streetlighting circuit for car charging is ...weird, to me... at least in this area, the entire road of streetlights is fed on one x 2.5mm regular SWA (TN-S area) from a feeder pillar up the road
a lot of led retrofits reduced current draw significantly and might leave room for some charging current, does seem kinda weird to me though here in the states our light poles are fed on seriously anemic supplies so this could never work here
here they was using mercury and yellow sodium or whatewer it is lamps before now slowly moving to LEDs so cabling is done for at least 1kw per pole but actual load is at most 1/10th of it
@@mikeselectricstuff I am wondering how street lighting is controlled (how they are turned on/off). Here lamp post are dumb devices that have no power if they need to be on, public light is controlled from one central place, power distribution company send signal over power lines to public light distribution boxes then then just simply turn on power to street lights (and cut power when they send off signal).
Any Idear what sort of data is sent down the cable from the car? i have see the tesla car start charging without having to logon to a app or use a tab key so im guessing some sort of identification goes down the cable. would be nice if non tesla cars could fast charge as easly
No data is sent from the car at all. No idea how Tesla does it -- it's annoying that they refuse to collaborate on or use international standards, meaning charge infrastructure has to be duplicated, wasting money for everyone. The only thing sent on normal cables is the control pilot signal, and that's mostly a one-way communication to the car, telling it how much current it can draw. Remember that the actual *charger* is inside the car, these are EVSE which literally do nothing but supply power to the car -- the car then decides what to do with it.
Very intersting bit of kit. Thanks for ripping it open, but sad to see that there really is nothing of use to us insde. Is the meter something like the smart meters the electric companys want us to have?
I have no driveway, and have no problem with public recharging. Lamp post charger sockets are a non-starter, because we have no lamp posts throughout most of this area. Streetlights are fitted high up on terraced house walls, with the junction boxes 3 metres or more above ground level. There are ways to circumvent any foreseeable problems with this. For instance, I could have an under the pavement cable channel fitted, which removes the no-driveway problem, so long as the local council approves it. Or I could continue to use public charging options. ATM, recharging is free [7 kW and 22 kW, 3 phase, which my car can accept] at my local supermarkets. But even at present prices for paid-for recharging [from 25p per kWh at 50 kw], it's cheaper to recharge publicly for the expected life of the car than to have a charging outlet fitted to my house. And I'm in a minor city in central England, which doesn't have the best recharging infrastructure. They're catching up, however, as the numbers of EV's around here are climbing rapidly. So no, the lack of a driveway for EV recharging points is not an issue for me. From my viewpoint, it should not affect the value of properties around here any more than the lack of driveways already does. Incidentally, I've driven thousands of miles, in both England and Wales, in city and rural areas, and have never had to worry about recharging the car. I've never had to pay directly for the electricity either. My suspicion, FWIW, is that the 'no-driveway problem' is not really an issue for most people, and that other EV drivers are adapting to the changed circumstances, as human beings tend to adapt to all kinds of situation.
My first thought when you showed this is "whats to stop someone just stealing this cable" since it has plugs on both ends with no obvious locking device. If someone stole it, and it doesn't use a pin to enable it as you say, then would someone be able to use it to charge their car and have you billed for it?
The cable is locked in situ at both ends once the car is locked. Presumably if you reported your cable as stolen, then Ecotricity ( now owned by Shell in the UK I think ) they could disable it?
Here in the SW mike, people with the dosh to buy the likes of Tesla etc., are not doing so because of very limited and awkward charging points (chicken & egg), plus concerns over the EOL environmental aspects of the battery packs. They look at Hydrogen fuel cells etc. and get totally bewildered by it all, defaulting to yet another hydrocarbon vehicle. The other aspect of EVs that concern is cabin heating which I think is usually about 2.5KW, whereas most gas cars are from about 3.5 to 9 KW, and whatever you take from the battery - can't be used for movement. This could get cold in rural traffic queues in mid-winter, possible answer - a diesel heater! :) Great video and analysis, by the way. All the best, Beamer.
4-5kw normally but I have seen them run as high as 7kw. So about 15 to 25 miles an hour charge rate, for the average EV. So ok for a 15 hour overnight charge or an 8 hour work day.
You dotn have a video on that little dreadful Miniware scope.? 11:55 a shame as your videos on scopes is usually pretty solid. Got the cheaper variant myself MiniWare DS212 and yeah it does wonder for your patience.. trying to navigate it (wow a pain). .. though the build is quite nice, but it cost like 60 bucks a few years back, but a few weeks after I took the plunge on a Micsig STO as that MiniWare DS212 would not be ideal as a learning oscillioscope... The Micsig STO 4ch 100Mhz was, on the other hand, a very pleasant experience with the price in mind, that was quite low at that time and it still works great.. though I would love to see Micsig implement some new features and updates.. ..ruclips.net/video/wlkgdtkoAeE/видео.html Though I was able to use the DS212 to measure the Micsigs waveform rate.. were around 95k but shockingly easy to record footage on the Micsig and connect to it from pretty much all devices out there ruclips.net/video/vDdu-4F3XQs/видео.html
My prediction for the future: mandatory separate metering for domestic use and EV charging use. With EV charging being taxed as revenue from fuel duty starts to dwindle. Especially after 2030 mandate that all new vehicles will be EV.
@@mikeselectricstuff what if manufacturers stop installing on board chargers, mandating us to charge at rapid hubs that are taxed? You've probably seen my thread on speak-ev discussing same...
Lot of places are simply averaging out the estimated revenue per car they get from fuel duty and adding that to yearly registration charges, of course while they're trying to encourage uptake they will either not do this or keep the rates low enough that people are less likely to complain that it's not actually cheaper to run
@@mikeselectricstuff I certainly would, because even an overnight charge on a 3 pin domestic plug/socket would still add enough miles for my driving the following day. They wouldn't know whether you charged a car up or sat up watching TV all night...... How could they realistically tax electricity generated by privately owned solar panels, unless they offered an assurance the sun would shine on X days per year?
Once UK fuel duty begins to dwindle, it is to be replaced by a system of road tolls, the details of which have mostly already been worked out. The Government are to publish some details of the scheme in 2022 I believe.... You appear to be implying that somehow the cost of charging an electric car will rise hugely, and the cost of petrol and diesel will not? I think you'll find that is most unlikely. Any Government which purports to promote the usage of green energy and transport methods to fulfill their climate commitments can hardly allow a situation to develop where fossil fuel is cheaper to use than energy from renewable sources..... And don't forget oil refineries. If the cost of electricity rockets, then so will the cost of fossil fuel by default. Oil refineries use *lots* of electricity..... Once the UK Government ceases subsidising the oil industry by £300 billion per year, the Treasury coffers should look a little healthier....
I think that would only work over short distances. If I remember correctly that protocol was mostly meant for appliances to speak to each other in the same household. Besides, this system would need the connector to always be powered which would make stealing power much easier and make it more dangerous to plug in your car. At the end of the day I think it's just easier to integrate a sim card in the thing.
The current monitor not being on the neutral wire is interesting. I guess you could flip the polarity on both sides and draw "0.0Wh" fairly easily after the authentication dance takes place. (I guess the security module isn't authenticating that embedded meter either, so you could just emulate your own and make it count at half the rate as normal. I bet nobody would ever notice.) I see why they're phasing this out :D
@@mikeselectricstuff I meant on the light pole side, the place you plug the entire module into. You could use the control lines to talk to the light pole. So city connection w/ network data goes into the plug, the plug has a basic MODEM for the data signals that also filters it out, then it goes to that plug. Complex, but you don't need wireless networking and it changes the attack surfaces a bit.
Thx for the video. Very interesting. Good idea, but executed somehow poorly. Very big unit, also imx6 is a huge overkill for this too. for the 1st generation it would acceptable, but it is not a new system. I agree same functionality should be implemented in the car itself using open standards
What a waste.! It doesnt even seem to a have contactor, the DIN part is just an electricity meter. So the actual contactor to control the charging still has to be integrated in the lamp post. That means some sort of control is also present in the lamp post. This whole concept is kind of moot in this case. They could have easily integrated the power measurement and the authentication into the lamp post itself. Plus they wouldn't need like thousands of these "smart cables" when a single robust solution would have sufficed to be integrated into the lamp post. Perhaps they wanted to "sell" these expensive cables and make a business case, which obviously failed.
I really wonder whether a large part of the cost was that microcontroller board, and to avoid putting one of those in each lamp post they put one in the cables instead. The reason I say that is I've looked at a few different industrial devices like this and instead of using a cheap microcontroller and writing bare metal code in C, they pick a way overpowered controller that can run Linux, just so they can write all their code in a high level language like Python. I get that C programmers are harder to find and cost more than someone who can learn Python in a weekend, but it just makes me wonder whether they could've paid a bit more for a better programmer, saved a huge amount of cost on the hardware side, and sold many more devices and been more successful as a result.
If you listened to what Mike was explaining at the beginning, putting the smarts and expense in the cable was meant to make it even easier for municipalities to add this system to their lampposts. They literally just have to install a simple plug that probably costs very little. Then all the transactions and whatnot are handled by the company, and they peel off a percentage each month to kick back to the municipality.
I'd still prefer to have the contactor in the lamp post. That way the actual connector is unpowered when not in use which also makes stealing electricity harder.
EVSE question: how hard is it to put an EU EV socket on, say, an electric bicycle and use an EV car charger to charge a bicycle? I'm not talking DC fast charging or 400v charging, since that's either overkill or a great way to start an lithium battery fire
Simple - you just need a switched diode and resistor on the CP line in the connector to tell the EVSE to turn power on. The switch is needed as some CPs lock the econnector. You can also buy type 1/2 to AC outlet adaptors/cables. Instead of a socket you may want to just make up a Type 2-to-whatever-your-bike charger-uses cable
@@MrHack4never Remember, these are *not* chargers -- the charger is IN the car. These are just electricity supply devices. So your bike would still need separate charge circuitry.
I guess that's possible? But each unit is registered to an owner for billing and calls home for authorization, right? I assume it would look suspicious if you were charging through the service but the billing was zero.
Doubt it, as this would make install much more expensive due to needing a cherry picker and lane closure. I'll take a closer look next time I see one. If I were doing it, I'd use the flap on the socket, or the socket surround.
Why not just do an authentication on a mobile phone APP and just have a bluetooth module in the carge post, that way niether the charge post nor the cable needs a cell connectsion. And you could solve the under ground carpark issue by letting the app pre authenticate a charge.
I was just wondering what is the percentage of electric cars to chargers what if everybody wants to charge the car all at once it could happen most people go in the grocery store and all leave at once
No, hardly. Not everyone fills with petrol at exactly the same time, do they? Not everyone covers the same distances during their journeys. We all have different driving styles too. You could have 2 identical cars, and two different drivers will yield different levels of fuel consumption with those same cars. And even if they all came out of the grocery store at the same time, they won't all travel the same distances to work, at the same speeds on the same roads. We're not all the same, which is why we eat at different times, and get haircuts at different times etc....
@@Brian-om2hh no not everybody feels the car with petrol at the same time but in the video he said there was only a certain number of chargers there’s got to be a lot more cars than chargers The one thing I find ironic about electric cars is all they’re doing is switching gas for electric you’re still gonna charge you for the electricity and it causes a lot more fuel to make that electricity right now with the electricity rates I would be paying more to drive a car if it was electric that’s the ironic part Electric car is only economical if electricity is too cheap to metre plain and simple
This cable is really not that smartly designed (from a logic, perspective). If that box, is all it takes to make the system go, then it would be simpler to have it inside the pole, and control the setup using phones (we all have apps these days), leaving the cable bare of any "eye catching" features.
As explained in the video, that means you're paying for this setup at each pole, versus only having to make them for the people who actually use them. You might install hundreds or even thousands of these units into the poles and only have a faction of them in use, which is a waste. But as also explained, they have since moved to exactly what you just suggested. I first heard of these through Fully Charged, and I'm glad they've managed to survive so far. That video is still available; being old also means you get a feel for their intent and plans. ruclips.net/video/rKaEhBjt1ls/видео.html
The newer poles are doing this now, you can access it with a QR code. Works ~reasonably~ well (app is a bit crap sometimes). Makes the smart cable completely obsolete IMHO. The cost of installing the socket and the magic gubbins to make it work is quite high compared to the relatively small cost of building a radio into it, so it always struck me as an odd approach.
The reason was cost. A the time this thing was designed, a metering power outlet was proper expensive. Not just to purchase, but also to operate - you have to have a calibrated energy meter, and communication infrastructure for metering. The idea behind this was to reduce the cost of installation, to encourage cities, businesses, real estate developers etc. to simply include charging points without the need for all of that.
I do hope I live long enough to see the world change to electric. If the shit show of the walking stupid, trying to keep gas cars running, isn't fun enough, wait until they try to keep these running. Who is going to clean up the abandoned vehicles that will litter our roads?
Mike, those abandoned vehicles will probably be robbed for spare parts, in attempts to keep other ICE vehicles running a bit longer..... Spares will become a valuable commodity once ICE cars cease production... Gas car diehards will begin stockpiling...
This EV charging is going to open up a world of pain in the near future, I mean thieves are gonna have a field day, then you have a lampost outside your house and everyone and his dog is hanging off it trying to charge their milk float, vandals pulling your lead out in the night. man is it just me ?
@@AureliusR made by materials hard to get out of the ground and pulled out by slaves and kids in genocide camps then processed using incredible amounts of energy that is made by coal plants that make china look like a dune movie set ...then shipped to our country ware charging it means you have gas plants making energy at a 25% loss rate to get it to the car then you get a charge over night taxing the already over taxedenergy grid to then only go one 4th the distance gas can then if your bat cooling dies or you wreck it cant safely be repaired meaning the hole car is scraped and despite what msm told you you cant recycle the batterys and even if you treat it right your getting maby 10 years of life since the batterys are set in stone thay die with each charge my gas car gose just as far as it did day one on the same amount of gas ...and finally my gas car can be put out if it burns ...but ask the uk how there airport parking grudge is doing hint it melted because evs burn so hot and cant be put out ... theirs a reason we threw the teck out in the 1900s ...but you lemmings will blindly follow wont you ...the internet is right hear you could learn the facts ...but instead youd rather be the problem ....lets hope the self driving dosnt glitch right ooo a semi....wake up before its too late...i could go even deeper this is just the cliff notes so let me know ...ill take on any of you EV children
@@AureliusR you not understanding the basics of reality isnt my fault but as the saying gose a fool is born every min and man that ev snake oil taste good dosnt it ....i hope someday you get smart
@@danbrit9848 You're accusing me of not "understanding the basics of reality" yet you can barely speak the English language. Physics and electrical energy are my specialities. You haven't actually offered any reasoning as to how electric vehicles aren't green.
@@danbrit9848 Like you unironically typed "gose" and "dosnt" ... and yet you're calling me a fool. I guess you've never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
Oh wow, a blast from the past. There is a non-calibrated meter in the socket, and the meterin box communicates with the charge point. It simply detects if there is a discrepancy between the meter readings, so bypassing the internal meter will get you in trouble ;)
Mike's a classic engineer trying to find various ways to get around the pay system 👍🏻
I'm not going to lie, this is instantly where my mind went too, hahaha
This is a classic "Camel" design (FYI: a camel is a horse designed by a committee). This all-powerful "solution" for charging a Tuk-tuk, aka "city car", was designed by bureaucrats for bureaucrats and approved by bureaucrats. Whether or not profitable to manufacture, the large NRE (mostly software and packaging) was likely a grant from political type bureaucrats. Genius!
Camels are pretty cool
Love that term!
That is an embedded MID meter, you can tell based on the "M " marking. Measuring electricity is a much harder problem than you'd initially think, it usually takes ~1 year normally just to go through the certification and fix all the tests that it would initially fail. The standard is written such that it's practically impossible to certify a EVSE like this as an MID meter since it assumes you're making a standalone unit. Those meters are designed for edge cases (e.g. DC current tolerance, bad power factor, immunity to transients), and it is NOT trivial to design, test, and certify. Even big players get it wrong sometimes and certify using "3rd grade" test houses that do not care, and when you test it per the standard it obviously fails. I don't believe there is a single MID certified embedded meter in an EVSE quite yet, although that may change soon.
How would this be different to a standalone unit, as the meter is connected directly to the input and output cables?
@@mikeselectricstuff by "standalone unit" I meant that the MID standards has many assumptions about what a "meter" should look like. E.g.: DIN rail mounting, certain mechanical characteristics related to input/output terminals, *input power consumption*. That last one is a big one, I don't remember what the specific requirement is but it's in the order of 3W. The EVSE unit consumes more than that obviously so if you were to certify the entire thing as an MID meter it would fail that test.
That is only a few examples, but there are many more. You may argue with regulatory/test houses til the cows come home about what clauses apply and which don't, but it better be worth the 100s of k$ and many months to save a little bit of space in the box.
4000 outlets around london? We'd be lucky to have half a dozen in Sydney.
That's only Ubitricity, there are many other operators, over 7000 charge points in greater London area & increasing
@@mikeselectricstuff Good thing! Electric cars make most sense in cities, massive improvement in air quality.
@@sparqqling Sadly though, not elimination - a significant amount of pollution comes from the tyres and any parts that move. We should all learn to levitate ;)
London has the most amount of charge points of any city within Western Europe. And makes up for almost 1/3 of total U.K. charge point distribution. Heard of this during the Mayoral question time yesterday. Interesting really, but also needed cleaner air and environmental sustainability. EV overall do make sense in the large urban area.
@@beamer.electronics Levitate, that requires even more energy. Maybe we should get hollow bones to levitate, until than cycling, the underground and trams are the way forward!
Love your detailed review as you did in the past.
Keep on doing this!
I like the use of clear cases, nice to see if something is burnt out or melted inside.
Or tampered with.
I'd be willing to bet that microcontroller is running Linux, and that the code that provides all the functionality is written in a high level language like Python. Not that I have anything against Python, but for some reason a lot of these companies seem to prefer using an expensive microcontroller so they can hire a cheap Python programmer, instead of hiring an expensive C programmer even though that would drastically cut the cost of the microprocessor board, and it would mean they could sell more of their product because of the lower price.
Yeah I agree that once you leave the prototyping stage you should go with c. My guess is that it's just easier to debug and and issue firmware updates to these things.
Part of me wonders what contents are stored in the eMMC of that i.MX6 module. Probably an embedded Linux operating system, but the applications and configuration files inside could be worth exploring.
The control pilot does allow for digital signaling, by first using a duty cycle of 3-7% and presumably have a timeout to wait for the EV to respond before reverting to standard J1772.
This is a great channel.
I really like to look at the good assortment of electronics you show.
Interesting stuff, not just boring consumer electronics.
I like the rubber nubbins that hold the PCB into the case.
Yup. Very neat. I'm gonna steal that trick
dont turn it on - tear it apart. I think we need to thank mike for dropping £180 on this for our viewing pleasure.
For a low volume product like this NRE will be the major cost anyway, so using off-the-shelf makes perfect sense. You'll have to make several thousands to get anything (more) custom to be economical.
Great tear down as usual, very interesting, cheers
The charge point wouldn't necessarily need its own mobile connection, it could use the cable device as proxy for communication (with end-to-end encryption). That way it's even cheaper!
Given the requirement that the charging has to work without any mobile link whatsoever, it is quite a challenge to design a moderately secure system though. I imagine that either each device has a universal key to unlock all charge points (and is responsible to protect that), or the downloaded authentication "ticket" is tied to a specific charge point and date/time range to avoid simultaneous use.
As always - interesting tear down Mike, the way things are going I wouldn't have thought you will be short of material from the rapidly changing EV world in the foreseeable future, the tech is changing almost daily it would appear.
I really want to get hold of an old 50kW rapid charger....
@@mikeselectricstuff that would be cool; wonder if you could test the overload behaviour ;))))
@@mikeselectricstuff There are a couple broken ones in my area of the US. Luckily we have higher powered ones too.
I saw this at trade shows years ago too, thought it was an odd idea and over-engineered at the time, but not to that extent! Can see what they were going for, low hassle plug and play with secure metering, but there must have been simpler ways to go about it even then.
Looks like the design was for speed-to-market. If it took off, they'd optimize it later .
Also if this is several years old then it was released in an environment when so many things were heavily subsidized. If the customer can get a £300 subsidy to pay for the thing then they already are 0 out of pocket so spending more time to reduce the price just delays the release.
And some subsidies are even pools of money so when they are gone they are gone. That means there is an element of urgency. Get the product to your customer before the subsidy runs out. There are DCFCs in my area from a decade ago which are clearly massively expensive due to each having a dedicated transformer next to them that is about 1.5m on a side. Plus a huge concrete pad under it. This was clearly unsustainable from a cost perspective but they got them out the door first and picked up the subsidies to cover it.
Glad things are more streamlined now. We never would have had the uptake we have now without a couple generations of design improvements.
problem with metering inside the chargepoint is to split between users and document that start meter reading and end meter reding for every transaction. the cable is fixed to one user only, so the meter count is continuous
Not hard - user scans a QR code with app to associate their account with the chargepoint session, chargepoint reports usage to the server
A carpark solution could be including a wifi chipset and require a router and 3G connection just for this purpose to be set up
the display as a whole seems pointless, any information it could give you you can just pull from a website, probably making the entire SBC pointless as well
im sure you can get integrated secure ARM, wifi, bluetooth and 4g modem modules now, slap in a shunt and capacitive divider, do OTA updates, throw in a few bits and bobs and get the cost down to $50-75US
Edit: Just throwing wifi or bluetooth endpoints around and sticking a wifi or bluetooth modem in the thing could not just reduce cost low enough to give these away with subscriptions but also reduce the big chunky box to a black rubber blob
I’d love for you todo a tear down of the HyperVolt! And maybe a dump of their SD Card 🤷♂️😉
Yes, I'd like to, but probably not enough to pay full retail for one.
All safety features like the RCDs and relays are still required in the charge point, which makes the charge point still expensive.
Not really - the relay can be the switch for RCD protection, so the only additional cost of RCD is a current transformer
Why cant we just have a standard protocol and let the car do the billing. Its the most obvious solution and much cheaper for everyone involved.
There is, it's called ISO15118, but will be a while before it's widespread.
Indeed, they are even already registered to a person
I always thought this was an interesting model. Getting plugs for people who have to street park is a problem which needs solving!
It's a work in progress. UK Local Authorities can obtain Government funding to pay for the civils work involved in fitting grids in pavements, so that a charging lead can pass under rather than over it. The installations allegedly take around 40 minutes. Many Local Authorities are oblivious to these grants, and may need their ar$e$ kicking to raise awareness. The funding *is* there, they just need to apply for it. But of course for that to happen, they need to hear requests for them.......the same applies to street light EV chargers. The funding is there, they just need to apply for it..... Employers here in the UK can also apply for a grant to pay for the installation of chargers at the workplace. Although again, many may not be aware of it.
Thanks for sharing your brain
I've often wondered how robust EV manufacturers are at honoring a dynamically changing CP PWM (to balance the load across multiple vehicles on the street). From what I've found online in the past, smart EVSE that adapt to solar panel output have encountered problems with certain vehicle brands throwing a shoe when the PWM duty cycle varies. Also, it is worthwhile noting that the CP PWM represents maximum charge rate; if, say, the vehicle is consuming 1kW when the CP PWM says 7kW is possible, the lampposts are squandering unused power that could otherwise be sold to another vehicle. Given this, it seems possible, if not likely, that they must be metering (but not at revenue grade) within the lamppost module to ensure that this doesn't happen?
Then those cars are violating the DIN standard that they claim to be certified to. If you are compliant with the DIN standard then you *must* respect changing CP, otherwise very dangerous situations could develop.
Not specific to this device but the concept of using the streetlighting circuit for car charging is ...weird, to me... at least in this area, the entire road of streetlights is fed on one x 2.5mm regular SWA (TN-S area) from a feeder pillar up the road
This will vary by area - if enough power is available, and lamps are near the kerb, it does save a lot of cost in groundworks.
a lot of led retrofits reduced current draw significantly and might leave room for some charging current, does seem kinda weird to me though here in the states our light poles are fed on seriously anemic supplies so this could never work here
here they was using mercury and yellow sodium or whatewer it is lamps before now slowly moving to LEDs so cabling is done for at least 1kw per pole but actual load is at most 1/10th of it
@@mikeselectricstuff I am wondering how street lighting is controlled (how they are turned on/off). Here lamp post are dumb devices that have no power if they need to be on, public light is controlled from one central place, power distribution company send signal over power lines to public light distribution boxes then then just simply turn on power to street lights (and cut power when they send off signal).
Any Idear what sort of data is sent down the cable from the car? i have see the tesla car start charging without having to logon to a app or use a tab key so im guessing some sort of identification goes down the cable. would be nice if non tesla cars could fast charge as easly
No data is sent from the car at all. No idea how Tesla does it -- it's annoying that they refuse to collaborate on or use international standards, meaning charge infrastructure has to be duplicated, wasting money for everyone. The only thing sent on normal cables is the control pilot signal, and that's mostly a one-way communication to the car, telling it how much current it can draw. Remember that the actual *charger* is inside the car, these are EVSE which literally do nothing but supply power to the car -- the car then decides what to do with it.
Very intersting bit of kit. Thanks for ripping it open, but sad to see that there really is nothing of use to us insde.
Is the meter something like the smart meters the electric companys want us to have?
No, it's basically the same as a dumb electricity meter
This sort of thing demonstrates why houses without driveways for charging will be worth a lot less in future.
I have no driveway, and have no problem with public recharging. Lamp post charger sockets are a non-starter, because we have no lamp posts throughout most of this area. Streetlights are fitted high up on terraced house walls, with the junction boxes 3 metres or more above ground level.
There are ways to circumvent any foreseeable problems with this. For instance, I could have an under the pavement cable channel fitted, which removes the no-driveway problem, so long as the local council approves it. Or I could continue to use public charging options.
ATM, recharging is free [7 kW and 22 kW, 3 phase, which my car can accept] at my local supermarkets. But even at present prices for paid-for recharging [from 25p per kWh at 50 kw], it's cheaper to recharge publicly for the expected life of the car than to have a charging outlet fitted to my house. And I'm in a minor city in central England, which doesn't have the best recharging infrastructure. They're catching up, however, as the numbers of EV's around here are climbing rapidly.
So no, the lack of a driveway for EV recharging points is not an issue for me. From my viewpoint, it should not affect the value of properties around here any more than the lack of driveways already does.
Incidentally, I've driven thousands of miles, in both England and Wales, in city and rural areas, and have never had to worry about recharging the car. I've never had to pay directly for the electricity either. My suspicion, FWIW, is that the 'no-driveway problem' is not really an issue for most people, and that other EV drivers are adapting to the changed circumstances, as human beings tend to adapt to all kinds of situation.
Interesting, it seems a bit over-engineered and it must've been quite expensive to manufacture.
My first thought when you showed this is "whats to stop someone just stealing this cable" since it has plugs on both ends with no obvious locking device. If someone stole it, and it doesn't use a pin to enable it as you say, then would someone be able to use it to charge their car and have you billed for it?
There are locking pins in car and chargepoint
The cable is locked in situ at both ends once the car is locked. Presumably if you reported your cable as stolen, then Ecotricity ( now owned by Shell in the UK I think ) they could disable it?
@@mikeselectricstuff Ah well that makes sense. I suppose you'd have to have that for a plain cable anyway.
Here in the SW mike, people with the dosh to buy the likes of Tesla etc., are not doing so because of very limited and awkward charging points (chicken & egg), plus concerns over the EOL environmental aspects of the battery packs. They look at Hydrogen fuel cells etc. and get totally bewildered by it all, defaulting to yet another hydrocarbon vehicle. The other aspect of EVs that concern is cabin heating which I think is usually about 2.5KW, whereas most gas cars are from about 3.5 to 9 KW, and whatever you take from the battery - can't be used for movement. This could get cold in rural traffic queues in mid-winter, possible answer - a diesel heater! :) Great video and analysis, by the way. All the best, Beamer.
Heat pumps are useful in cold climates, EVs often have heated seats and steering wheels to reduce cabin heat requirement
Given that streetlamps are typically wired with 6mm^2 cable on a radial circuit, isn't the charging capacity on an average street rather limited?
Limited to 19A. Good enough.
It's OK, especially since they retrofitted most lamps to LED from HPS (High Pressure Sodium) but kept same wiring so there is more lean-way.
4-5kw normally but I have seen them run as high as 7kw. So about 15 to 25 miles an hour charge rate, for the average EV. So ok for a 15 hour overnight charge or an 8 hour work day.
Regarding what happens when the battery goes completely flat - maybe it manages to get power from the pilot signal?
You dotn have a video on that little dreadful Miniware scope.? 11:55
a shame as your videos on scopes is usually pretty solid.
Got the cheaper variant myself MiniWare DS212 and yeah it does wonder for your patience.. trying to navigate it (wow a pain). .. though the build is quite nice, but it cost like 60 bucks a few years back, but a few weeks after I took the plunge on a Micsig STO as that MiniWare DS212 would not be ideal as a learning oscillioscope... The Micsig STO 4ch 100Mhz was, on the other hand, a very pleasant experience with the price in mind, that was quite low at that time and it still works great.. though I would love to see Micsig implement some new features and updates.. ..ruclips.net/video/wlkgdtkoAeE/видео.html
Though I was able to use the DS212 to measure the Micsigs waveform rate.. were around 95k
but shockingly easy to record footage on the Micsig and connect to it from pretty much all devices out there ruclips.net/video/vDdu-4F3XQs/видео.html
My prediction for the future: mandatory separate metering for domestic use and EV charging use. With EV charging being taxed as revenue from fuel duty starts to dwindle. Especially after 2030 mandate that all new vehicles will be EV.
Except that would be impractical and dangerous - people would use granny chargers or more unsuitable arrangements to charge from the domestic supply.
@@mikeselectricstuff what if manufacturers stop installing on board chargers, mandating us to charge at rapid hubs that are taxed? You've probably seen my thread on speak-ev discussing same...
Lot of places are simply averaging out the estimated revenue per car they get from fuel duty and adding that to yearly registration charges, of course while they're trying to encourage uptake they will either not do this or keep the rates low enough that people are less likely to complain that it's not actually cheaper to run
@@mikeselectricstuff I certainly would, because even an overnight charge on a 3 pin domestic plug/socket would still add enough miles for my driving the following day. They wouldn't know whether you charged a car up or sat up watching TV all night...... How could they realistically tax electricity generated by privately owned solar panels, unless they offered an assurance the sun would shine on X days per year?
Once UK fuel duty begins to dwindle, it is to be replaced by a system of road tolls, the details of which have mostly already been worked out. The Government are to publish some details of the scheme in 2022 I believe.... You appear to be implying that somehow the cost of charging an electric car will rise hugely, and the cost of petrol and diesel will not? I think you'll find that is most unlikely. Any Government which purports to promote the usage of green energy and transport methods to fulfill their climate commitments can hardly allow a situation to develop where fossil fuel is cheaper to use than energy from renewable sources..... And don't forget oil refineries. If the cost of electricity rockets, then so will the cost of fossil fuel by default. Oil refineries use *lots* of electricity..... Once the UK Government ceases subsidising the oil industry by £300 billion per year, the Treasury coffers should look a little healthier....
The other possibility is data over the mains distribution network. We aren't talking a LOT of data here.
I think that would only work over short distances. If I remember correctly that protocol was mostly meant for appliances to speak to each other in the same household. Besides, this system would need the connector to always be powered which would make stealing power much easier and make it more dangerous to plug in your car. At the end of the day I think it's just easier to integrate a sim card in the thing.
I am sure it will be a good video :)
The current monitor not being on the neutral wire is interesting. I guess you could flip the polarity on both sides and draw "0.0Wh" fairly easily after the authentication dance takes place. (I guess the security module isn't authenticating that embedded meter either, so you could just emulate your own and make it count at half the rate as normal. I bet nobody would ever notice.)
I see why they're phasing this out :D
Wouldn't it be theoretically possible to have networking over the power lines that the charge points filter out on the car side?
yes, though easier to use the control lines that are already there.
@@mikeselectricstuff I meant on the light pole side, the place you plug the entire module into. You could use the control lines to talk to the light pole. So city connection w/ network data goes into the plug, the plug has a basic MODEM for the data signals that also filters it out, then it goes to that plug. Complex, but you don't need wireless networking and it changes the attack surfaces a bit.
Thx for the video. Very interesting. Good idea, but executed somehow poorly. Very big unit, also imx6 is a huge overkill for this too. for the 1st generation it would acceptable, but it is not a new system. I agree same functionality should be implemented in the car itself using open standards
Would be a cool stupid project to turn this thing into a mobile phone using the existing electronics.
What a waste.! It doesnt even seem to a have contactor, the DIN part is just an electricity meter. So the actual contactor to control the charging still has to be integrated in the lamp post. That means some sort of control is also present in the lamp post. This whole concept is kind of moot in this case. They could have easily integrated the power measurement and the authentication into the lamp post itself. Plus they wouldn't need like thousands of these "smart cables" when a single robust solution would have sufficed to be integrated into the lamp post. Perhaps they wanted to "sell" these expensive cables and make a business case, which obviously failed.
I really wonder whether a large part of the cost was that microcontroller board, and to avoid putting one of those in each lamp post they put one in the cables instead. The reason I say that is I've looked at a few different industrial devices like this and instead of using a cheap microcontroller and writing bare metal code in C, they pick a way overpowered controller that can run Linux, just so they can write all their code in a high level language like Python.
I get that C programmers are harder to find and cost more than someone who can learn Python in a weekend, but it just makes me wonder whether they could've paid a bit more for a better programmer, saved a huge amount of cost on the hardware side, and sold many more devices and been more successful as a result.
If you listened to what Mike was explaining at the beginning, putting the smarts and expense in the cable was meant to make it even easier for municipalities to add this system to their lampposts. They literally just have to install a simple plug that probably costs very little. Then all the transactions and whatnot are handled by the company, and they peel off a percentage each month to kick back to the municipality.
I'd still prefer to have the contactor in the lamp post. That way the actual connector is unpowered when not in use which also makes stealing electricity harder.
EVSE question: how hard is it to put an EU EV socket on, say, an electric bicycle and use an EV car charger to charge a bicycle?
I'm not talking DC fast charging or 400v charging, since that's either overkill or a great way to start an lithium battery fire
only needs socket, one diode and one 820ohms resistor
Simple - you just need a switched diode and resistor on the CP line in the connector to tell the EVSE to turn power on. The switch is needed as some CPs lock the econnector. You can also buy type 1/2 to AC outlet adaptors/cables. Instead of a socket you may want to just make up a Type 2-to-whatever-your-bike charger-uses cable
@@flipschwipp6572 @mikeselectricstuff
Interesting to hear, I expected more circuitry to make the charger not freak out
As others have said simple, you can also buy ready made type 2 to 16a cee or schuko adapters from various shady sources
@@MrHack4never Remember, these are *not* chargers -- the charger is IN the car. These are just electricity supply devices. So your bike would still need separate charge circuitry.
They may have stopped making them because people were bypassing the metering.
I have no evidence, but can imagine it happening.
Doubt it - more likely people didn't want to pay for the cable
I guess that's possible? But each unit is registered to an owner for billing and calls home for authorization, right? I assume it would look suspicious if you were charging through the service but the billing was zero.
Nope, not possible. Second meter in the outlet for exactly that reason.
Would there be a box thing at the top of the light that is the 3G/4G Antenna.
Doubt it, as this would make install much more expensive due to needing a cherry picker and lane closure. I'll take a closer look next time I see one.
If I were doing it, I'd use the flap on the socket, or the socket surround.
@@mikeselectricstuff Check to see whether the lamp post cover is isolated from the post. That would allow the cover to be the aerial.
Probably wakes up from the dead every couple of hours when the battery is marginal to plead for a bit of charge.
So the billing and auth was in a product controlled by the customer, I can't see this going wrong at all /s
Why not just do an authentication on a mobile phone APP and just have a bluetooth module in the carge post, that way niether the charge post nor the cable needs a cell connectsion. And you could solve the under ground carpark issue by letting the app pre authenticate a charge.
Hi!
Such a strange design. Clearly not built with budget in mind. Nice teardown.
Smart charging cable you say 😉
i.MX6 in a EVSE!!?!? 😂
It's not even an EVSE.
@@mikeselectricstuff how would it call it then? Smart charge cable adaptor? 😅
I was just wondering what is the percentage of electric cars to chargers what if everybody wants to charge the car all at once it could happen most people go in the grocery store and all leave at once
No, hardly. Not everyone fills with petrol at exactly the same time, do they? Not everyone covers the same distances during their journeys. We all have different driving styles too. You could have 2 identical cars, and two different drivers will yield different levels of fuel consumption with those same cars. And even if they all came out of the grocery store at the same time, they won't all travel the same distances to work, at the same speeds on the same roads. We're not all the same, which is why we eat at different times, and get haircuts at different times etc....
@@Brian-om2hh no not everybody feels the car with petrol at the same time but in the video he said there was only a certain number of chargers there’s got to be a lot more cars than chargers The one thing I find ironic about electric cars is all they’re doing is switching gas for electric you’re still gonna charge you for the electricity and it causes a lot more fuel to make that electricity right now with the electricity rates I would be paying more to drive a car if it was electric that’s the ironic part Electric car is only economical if electricity is too cheap to metre plain and simple
This cable is really not that smartly designed (from a logic, perspective). If that box, is all it takes to make the system go, then it would be simpler to have it inside the pole, and control the setup using phones (we all have apps these days), leaving the cable bare of any "eye catching" features.
As explained in the video, that means you're paying for this setup at each pole, versus only having to make them for the people who actually use them. You might install hundreds or even thousands of these units into the poles and only have a faction of them in use, which is a waste.
But as also explained, they have since moved to exactly what you just suggested.
I first heard of these through Fully Charged, and I'm glad they've managed to survive so far. That video is still available; being old also means you get a feel for their intent and plans. ruclips.net/video/rKaEhBjt1ls/видео.html
The newer poles are doing this now, you can access it with a QR code. Works ~reasonably~ well (app is a bit crap sometimes). Makes the smart cable completely obsolete IMHO. The cost of installing the socket and the magic gubbins to make it work is quite high compared to the relatively small cost of building a radio into it, so it always struck me as an odd approach.
The reason was cost. A the time this thing was designed, a metering power outlet was proper expensive. Not just to purchase, but also to operate - you have to have a calibrated energy meter, and communication infrastructure for metering. The idea behind this was to reduce the cost of installation, to encourage cities, businesses, real estate developers etc. to simply include charging points without the need for all of that.
The last thing that EV owners want is another app.
I do hope I live long enough to see the world change to electric. If the shit show of the walking stupid, trying to keep gas cars running, isn't fun enough, wait until they try to keep these running. Who is going to clean up the abandoned vehicles that will litter our roads?
Mike, those abandoned vehicles will probably be robbed for spare parts, in attempts to keep other ICE vehicles running a bit longer..... Spares will become a valuable commodity once ICE cars cease production... Gas car diehards will begin stockpiling...
When they break down will they be recovered with a diesel powered truck?
isn't it time for a 4k camera
Already have one but old editing SW won't do it, and newer version is too crashy to be useable
Why exactly? It's not like he's making nature documentaries.
This EV charging is going to open up a world of pain in the near future, I mean thieves are gonna have a field day, then you have a lampost outside your house and everyone and his dog is hanging off it trying to charge their milk float, vandals pulling your lead out in the night. man is it just me ?
@Matt aren't you bored yet?
The pin contacts I used for the mains connection came from a friend's granny charger that some idiots broke while he was charging outside his house!
@@mikeselectricstuff did they damage the vehicle or just the charge cable?
EVs the least green mode of transport ever created
Uh, what? Calling BS on that one.
@@AureliusR made by materials hard to get out of the ground and pulled out by slaves and kids in genocide camps then processed using incredible amounts of energy that is made by coal plants that make china look like a dune movie set ...then shipped to our country ware charging it means you have gas plants making energy at a 25% loss rate to get it to the car then you get a charge over night taxing the already over taxedenergy grid to then only go one 4th the distance gas can then if your bat cooling dies or you wreck it cant safely be repaired meaning the hole car is scraped and despite what msm told you you cant recycle the batterys and even if you treat it right your getting maby 10 years of life since the batterys are set in stone thay die with each charge my gas car gose just as far as it did day one on the same amount of gas ...and finally my gas car can be put out if it burns ...but ask the uk how there airport parking grudge is doing hint it melted because evs burn so hot and cant be put out ... theirs a reason we threw the teck out in the 1900s ...but you lemmings will blindly follow wont you ...the internet is right hear you could learn the facts ...but instead youd rather be the problem ....lets hope the self driving dosnt glitch right ooo a semi....wake up before its too late...i could go even deeper this is just the cliff notes so let me know ...ill take on any of you EV children
@@AureliusR you not understanding the basics of reality isnt my fault but as the saying gose a fool is born every min and man that ev snake oil taste good dosnt it ....i hope someday you get smart
@@danbrit9848 You're accusing me of not "understanding the basics of reality" yet you can barely speak the English language. Physics and electrical energy are my specialities. You haven't actually offered any reasoning as to how electric vehicles aren't green.
@@danbrit9848 Like you unironically typed "gose" and "dosnt" ... and yet you're calling me a fool. I guess you've never heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?