11–20 of 27 posts
Best rating you can get on those ESP modules is "blue PCB".
It's cool that it has/claims support for DC fast charging. All the custom conversions I've seen are AC only.
It’s CHAdeMO - much simpler - and not CCS2
It's always a little jarring to me to see a seemingly competently laid out automotive grade PCB, with a cheap as dirt Amazon special D1 mini ESP board lovingly stapled in one corner. Best rating you can get on those ESP modules is "blue PCB".
If you like, you can leave it on and monitor your EV data via the web interface. But if the D1 flakes out the VCU will be unaffected.
Given that battery fires and automobile crashes happen, and that there are business and legal cultures around that for stock vehicles... Does this "ZombieVerter" have a high chance of being blamed for an incident involving death/injury or very expensive property damage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s CHAdeMO - much simpler - and not CCS2
I am for sure not educated about the difference between CCS and CCS2 but it does say it's not just CHAdeMO https://openinverter.org/wiki/ZombieVerter_VCU#:~:text=ccs%2... and further down they cite a BMW i3 which I had and it fast charged to my satisfaction
It's cool that it has/claims support for DC fast charging. All the custom conversions I've seen are AC only.
At present, the Zombieverter supports:
Chademo CCS by interfacing with the BMW i3 LIM CCS by interfacing with the open source FOCCCI CCS controller.
The FOCCCI CCS controller is an associated project. See https://openinverter.org/wiki/Foccci
FOCCCI is the newest kid on the block, but it has been successfully integrated into several conversions now.
It's always a little jarring to me to see a seemingly competently laid out automotive grade PCB, with a cheap as dirt Amazon special D1 mini ESP board lovingly stapled in one corner. Best rating you can get on those ESP modules is "blue PCB".
The D1 board on the Zombieverter is just a piggyback board to allow web interface access to the VCU. Once you've set everything up, you can remove the board. It makes configuring the Zombieverter significantly easier since you don't have to mess around with serial cables. If you like, you can leave it on and monitor your EV data via the web interface. But if the D1 flakes out the VCU will be unaffected.
Two weaknesses of the project are spotty / outdated / unclear documentation and support. This is not because the community doesn't care, it's because keeping the documentation up to date is hard. And support is hard, because you have like 3 core commenters on the forum answering 90% of questions. They know the stuff inside out, but they take strain from having to answer 'my hello world is broken' type questions over and over again.
It's hard to demonstrate this to software people. You know the endless 'works on my machine' swamps people would get stuck in in the bad old days? Imagine that, but you also have no assurance that the machine the person is using has a hard drive connected, or a cooling fan. You have to cover _all_ the hardware related root causes before you can even begin to address and software related issues people run into.
I think the best support this community could get is more resources dedicated to documentation and support. That would also serve to make the learning curve less steep.
EDIT: I think it's also worth saying that once you set one of these once, it becomes very easy. It's just figuring it out the first time that's hard. If anyone buys one and has trouble, hit me up and maybe I can help.
Given that battery fires and automobile crashes happen, and that there are business and legal cultures around that for stock vehicles... Does this "ZombieVerter" have a high chance of being blamed for an incident involving death/injury or very expensive property damage?
Well, if you modify a vehicle, generally you need to take it back to your DMV / TUV / MOT for inspection. Those are the bodies responsible for determining that your car is road legal. And if you don't have a proper BMS, emergency cutoff, adequate cooling and engineering, it won't be certified road legal. Not sure why an EV conversion should be treated any differently to an ICE conversion.
Even if it can eventually be proven (to the judge/jury) that the ZombieVerter performed perfectly, and that you were not at all negligent or reckless, that's going to be drawing suspicion and blame.
While defense costs bankrupt you.
This man has been working for years on repurposing old EV hardware and using it to electrify cars, sometimes in really wacky (and extremely entertaining) ways on the Youtube channel “evmbw” - I suggest giving it a watch! Some of the cars are really scrappy, but he obviously knows very well what he’s doing.