Cheapest Low Amperage Charging Solution for Roadster?

[hcsharp]

My apologies for the confusion -- correct, the car never pulled any current.

For a brief period after initial connection, the VDS would show "0V 0/20A" over maybe the next 20 seconds it would go up to about "4V 0/20A" along the bottom of the charging screen. After that the voltage would drop back to 0 or - and the screen displays charging stopped or occasionally disconnected.

20A is the maximum capacity of the EVSEUpgrade charger, and what I'd had it set to (the new version is adjustable).

No error codes on the VDS, no fault lights on the charger, no red lights on the charging port light ring.

Does that clarify things any?

I'd go and test it on the car and get you some video, but its a 3 hour round trip, plus the time there for the testing -- the EVSEUpgrade folks are being very cool about taking the unit back, so I'm not sure how much I want to push my luck there.

EVSEUpgrade needs to troubleshoot this. It sounds like it's the EVSE that's stopping the charge or signal. If that's the case they need to tell you why it's stopping with some kind of error code. What are they doing in the EVSE that it leaks enough current to register 4v? Some of the OpenEVSE units are being built with SSRs instead of contactors. That's a bad idea and probably doesn't work with a Roadster.

 

[Panicopticon]

EVSEUpgrade needs to troubleshoot this. It sounds like it's the EVSE that's stopping the charge or signal. If that's the case they need to tell you why it's stopping with some kind of error code. What are they doing in the EVSE that it leaks enough current to register 4v? Some of the OpenEVSE units are being built with SSRs instead of contactors. That's a bad idea and probably doesn't work with a Roadster.

I know I've seen that voltage ramping behavior on other chargers, though its usually more like 0-1-4-200-220-240, over the course of a few seconds.

I shipped the charger back this morning. If you're interested I can put you in touch with the fellow that makes them, my impression is he's a good guy, perhaps he'd send you one out to take a look at. Though I suspect your time is probably better spent turning out CAN-SRs at breakneck speed, or creating some new amazing thing.

If the car were here I'd have dug into things a bit more, but at the moment its not practical.

Still need to figure out what to do spare charger wise, the intent is to have something that does 120 & 240 charging and was more portable than a Roadster UMC and/or Spare Connector.

Perhaps I'll try and find a Model S UMC to use with my CAN-SR..? Seems like the only other real contender is the TurboCord.

I also gather that at some point my Roadster UMC will die, so it seems prudent to have some options (when it does die, the Roadster head will live on attached to an OpenEVSE).

 

[miimura]

The RAV4 EV which uses a Tesla on-board charger also has compatibility problems with some of the EVSEupgrade units. The 2010/2011 Leaf based units are not compatible. I believe it is because they do not use +/-12V pilot. Instead they use 0V/12V pilot, which the Tesla charger will not accept. Anyway, Nissan changed their included EVSE for later years, but I'm not certain if the good ones start in the 2012 or 2013 model year.

 

[Panicopticon]

The RAV4 EV which uses a Tesla on-board charger also has compatibility problems with some of the EVSEupgrade units. The 2010/2011 Leaf based units are not compatible. I believe it is because they do not use +/-12V pilot. Instead they use 0V/12V pilot, which the Tesla charger will not accept. Anyway, Nissan changed their included EVSE for later years, but I'm not certain if the good ones start in the 2012 or 2013 model year.

Thanks for the info. Based on the upgrade options they show on their site, I think the unit I ended up with was newer than the 10-11 model, but I can't be sure...