Got the Raspberry Pi Zero W today. Running TWCManager with VNC connected via wifi it's only drawing 0.12 to 0.15A (with a rare spike to 0.17A) at 5.02V. That strikes me as maybe low enough power to vampire off a power source inside the TWC? Can anyone with electrical engineering knowledge help me figure that out?
I found you can remove the inner cover within the TWC by prying out three snaps which doesn't take much force:
Snap closeup:
Under the cover:
The ribbon cable near the bottom has 10 pins and supplies power to the LED array on the front of the unit. I tried testing voltage between some random pins and got 14V and 13.5V.
The bundle of 3 black plus a red wire that goes from mid left to top left looks like they could supply power but my volt meter read no voltage between red and black wires. I may have been too ginger with pushing pin-sized probes in the backs of the wires, though I don't think so.
Serious 24VDC to 400VAC transformers which I think supply the car with power:
And a bunch of closeups of everything:
In the bottom right are four wires (purple, blue, black, and orange) screwed into terminal blocks. Those wires enter the charger cable for the car. If I'm reading
this correctly, Tesla tends to use purple for the pilot wire, so maybe I'll give that a test sometime.
Does anyone see any points I might be able to draw power from?
Also, there is at least one more layer of PCBs beneath the one I'm able to take pictures of.