Dane.Kouttron
[10.23.19] Repairing a
Chargepoint EVSE
| I
was gifted a faulty chargepoint for excellent reverse engineering and
repairing. |
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| Lets take a look at the
insides of this beast |
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| Starting
off, I didnt have the cover that should normally be sitting covering up
the base of the unit but that realy wasnt a worry. On the left side
there's a mains connection of 208-240 VAC, reccomending at least 10 awg
stranded cable. Otherwise the user interface is literally a vacuum
flourescent display, a pushbutton and two indicator lights. |
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| Some
more details, unclear if they will be useful, a provisioning password
for the chargepoint EVSE, and some model / serial # information. |
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| As
this unit doesnt power on when fed 220v AC, but when you look at an
off-angle you can see the character sub-displays that are part of the
VFD display. Its nominally a 16x2 display, but probably can
do
some minimal graphics. VFD's seem like an odd choice at first, but they
are actually a really neat technology, they dont seem to mind the cold
as much and can work down to much
colder temperatures than standard LCD character displays. |
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| Taking
a quick look at the back of the unit, its fairly simple, just a single
cast part with plenty of accompanying spider webs. A scrubby brush was
used to remove most of the leftover ants and spiders |
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| The
case rear is secured with 5x phillips screws with built in
gasket-washers. |
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| With
the front facing cover removed, the whole unit is fairly empty. As an
EVSE is nominally just a mechanism to aquire ~220vac, I really didnt
expect much to be hiding in here. What I was impressed with was the
individually labeled wires, each with a crimped on ferrule connector.
This seems a rather manual assembly process, but, at least very
organized. I believe these were gen-1 vintage so they could have been
optimized at a later date. |
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| Yep
its a VFD. This particular one is a noritake itron, |
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| The
random red wires were a bit curious. |
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| Time
to do some debugging. This large 5v 'power blob' or self-contained
board mount power supply provides all the logic power for the entire
board. For the sake of |
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| Fortunatley
the part in question still existed, i ordere another (knowing this may
happen again) and it arrived via digikey usps. Interestingly i had used
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| This
isnt a proud image, but for the sake of testing I 'adapted' a standard
110vac plug to work with a 220v outlet. |
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| High
charge-rate plotting. |
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Concluding Remarks:
If you
have questions or comments, ask below or send over an email.
Stay safe when working with electrons in aqueous /
semi-aqueous environments.
Also wear sunscreen, I'm not responsible for your newly aquired
winter-farmers
tan : ]
Dane.Kouttron
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Electrical & Electrical Power
631.978.1650
