Maker and former One Laptop computer Per Baby staffer C. Scott Ananian has designed a quality-of-life improve for the OpenEVSE electrical automobile charging station, providing a capacitive touchpad and radio-frequency identification (RFID) reader to assist preserve your charger safe but permit third occasion entry on-demand.
“This venture replaces the unique entrance panel of the OpenEVSE open-hardware EVSE [Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment] charger with a brand new entrance panel with a capacitive-touch keypad and RFID reader,” Ananian explains of the venture. “This enables fundamental entry management in your charger: you’ll be able to assign PINs and observe utilization by PIN, preserve your charger ‘principally locked’ however permit people who contact you on PlugShare [an EVSE sharing service] to drop by and cost when you give them a pin, and so on. For frequent customers you may give out RFID playing cards as nicely, and observe utilization by card ID.”
A sensible front-panel improve for OpenEVSE chargers makes it simpler to securely share vitality on companies like PlugShare. (📷: C. Scott Ananian)
The OpenEVSE venture goals to ship an open supply various to off-the-shelf electrical automobile charging stations, and is available in its default configuration with a design that slots into the Polycase ML-85 weatherproof enclosure. Ananian’s mod, although, replaces the printed entrance panel with a capacitive contact PCB, lit to be used at night time by “reverse-gullwing” LEDs on the again facet.
“I’ve acquired three of them working at my home now,” Ananian says of the most recent revision of the board, which swaps a black solder masks layer for white with the intention to scale back warmth build-up within the solar. “Two for our private EVs (a [Tesla] Mannequin Y and a Fiat 500e) and yet one more for public use. We may give out PINs for the general public charger after we’re contacted by way of PlugShare, or for neighbors who want a spot to cost, which lets us observe utilization.”
Ananian has launched the venture for others to construct, however does warn of some “bodges” in its design — and the potential to resolve them in a future third revision. “The CAP1214 chip I am utilizing for the capacitive keypad has solely 11 LED outputs, whereas there are twelve keys on the keypad,” he explains.
The PCB sits behind the clear entrance of a weatherproof housing, making certain it’s going to preserve working come rain or shine. (📷: C. Scott Ananian)
“I hacked round this in v1 and v2 by wiring the ‘again’ and ‘enter’ keys LEDs in parallel,” Ananian continues, “so each LEDs blinked whenever you pressed both of them. The second bodge is the extra ordinary ‘dumb mistake’ sort, the place I would managed to quick two traces within the PCB format in a method that the DRC [Design Rules Check] did not catch; therefore the ‘inexperienced’ (truly orange) wire working from U3 to the capacitive pad for key ‘3.’”
Extra particulars on the venture are avalable on Ananian’s Hackaday.io web page, whereas design information are printed to GitHub beneath the reciprocal Inventive Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license.
