Freelander 1 Freelander EV

So after a couple of weeks procrastinating I finally made time to try and figure out how to make the charger work at a commercial EVSE which the setup above failed to achieve.
It works great at home but commercial chargers require a low resistance on the Proximity Pilot (PP) line to confirm the current rating of the charger cable.
A quick online search found the following

• For a 13 A cable assembly, the resistance is 1.5 kΩ / 0.5 W.23
• For a 20 A cable assembly, the resistance is 680 Ω / 0.5 W.23
• For a 32 A cable assembly, the resistance is 220 Ω / 1 W.

When I originally got my charger working I didn't have any of these resistances on the PP line. It still worked at home because my EVSE has an integrated cable and is designed to supply up to 32A, but most of the commercial chargers don't have cables. They need to see one of these resistances so they know how much current to supply. I found a thread in Openverter.org where someone just connected their PP line to ground via a 220R resistor so after doing the same I could charge at Tesco and a couple of others.

When I started the latest upgrade I figured it would be easier to get it working without the 220R resistor, and in all honesty I didn't know what I was doing so just hoped it would work without it. As I said it did work great at home but it meant starting again from scratch.

Anyway after a great deal of head scratching and lots more time on the breadboard I have a solution that includes the 220R resistor and is working at home so next job is to replace a couple of resistors in the circuit board and try again.

This is a pic of the bench
testing,

It works



I called into a Tesco in Lisburn Co Antrim today, plugged it in, pressed the charge start button and it started charging straight away

Alibro said:

It works

View attachment 338905

I called into a Tesco in Lisburn Co Antrim today, plugged it in, pressed the charge start button and it started charging straight away

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Well done - that’s quite some feat

Freddie17 said:

Well done - that’s quite some feat

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Thanks mate, I spent weeks procrastinating over this but in the end it was fairly simple to do.
DeepSeek did all the heavy lifting for the programming and the Voltage Divider Circuit that senses if the cable was plugged in was also simple in the end. TBH the hardest bit was figuring out how to control the various bits that are required for charging to work,
I drove 50 miles today so decided to set the timer for it to charge overnight so we'll see how that works out.

Alibro said:

It works

View attachment 338905

I called into a Tesco in Lisburn Co Antrim today, plugged it in, pressed the charge start button and it started charging straight away

Click to expand...

Well done for getting it sorted.

As a matter of interest, can you buy the sockets those chargers plug in to?

Might stick 1 on the side of my Freelanders so I can plug a charger in and make it look like its charging. Quite often the charging places in carparks are free.

I set the timer to charge on cheaper overnight leccy and when I checked this morning it had worked without burning down the house so a result!
Now I know it works I need to think about reducing the number of Arduino's and tidying things up but that's a project for another day.

The handy thing about this is the kit I'm using with a few small tweaks could be used to control pretty much anything in the house.
The Arduino could be connected to the home WiFi so enabling control of lights, TV, HiFi etc from your mobile phone.

Alibro said:

I set the timer to charge on cheaper overnight leccy and when I checked this morning it had worked without burning down the house so a result!
Now I know it works I need to think about reducing the number of Arduino's and tidying things up but that's a project for another day.

The handy thing about this is the kit I'm using with a few small tweaks could be used to control pretty much anything in the house.
The Arduino could be connected to the home WiFi so enabling control of lights, TV, HiFi etc from your mobile phone.

Click to expand...

Erm, please read that post back to yourself Ali.

You've done brilliant mate, but I think you need a holiday.

Take a break from it for a while.

So how many "AliBro ECU's" does the car have now ??

GrumpyGel said:

Erm, please read that post back to yourself Ali.

You've done brilliant mate, but I think you need a holiday.

Take a break from it for a while.

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I take constant breaks from it but I enjoy playing with this kind of stuff and get a real kick from overcoming problems.
When I'm not working full time it gives me something to do that is NOT housework.

pwood999 said:

So how many "AliBro ECU's" does the car have now ??

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Ermm 5 plus the VCU I think.

Alibro said:

It works

View attachment 338905

I called into a Tesco in Lisburn Co Antrim today, plugged it in, pressed the charge start button and it started charging straight away

Click to expand...

This is a glorious sight. I wonder what the Tesla/Polestar (enter any other EV vehicle here) owners make of it when they drive in and are looking for a charger...

kernowsvenski said:

This is a glorious sight. I wonder what the Tesla/Polestar (enter any other EV vehicle here) make of it when they drive in and are looking for a charger...

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While I was charging a guy pulled up in a PHEV and plugged in.
Why anyone would charge a PHEV on Supermarket leccy at 45p per kWh beats me as it's probably cheaper to use petrol.
Maybe it was just to get a parking space like GG suggested above.

Alibro said:

While I was charging a guy pulled up in a PHEV and plugged in.
Why anyone would charge a PHEV on Supermarket leccy at 45p per kWh beats me as it's probably cheaper to use petrol.
Maybe it was just to get a parking space like GG suggested above.

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Or in that case, a parking space near the entrance quite likely.