I have to rethink my charging, so I decided to take a closer look at TC chargers (aka Elcon).
It seems, that these chargers (with CAN) are more flexible and less expensive than f.e. Zivan charger (which I use today).
Now I have to find a way to communicate with the TCCH to set voltage and amperage.
The only solution I found is a Box from Jack (EVTV), which could be bought with a charger that won't fit my battery pack.
The price and shipping would melt the advantage of the relative cheap chinese chargers, so I have to find my own circuit.
Is there a DIY project witch fits my needs?
- no BMS required
- simple connection
- easy component compilation
- easy adjustment
A microcontroller is pretty much a requirement. Its not going to be a simple circuit and AFAIK, Jack and Mark Weisman worked on putting it together, and it almost certainly has a microcontroller inside that keeps writing to the controller to tell it what voltage/current to limit to.
I don't think it'd be hard. I have the CAN protocol from TCCharger, but I don't think they did it with CAN. They don't use a CAN box that TCCharger sells. Pins 6 and 7 of the charger communication connector are serial RX and TX respectively. I think the box that you order from TCCharger is a CAN to Serial converter. You'd likely need one in order to communicate with the charger and see what comes out of the TCCharger CAN/Serial dongle. After that, its just seeing what gets crapped out of the CAN Serial dongle and make your microcontroller do that.
The CAN is 250k baud and uses 29-byte identifiers.
The EVTV Box is made out of an Maccina (Arduino based), "some components" and a software sketch, i think.
Only offered combined with a charger.
Such a box with perhaps a display on it and the opportunity to manage three chargers (in parallel) would be great and a wonderful open source project ;-)
Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do it on my own, but I think this would be a great input for the hole community, because the topic is repeatedly discussed.
I've got one of the EVTV 4kw chargers - 165V works great for charging a 48 volt pack or my 120 volt pack. Easy to adjust and for what you get in flexibility a great buy, just buy one and be done with it.
I could by a 6kW TCCH in Europa inkl. VAT for $990,-
Jacks 4kW Version with box costs $1895,- plus international shipping, plus duty and VAT would be around $2500,-.
I would surely support him and his show, but this hugh difference is not feasible for me.
There you can download the basic program and get a pretty good feel of how to program a simple program that communicates over CAN-bus.
If you like we can try to develop something together.
I have been looking at this solution for some time now but have not gotten time to do something about it.
I have the spec for the Elcon/TCCH charger, and I can also get the spec tor the Eltek chargers so we can put that charger to use also.
Check the specs for the Duinomite board, they are pretty neat.
I'm also interested in a CAN interface for my Shinry charger.
The protocol is almost identical with the TCCH charger.
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