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I have read all ten pages of this and am knocked over by how smart and clever you guys are. Bravo!
Being new to all this, I am charging my newly acquired 2012 ES at level 1 8A with a first generation factory EVSE. What I really really want is to determine ONLY the work and parts needed to make my EVSE programmable to 6 or 8 or 12 at 120vac only. I have no interest in buying or doing a modification to go to L2 240vac. Unless I missed that part in the foregoing, the mods done by EVSEUpgrade and by you guys DIY all include going to Level 2 AND allowing variable amp rates at level 1. I don't want level 2, just programmable level 1. That just has to be possible, please! Thank you.
 
Go read the 62 pages over on the myleaf forum and you'll find that back in feb 2011 Ingineer Phil de-potted one of these EVSE units and reverse engineered the circuitry. He then started evseupgrade.com to offer this $300 upgrade.

By Nov 2011 the nytimes reported that over 15% of the 7000 leaf owners had bought this upgrade.

Phil now drives a top of the line tesla (you can do the math).

But it's tedious work to reverse engineer circuits and firmware, especially when the boards are potted, and it takes a lot of time. Once it's done it seems so simple and obvious, but he did the work and he doesn't share how to make the upgrade.

From what i can see in the pictures, there is a 3-pin header located next to the connector for the pair of small yellow wires. That is likely some sort of programming port that connects to a microcontroller on the potted board. If only i had a de-potted board...
 
thomash85715 said:
...I don't want level 2, just programmable level 1...
Here's the J1772 overview, and I'm sure some googling will provide you with schematics so you can design and build to suit your needs if you can't further reverse-engineer this Panasonic unit after going through both this forum and the Leaf forums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772

Look further, and for less time and effort you might find a really inexpensive 120vac 12A EVSE if you want more current, especially if you don't care about UL certification; however, beware, as worn-out 120vac wall outlets or cheap plugs may not handle 12A steady-state comfortably (ideally they shouldn't even get warm, and NEVER hot). The stock 8A provides a much better safety margin if you don't need the charging speed.

I don't understand your aversion to 240vac, as at some point you'll be wanting a quicker recharge during the day and you may want to invest in either a dedicated L2 EVSE or the EVSEUpgrade. Do you not have 240vac available at home?

Speaking of "Ingineer" Phil, in the early Leaf days he was a terrific source of information and was extremely helpful to everyone (he often came to the BayLeafs meetings). You should have seen his trailer-mounted turbine-powered range-extender. I, for one, do not mind supporting his little EVSEUpgrade.com company, and I consider his current-adjusting implementation to be simply brilliant.
 
My cars are in a big double carport, not in a garage. I have 120vac in the carport and 240vac in adjacent laundry room. All this is at opposite end of property from the 200 amp incoming service. The savings from abandoning gasoline could easily be eaten up by a few hundred bucks here and a few hundred more there...it is going to add up very fast if I start paying other people for upgrades. I do get it that a person who successfully hacks and reboots something to make it better should get a reward. I am just not in a financial position to pay retail for these devices. So I will just sort of give up I guess and use the 8A stock system.
Tonight I went to our local nissan dealer and spent a few minutes hooked up to the DCQC plug for free. A salesman floating around stated lots of people use it but it's never backed up with any kind of wait. It is about four miles from my house. When the graphic battery cartoon reached 82%, and my dashboard gauge mirrored that, the thing stopped and told me to disconnect, that I was "full." With the stock 120vac EVSE, the gauge went all the way to the top and range indicated 84 miles but this took 14 hours, not eight minutes!
 
I wonder if the charger from a 240v market may be the best option in the US???

So, UK runs 240V AC all domestic, and Europe is essentially the same, but technically varies between 220-230V AC.

Does a Leaf Type1 charger work on the IMIEV - if it does, you could, as long as your domestic sockets could handle it, get hold of a used 240v J1772 EV charger, and connect it to a domestic 240V outlet using an adapter or changing out the plug end. This way you could use a standard US outlet converted for 240V, not bother with a 240V L2 EVSE.

In basic terms, I charge the car with a L2 240V EVSE using a type2 to type1 32 KW capable charging cable. Thats fairly inconsequential as the I only charges at 3.6KwH/hour - so the net benefit of the EVSE is about 30 mins off the charge time for me:

6h, compared to 6.5 hrs using the mitsu supplied charging cable in to a domestic outlet.

The only reasons I bought an EVSE living in a 240v domestic market were as follows:

1. Contingency against failure of the mitsu charging cable, thus providing a 2nd option.
2. In case I get an EV that charges more rapidly in the future
3. Better water resistance
4. Option for a longer cable, as the standard one is 15 feet or so, and I use a 30 ft one for flexibility.
5. The government paid 70% of the costs.

If a 240V one would work, the £ is very weak at the moment, so you could take advantage of the relative weakness of the £ and get a 240V one.

...unless the car itself is different, which I do not know the answer to.

Interestingly, at this current time, there isnt one single IMIEV for sale in the UK anywhere... first time ive seen that occurrence.
 
thomash85715 said:
When the graphic battery cartoon reached 82%, and my dashboard gauge mirrored that, the thing stopped and told me to disconnect, that I was "full." With the stock 120vac EVSE, the gauge went all the way to the top and range indicated 84 miles but this took 14 hours, not eight minutes!
That's normal. You can plug back into the DCQC to get to 100%, but it could take about as long to get from 82 to 100 as it does to get from 20 to 82, because it tapers off as it goes. That's why it stops where it does -- to give you a decent charge in a reasonable amount of time.
 
Here in USA, our 240 outlets are in fact two hot out of phase 120 legs that together make 240. But in EU and UK, are all the plugs inside the house for TV, refrigerator, clocks, etc single phase with one 240 hot and a neutral plus ground? A EVSE made for a EU mitsu or leaf: is it a level 1 from a single ended single phase 240? If so, bringing one here and plugging it into a two phase two hot USA type 240 plug would not be in its best interest maybe? phb10186 you offer an intriguing idea...but just wondering what the reality of such a thing would look like. Am I missing something here?
I will investigate the reverse engineer pages when I have time read them all. I did ask EVSEupgrade if any of their products or kits would make my 8A stock mitsu EVSE a paper-clip programmable 12A level 1 only (not level 2) and they said no.
 
thomash85715 said:
...I have 120vac in the carport and 240vac in adjacent laundry room....Tonight I went to our local nissan dealer and spent a few minutes hooked up to the DCQC plug for free...It is about four miles from my house....
There will be times when you come back from a 50-mile trip in the morning and want to make another excursion in the afternoon, which 2-3 hours of L2 charging would give you. No reason why you couldn't run a 240vac e x t e n s i o n cord from your dryer out to an L2 EVSE by the car, for the few times you might really need it. I just checked on eBay and jray3 was spot-on about the Duosida EVSE at $228 with free shipping being a great deal for a combined 120vac/240vac EVSE that even comes with a plug for your dryer outlet. I doubt that you'd find a used EVSE with this feature for a better price.

That's nice of the Nissan dealership to let you use their CHAdeMO charger, especially for free. Make sure you let the manager know how much you appreciate that and even offer to pay for it or put some money in their coffee fund or something and try not to abuse the privilege. Despite it being only four miles from your home, you'll soon realize how inconvenient the gas-station model of going somewhere to charge really is. If that Nissan charger is available 24/7 then it's a godsend as a backup, especially if its on your normal route of going somewhere.
 
If you can change or send a longer PWM-duty cycle over the pilot wire, then you can increase the charge current according to the spec from SAE. i read this to say that miev 8 Amp is at 13%, leaf (12A) is ~19% duty cycle.


Ot2Bub4.png
 
Wow what a graphic display that is! But how to alter duty cycle on pilot line? Would a person have to build a heterodyning circuit of some kind that would intercept the pilot square wave and then use it to make a bigger longer one? Controlled by a little potentiometer or variable capacitor or inductor? Re-insert the new pilot wave? But where does the pilot oscillator reside? In car charger or in EVSE? My perennial question: what am I missing? But I feel closer to the solution I seek. Thank you.
 
It's all in the EVSE

Phil reverse engineered it and figured out how to change the duty cycle - He even figured out how to make it adjustable!! So far, nobody else has cracked that nut. Once you reverse engineer your own EVSE, you'll be good to go! . . . . assuming you're as smart as Phil and you don't blow it up in the process :shock:

You could go to Open EVSE and build your own - That way, you can program it any way you like. The EVSE we use nearly every day is an Open EVSE I built 4 years ago. It's adjustable in steps of 2 amps on both 120 and 240 volts. I built it into a clear plastic waterproof Pelican camera storage case. Mine has an LCD display that tells you what's going on, which is nice. You can program the display to tell you anything you like. My display tells me what mode it's using (L1 or L2) How many amps it's charging at and how many hours and minutes it's been charging. I also added an LED light in the charge handle which makes it easy to find the 'target' in the dark :lol:

http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=654

The 'Open' means 'open source code' so you can program anything you like - It's not using a hidden proprietary code like our OEM Panasonic EVSE does

Total parts ran me about $350 IIRC. Some of the parts may be a bit cheaper now . . . . the cord and the J1772 charge handle were the most expensive bits

It's a fun project and you'll learn lots about EVSE's and what makes them tick - Unfortunately though, you won't learn a darned thing about how to do Phil's modifications to the Panasonic brick that came with our cars

I also paid Phil $287 to Upgrade my OEM one - I didn't want to have only one way to recharge. With the purchase of our second iMiEV, we also have a stock OEM EVSE which does 8 amps, but we never use that one. Our daily set-up for both cars is the Upgraded EVSE set to L1 @ 12 amps and the Open EVSE set to L2 @ 12 amps. We just plug in whichever one we need to get however many amps we need over the time we have available. The ability to change the current setting on any EVSE is a bit over rated, IMO - We haven't done that in several years. It was fun to play with at first, but in everyday use, we just don't bother. Plug into L1 if you want to charge for 3 or 4 hours without letting it charge fully, or, plug into L2 if you're in a hurry - 12 amps either way, at least at our house ;)

Don
 
thomash85715 said:
Here in USA, our 240 outlets are in fact two hot out of phase 120 legs that together make 240. But in EU and UK, are all the plugs inside the house for TV, refrigerator, clocks, etc single phase with one 240 hot and a neutral plus ground? A EVSE made for a EU mitsu or leaf: is it a level 1 from a single ended single phase 240? If so, bringing one here and plugging it into a two phase two hot USA type 240 plug would not be in its best interest maybe? phb10186 you offer an intriguing idea...but just wondering what the reality of such a thing would look like. Am I missing something here?
I will investigate the reverse engineer pages when I have time read them all. I did ask EVSEupgrade if any of their products or kits would make my 8A stock mitsu EVSE a paper-clip programmable 12A level 1 only (not level 2) and they said no.

That's what I assumed if your incoming mains power is 120v.

UK domestic power is 240V single phase, with neutral earthing - 3 wires: live 240, neutral and earth, in the normal way. The circuit I have the 240V L2 charger on is dedicated to the EVSE, and uses heavy duty armoured cable of 8mm2 cross sectional diameter - so it could theoretically charge 2 cars if needed. UK electrical regs stipulate earthing on every outlet, with each appliance, light or whatever having a replaceable fuse within the plug that plugs in to the outlet - even if the appliance has an internal fuse of its own, AND of course the fuse box has fuses on each circuit and RCD protection. The only thing this causes is that UK plugs that go in to the outlets are big, but they have large pins, and tend not to pull out of the outlets if the cable is yanked. In Europe, there are a few differences, but not many. Unquestionably, an EU car charger would work in the UK, but the plug end for the outlet would need swapping out , or an adapter used.

http://www.cyberphysics.co.uk/graphics/diagrams/3pinplug.gif

Unlike most other countries we use 'ring' circuits, where the last outlet rind back to the fuse box, as opposed to the 'spur' method where it doesnt - though this has no bearing on the appliances we use. We do use 120v in some applications, such as boats, RVs and commercial builders tools, where 120v where any water may be is deemed safer. From what I understand the presence of long transmission distances, hurricanes, tornados etc was the reason for 120v in the US. In the UK we have shorter transmission distances, not much extreme weather etc. However, in days gone by, some people did install a 120V ring in their kitchens to allow the use of American style fridges and other US import appliances, running 120v, but there would be little point in doing so now, as we have moved to European style kitchens and appliances.

Regulations would not permit more than 1 hot out phase. Commercial electrics are 3 phase at 240V - i.e. 3 incomming mains cables.

My orginal suggestion that doubling on two 120v circuits to make 240v as used for a L2 charging point in the US could also be used for a 240v leaf or mitsu cable, so long as the car would take it. Since the car can charge with a 240V L2 EVSE, I am suggesting that it would likely work, and would charge your car in 6.5 hours, without the need to install a dedicated EVSE.

When they came to install my EVSE on the side of my house, I got them to drill a hole in the bottom of it, and install another double outlet below it, on the same circuit. This way, I can use the supplied charging cable, or any other electrical appliances in that area, as there were no electrics there before. Since I have the EVSE ans 2 outlets, I may even be able to charge 3 cars with it. Though I anticipate over the comming years dual outlet EVSEs will become more common and less costly.
 
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