Found this:
The dip switch in question:
That could probably be replaced by be a esp32, but would it be safe to switch while charging?
Apparently though, the purpose of the monitoring clamp is not only to spy on our energy consumption, I mean gather data, but to reduce the flow of energy supplied to the car if the load on the home supply is too great. So maybe an easier way would be to alter the signal from the clamp.
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I haven’t messed with the clamp signal, but I can confirm the ability to change charge rate with the dip switches while the car is charging. I’m about to try an esp8285 based relay mod. Weirdly I couldn’t get the lowest setting to work. Seemed to only go as low as 2kw.
I read on a forum somewhere (sorry can’t find it now!) that folks with a looped supply were able to have the install done with it capped at half power and podpoint were able to subsequently change the power setting remotely without an engineer visit after the dno had changed their supply.
When I pull the PCB I’ll investigate a bit further. I wonder if the first 3 dip switches are more of a variable resistor…
Very interesting. Please share your findings, I’m interested in the outcome as I was thinking about changing over to a zappi…
Yes, likewise. Will do!
EDIT:- This hardware modification post has been moved to:-
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/podpoint-rate-of-charge-modification-for-solar-pv/417459
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Hi,
Looks cool.
Are you saying the orange and yellow leads are for starting and stopping the charge (lock and unlock) and this can be used with a relay for scheduling purposes?
Thanks.
Yep. It will work like that.
Thank you for sharing this. That is a really useful mod indeed. I look forward to having a bit of time to look at this and I hope it will straight forward enough since I have a Solo 3, I have no idea if the board has changed much between the two iterations.
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Thanks. What is the name and size of connectors you are using to mount the terminal?
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Couldn’t say for sure. They were leftovers from a wemos d1 pack that I snipped, so standard header size and a load of breadboard leads.
Fear this mod might get in the way of the main podpoint integration chat, so I’ve pushed it over to:-
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/podpoint-rate-of-charge-modification-for-solar-pv/417459
Thank you for building this integration. Is anything extra required to pull the energy usage data in to the Energy dashboard? I’m new to the energy monitoring side of homeassistant, but can’t see the podpoint as an option under individual devices.
Thanks,
Matt
Hi @mattcd216,
Nothing extra is needed, simply add the total energy consumption sensor as a ‘device’ and your usage with be tracked day to day as you use the pod.
Currently long term history is not stored so if you remove and re-add the integration the first day shows a spike, this isn’t something I can fix at the moment with the existing PodPoint APIs
Hi @tomcoleman, Just wanted to check ig this was still an issue for you? The error log you have shown seems to be related to your home assistant installation rather than the pod point integration, looks like a device limit issue?
@eximo84 it looks like they have made a change to their APIs to show the actual time spent delivering charge, which I now expose as a sensor and could be used to better calculate a cost. It comes in as seconds (with some rounding down on the pod point side)
Thanks for the help. The device/sensor took a few days to appear in the drop-down menu.
Docs mention to add the " Current Charge Energy sensor as a device".
My sensors:
However I’m getting minus usage in the Energy dashboard…!
The car was charging overnight last night, so I wonder if the midnight crossover has confused things for today’s readings.
I think I need an idiot’s guide to the energy dash - not getting on very well with it.
Matt
Seeing zero consumption for podpoint now. It seems to appear during/after a charge briefly, but isn’t holding in the dashboard.
@mattcd216 try changing over from the current energy value to the total value in the energy dashboard, that may give you more joy.
The total consumption value is an ever increasing number from Pod Point which internally in the HA dashboard will show the change over time.
RegardIng the negative amounts that shouldn’t happen, but I’ve not tested the current value in the dashboard. My assumption there is that as the current charge value drops from say 1.2kwh to 0 when you end a charging session (unplug the car) Its seeing that as a -1.2kwh value.
The current value is something like:
If latest charge session does not have an end time, assume it is ongoing and display the charge value.
Else if the latest session has an end time, show 0
The actual increase you see in HA is because when we poll Pod Point (every 5 minutes by default) we see what the latest charge session value is, and if that has increased, we tell HA the new number.
With the total charge value we get every charge you have ever made, grouped by the pod that you actually charged at. For your home pod we show that value.
I hope this helps!
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