Porsche 914E Electric Conversion and Tesla Obsession

5 Year Prediction for X.com

2023-10-11T14:56:00.001-07:00

Russell Coker and I have been bantering on Facebook about the state of Twitter / X. Russell suggested that I make a blog post since Facebook is not great for bookmarking. I'll copy in our discussion here:

Russell started with the comment "This explains a lot." and a link to this article:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/was-elon-musks-strategy-twitter-rcna118490 I replied:

I replied:

Elon does what he wants to do based on his own analysis and the laws of physics. He rarely listens to anyone else, much less this "plan." Read the new biography by Walter Issacson, you'll really understand how his mind works.

Russell replied:

his mind isn't working properly. He has tanked Twitter's value and is decreasing the value of Tesla.

I replied:
Maybe Twitter/X's value is now where it should have been... Advertisers are coming back, engagement is beyond what Twitter ever had, contributors can earn money, this is just the beginning on the path to X, that he envisioned back in the 90s. NEVER underestimate him. And Tesla is doing just fine.

Russell replied:

if Twitter's value now is what it should have been then a smart businessman would have paid the current value.
Citation needed on advertisers coming back.
The most valuable contributors are the ones who will never earn any amount of money that is useful to them.
Tweet is in dictionaries, that's the sort of business intangible value most executives dream about and he's destroying it.

I replied:
Twitter's board would have rejected any lower offer. You've got to change to long-term thinking, at least 5 years out to see the vision he has for X. He's shown over and over that his relentless drive for change has upended traditional business modes. Vehicles, rockets, energy storage, Internet service, solar, brain implants and soon social media+finance and robotics. Bookmark this and we'll discuss in 5 years.

Russell replied:

satellite internet has latency that makes it unusable for anyone who has any other option. That's why it's been around since the 90s with little use apart from people in remote areas.
Tesla didn't change the car business model, Uber did that.
The brain implants thing was a failure. Killing those monkeys set it back if anything.
Facebook isn't designed for bookmarking things. If you think you are right create a blog and put your predictions there.

I replied:
Let me address your points:

1) Yes, OLD satellite service was unusable, that's why Starlink is at much lower altitudes, in shells around 340 miles rather than 22,500 miles. It's designed for latency so low you can effectively play video games. It also has optical laser sat-to-sat communication to find the best possible data path for each packet. It's available in all of the US now, plus about 60 other countries. It's also availble on airliners, cruise ships and a mobile unit for RVs. It has 2 million subscribers around the world, including thousands of dishes provided to the Ukranian army for free. https://www.starlink.com/map

2) Tesla's massive success around the world has caused every other car company to panic and jump into EVs. Some have good models, some are medicore, others are too late to the game and will go bankrupt. In conjunction with climate targets, countries around the world have set deadlines for the last gas cars to be sold, starting in 2025 with a huge list in 2030. NONE of this would have happened without Tesla. The Uber model only displaced traditional taxis, not EVs. The rideshare/taxi model will be addressed by Tesla's robotaxi service.

3) Neuralink has had a lot of fake bad press. They just got permission from the FDA for their first human clinical trials. Sound like a failure?

Here's the link to a copy of our discussion in my blog:

https://porsche914e.blogspot.com/.../5-year-prediction...

2021-06-12T18:08:00.005-07:00

I just finished reading "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir and I noticed a HUGE shoutout to Cody, the YouTuber behind Cody'sLab and Cody'sBLab. Here's a screenshot:

The ESP32 ProtoBoard Home Page

2020-06-25T03:19:00.004-07:00

This is a placeholder for documentation for the ESP32 ProtoBoard.

This will be the location for documentation and sample code.

The bitly link is: bit.ly/ESP32ProtoBoard

DC Voltage & Current Sensor with CANbus Output Device Home Page

2018-06-02T04:13:00.000-07:00

The "DC Voltage & Current Sensor with CANbus Output" Device Home Page.

This is a placeholder for documentation for the DC Voltage & Current Sensor with CANbus Output device.

My Tour of the Tesla Gigafactory - September 22, 2017

2017-11-06T22:58:00.000-08:00

At long last, I can reveal my super-secret, super-geeky event - a tour of the Tesla Gigafactory! Due to confidentiality, details are light but what is there is interesting, and you get to see several early Tesla Model 3 cars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqi09aJZHg

The 914E is For Sale

2017-05-02T02:04:00.000-07:00

Short Story: My restored and electric converted Porsche 914E is for sale. According to my records, I've got about $40,000 into it, not including my own labor. I'm willing to make a very good deal to give it a new home. Please contact me at mwbrown42@gmail.com to discuss. The full restoration and conversion process is covered in excruciating detail here in this blog.

Long Story: I've been living in Thailand now for almost 4 years. I've had a few plans come and go in that time and now I realize that I'm likely here for good, and not returning home. The Thai government's policy on importing cars is frankly ridiculous, so bringing it over here is not in the realm of possibility. My costs for storage and insurance keep adding up, so I've come to the realization that it's time to sell.

To get the car on the road, you'll need 1) a set of batteries since I pulled the originals and sold them to a golf cart shop and 2) a shock absorber due to a de-trailering incident. This gets you a daily driver capable of about 50 miles of range and a top speed of 70 miles per hour, but not at the same time!

The car is located in Paso Robles, California, halfway between L.A. and San Francisco, near the coast. It can easily be picked up by a car transport company or you can come and get it yourself and trailer it home.

A short history of the car for those who don't want to read from the origin story of the blog: It's a 1973 Porsche 914, with the factory 1.7 liter engine. I bought it on eBay with the description of "It looks good from 10 feet." I drove it home and could see the rust and other issues from about 9 feet. I stripped the car down to the frame and gave it to a restoration shop. They gave it back in fully restored pristine condition. I then converted it to full electric using the ElectroAuto Porsche 914 kit, along with several customizations of my own. I happily drove the car and took it to several car shows, winning First In Class at Warbirds, Wings and Wheels. When I took early retirement and moved to Thailand, I put the car in storage in an airplane hangar, under the watchful eye of the owner of the hangar. I've visited the car since leaving and she's still in perfect condition under a car cover.

So that's it.

If you or anyone you know might be interested, please contact me at mwbrown42@gmail.com.

Battery Pack and Related Electrics Version 2.0

2016-04-16T01:16:00.000-07:00

I spent the afternoon of my birthday playing around with a new Lithium ion battery pack design for the 914, if I ever return to civilization.

To save money and complexity, I'll keep the existing Curtis 1231C-8601 controller which is rated for a maximum 144V pack and 500 amps. This is still sufficient for me driving through town.

Based on years of experience at EVTV with the China Aviation Lithium Battery Company (CALB) 180AH CA-series cells, I know how to bottom-balance them, charge them and discharge them safely. This is in deference to the many YouTube guys building up Tesla-like 18650 packs from dodgy laptop battery packs. I did the math to determine I need 42 of the CALB cells at a nominal 3.4V each.

I brought up an old SketchUp model I made a couple of years ago and worked out how to place these batteries and other components. I'll fill up the rear battery box where the gas engine used to be and put the rest in the battery box where the gas tank used to be, with a good amount of space left over.

This means I can remove the 2 single-battery-sized boxes from the trunk and weld some steel plates into place, prime and paint and turn it back into a fully usable trunk.

I also gain all of the capacity of the battery box where the spare tire used to be right in the front. I created shapes matching the sizes of the rest of the components I need and fitted them all into place. This means the new TCCH 4KW or 5KW charger I'm looking at and its controller, the new GEVCU controller, the existing relay board and the existing DC-DC converter all fit inside the front box. The TCCH is air cooled but the box already has an exhaust fan that switches on during charging, so it looks like it will be a perfect setup.

Cleverly I'm moving the 12V auxiliary battery from it's ugly, nasty, breaking-off-prone mounting bracket on the front of the front battery box to inside the gas tank battery box due to some newly available space. I'll run the 12V wires down the passenger side of the frunk to the DC-DC controller and leave the high voltage battery pack wiring where it runs now down the driver's side. There's even still a bit of empty space so I'll play with the position of the batteries to maintain side-to-side weight balance and fill the gaps with some stiff foam.

So, here's the layout. I've also built up a list of to-do items, some must be done concurrently with this major upgrade, while the rest can be done at my leisure. I'll bling up the installation by replacing the white plastic battery pack lids with transparent lids.

Tesla Paris Chambourcy Showroom and Service Center

2015-11-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

From the Paris Ouest Tesla showroom, I took another series of trains and subways to get as far as I could to St. Germain, home of the famous PSG football team. From there it's a 20 minute bus ride to Chambourcy. I made it to the store with about 15 minutes to go before closing time, whew! I took some pictures and had a chat with one staffer until closing time.

Tesla Paris Ouest France Showroom and Service Center

2015-11-26T12:58:00.000-08:00

While in Paris I discovered two Tesla locations, one easy to get to and one difficult. I went to the easy one first in Paris Ouest. I did a series of subway and outer-region train rides and a long walk to get there. Turns out it's a service center only now, they moved the showroom two weeks ago to the other location that's about 30km away to the west. The staff were very helpful, pulling out a map and showing me what public transport I'd have to take to get there.

Tesla Tilburg Netherlands Showroom and European Factory

2015-11-19T17:07:00.000-08:00

The Tilburg factory is a 2 hour walk, train, bus and walk in the pouring rain but hey if I'm that close I have to do it.

I walk into the Visitor center at the factory to find that it's not the factory anymore! It's now a showroom, service center and warehouse since September. The very helpful man there explained everything and pointed me towards the new factory just down the road.

I walk in more pouring rain to the new building. This is a massive building, about 200 meters wide and 40 tractor-trailer-loading-bays long.

I walked into the first sliding glass door but it looked like an employee entrance, so I went out and then into the next door which led me into a big visitor room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls looking right into the factory.

The "factory" is what I would call final assembly, about the size of a basketball court, done this way to reduce the taxes payable for fully assembled cars brought into the country for distribution around Europe. The cars come four to a shipping container, with the wheels bolted onto the hubs so they can roll. The cars enter what is labelled "General Assembly", riding on a smart cart and they move in an S-shaped work line where the car is grabbed from above with a big claw-like hanger. The wheels come off, the battery pack is installed, the drivetrain(s) are installed and then the wheels go back on again. They fill it with windshield washer fluid and then flash the software at which point the car is driveable. The car is lowered onto another smart cart and makes its way to final inspection for paint and water leakage. It comes off the cart and goes through an indoor test track about 900m long with bumps designed to make squeaky things squeak. They then are driven over into the detailing area then parked waiting for shipment though Europe or for local pickup.

All this time, several people walked through the visitor area and nobody seemed to be worried about me with my nose pressed up against the glass. Finally a young man walked over and introduced himself. He was the Delivery Specialist, handling about 8 - 10 local pickups every day. One customer with a new titanium colored Model S drove past me and out the door with a huge smile on his face. I told my story and we talked for about half an hour. He then told me it was OK to take pictures through the glass, I said I hadn't up to then because of the no-picture rule in Fremont but he said there are no secrets here, so he took a few pictures of me, then I took a few more. He then went back to his desk and brought out a stainless steel Tesla pen for me, I'm very thankful for his gift. Well that was an awesome visit.

Tesla Amsterdam Zuid-Oost Netherlands Showroom, Service Center and European Headquarters

2015-11-18T16:28:00.000-08:00

On the Amsterdam city outskirts is another Tesla location. This one combines a showroom, huge service Center and the Tesla European headquarters. All support calls in Europe come here and staff is available in all supported languages.

I thought it was interesting that Tesla had a big "we're hiring" sign outside the office.

Tesla Amsterdam Netherlands Showroom

2015-11-18T16:06:00.000-08:00

I walked to the Tesla showroom, of course. It's in a tiny storefront in an upscale part of town. The young man working there said electric cars are really coming in the Netherlands, nearly every street has at least one charging station so the infrastructure is there and ready for more cars.

New Electric Amsterdam Netherlands

2015-11-17T15:52:00.000-08:00

Continuing my trip, I made a stop in Amsterdam and visit Anne Kloppenborg and his New Electric company, building electric cars and boats.

I made my way to Anne's workshop which is tucked in behind some industrial buildings. I walked into the right shop and saw Ray and Celso and Anne.

A customer Volvo was up on the hoist being converted for the CEO of an electric car charger station company. The Delta boat that didn't finish the English Channel crossing was in pieces, apparently the contactor failed from heat thrown off by the fuse that was running near its limit. 3/4 of the way across the English Channel is a tough place to have an electrical glitch! A simple redesign of that part of the circuit should avoid concentrating the heat, with a next try scheduled for December. The 818 project is in process but delayed by paying customer work (which is always good to have!) There was a small cabin boat out the back in the canal being converted.

Trying to help out a bit, I built up a parallel pack of 10 CALB CA100 batteries and Celso initiated the bottom balancing process. I was careful not to drop the wrench across the battery terminals...

Anne had a meeting with an electric boat motor company at a trade show in town so we went in. I got a visitor badge and we found the booth. While Anne talked with them, I explored the next few aisles of products.

Later in the week we walked down to the two canal boats that Anne had installed electric motors and batteries into. These are new and he did the installation in conjunction with the boat manufacturer. The battery packs hold 180 KWH, this is a monster, as much as two Teslas, folks! They have between 2000 and 3000 hours of service in only 8 months and they're still purring along.

Tesla Copenhagen Denmark Showroom and Electric Bicycles

2015-11-14T14:55:00.000-08:00

Continuing my trip I tracked down the Tesla showroom in Copenhagen. This is a very dense city with small streets and the showroom was tiny but in a high-end shopping area. They did have just enough room for a rolling chassis and a production 90D model running the brand-new AutoPilot software update. I spotted 4 other Teslas around town. Due to a change in government, the tax-free status of electric cars is going away soon and will now be subject to the 200% tax levied on all cars. Maybe tax free is too much of a break but a little social engineering always helps to move society towards a zero-emission, renewable energy future.

We walked outside and down a block to a rack of electric bicycles! Woo hoo! Simon entered his account information on the touch screen and away we went. It has 3 speeds and uses a pedal-assist method. You start pedalling and the motor turns on and gives you a strong assist, you just need to keep gently pedalling. If you stop, you get a nice regen. We rode through the city over to a canal with a sightseeing boat and checked the bikes into another rack. Cost for the ride was DK25 or about $4.

As we walked away from the bike rack, I spotted a VW plugged into an electric charging station, and a guy with professional camera equipment taking pictures. He said the car was on sale in Sweden now and would come here next March, so he was taking pictures for the brochure to be used here.

Tesla Birmingham England Showroom and Service Center

2015-11-11T02:52:00.000-08:00

Continuing on my trip, I was visiting a friend near Birmingham England when I realized that there is a Tesla location nearby, so off we went.

It's quite a large location near the city center. I took some pictures and talked with a young woman who was just recently hired. I walked out into the back parking lot to look at the cars waiting to be delivered and was politely chased out, turns out I can't go back there, sorry!

Tesla Sarasota Florida Showroom

2015-10-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

I drove over to the west coast of Florida to visit my friend from way back in High School and visit the Tesla Sarasota showroom. Like two others I've visited here, it's in a shopping mall.

For a Monday, there were a lot of people in the mall and a steady stream of potential customers coming in and looking at the chassis and assembled car.

Sadly, no pictures. I'm pretty sure at this point my camera is deleting pictures behind my back...

Tesla Tampa Florida Showroom and Service Center

2015-10-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

Continuing my trip, I visited the Tampa showroom and service center. Despite the hints on the Tesla web page, this location is very hard to find. It's in a complex of one-story professional and light industrial offices.

Once inside though I was happy to meet with Agnes, a transplanted Scot who talked with me for a long time about her showroom, service center and Tesla in Florida. You can just barely see the service center through the glass doors.

Tesla Miami Dadeland Florida Showroom

2015-10-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

The end of the long day brought us to the Miami Dadeland Tesla showroom. The showroom in Miami beach I went to last year is no more, it was getting more tourists than folks actually in the market for the car, so this site was opened.

As with the Boca Raton showroom, this one is in a mall. There were less people in the mall here this afternoon for some reason.

Sorry, again no pictures.

Tesla Dania Beach Florida Showroom and Service Center

2015-10-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

We then drove south to the Dania Beach showroom & service center which is just a little bit north of Fort Lauderdale.

There we met Franklin, a very enthusiastic young man! He invited us for a test drive in a Ludicrous mode car, which has just been released and I was not going to pass up on this opportunity. We did 3 passes up and down the service road next to the airport runway. The acceleration is mind-blowing. I didn't have the courage to keep my foot on the floor until the third run. Big thanks to Franklin and best of luck to him in the future.

With my body buzzing with adrenaline, I completely forgot to get any pictures!

Tesla Boca Raton Florida Showroom

2015-10-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Continuing south, we stopped in at the Town Center mall in Boca Raton, home of the Tesla showroom. There were so many people walking into the store that I only had time for a brief chat with Dan. Shopping malls are a good way to get eyes on the car and plant a seed in people's minds.

Charging stations in the mall parking lot.

Tesla West Palm Beach Florida Showroom and Service Center

2015-10-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

While I'm in Florida visiting my father, I decided to visit all of the Tesla showrooms in South Florida. Heading south from Vero Beach, first up was West Palm Beach.

This location is a bit out of the way but quite a large facility with a showroom and service facility. I spoke with Steve and Tess. We talked about the launch of the Model X and Tesla in general. Tesla is doing quite well in south Florida and they expect the trend to accelerate.

EVCCON 2015 - Day 4

2015-10-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

This morning the schedule shows the Car Show at Jack's house from 9 AM - 2 PM. For the majority of us, it meant a well-deserved sleep-in and then hang out in the workshop until 2 PM.

Ray and Nabil got their motorbike-of-death running. It's a frankenbike made with a Kelly controller and an automotive alternator wired backwards.

Among the goodies found around the shop was this Chinese motor controller from a company called Shinry. Yes, the jokes just write themselves folks. The specs seem good, liquid cooled and even includes a DC-DC converter so if it tests out well it could be a viable controller.

This is a section of Tesla battery pack, made from 18650 form-factor Lithium Ion batteries. Every one of those holes is a battery and there's a tiny wire welded from the battery to the metal backplate, acting like a fuse. If a battery goes runaway, the wire will melt and the battery will be taken out of the circuit in the pack.

This is the guts of a 10 KW Tesla battery charger. Time will tell if Jack and the team can reverse engineer it and install it into a vehicle.

At 2 PM, Jack kicked off the awards. This year, the awards are small and engraved plastic rather than the huge softball-championship-trophies in years past.

Awards were given for the top 3 attending cars but the drag strip and autocross trophies went un-awarded as those events were cancelled this year.

Steve West and Nick Smith and their Charge.net.nz organization won the Electric Vehicle Evangelist of the Year award, well-deserved.

Kevin Smith, leader of the Illuminati Motor Works team that came *this* close to winning the Progressive Automotive X Prize, won for Technical Innovation.

Second year in a row, I snagged the Furthest Travelled Attendee, or as Jack called it this year, "Global Visionary (Furtherest Travelator). Nick Smith went the long way around through the UK to try to beat me, but my 3 months on the road from door to door added up to 27,418 miles, longer than the earth is around. He'll have to step up his game next year.

After the awards, most of us headed over to Sikeston to Dyno Dom's drag race track. Most years we went on Sunday morning but Jack decided to go on Saturday night this year. The dinosaur-juice folks were out in force, while we made up a small EV contingent, under the official auspices of NEDRA.

After waiting for about an hour and a half in frigid cold and cloudy skies, Dyno Dom cancelled the whole day on account of rain which didn't really exist. The lady at the ticket gate refused to give us each our $15 back, but did write on them that we could come back later. We explained we only come once a year but she wouldn't relent. Screwed again...

Most folks headed back to the hotel for free "kickback" drinks and buffet of tremendously fattening American food. I couldn't get anybody interested in going out for the evening so many goodbyes were said. The Drury Lodge is scheduled soon for demolition and rebuild into an 8 storey hotel so we'll have to find a new place to stay next year and possibly the year after that if their schedule slips.

All in all a great week, with the hard-core EVCCON folks showing up despite cancellation and we managed to safely get liquored up and play with high voltage again. Until next year...

EVCCON 2015 - Day 3

2015-10-02T08:16:00.002-07:00

Session: Arduino CAN_DUE Library Advanced Techniques - Collin Kidder

Collin's CAN_DUE library brings advanced CANbus handling functionality to the Arduino world. All code written by the extended EVTV coding teams uses CAN_DUE.

The hardware has 8 "mailboxes" which can be used to send or receive data on the CANbus, and everything is interrupt driven using callback function registration, which is far more efficient than polling, although polling is available.

There are two independent CANbuses, you can run both independently at the same time.

To initialize a CANbus, use the begin() method call with the desired bus speed and the hardware pin connected to the bus. You can also later adjust the bus speed.

Filtering of incoming messages is set using a number of method calls where you specify which message frame ids you're interested in.

The main data structure is called CAN_FRAME and contains all of the critical information about each incoming and outgoing message, including the message id and data. A union data structure allows you to access the data by low and high int, four shorts or 8 bytes without casting and converting each time.

Sending data is done with the sendFrame() method call, passing in your formatted CAN_FRAME.

One thing to remember is that although Arduino sketches look like C++ code, it's not a full implementation. For instance, you cannot use a C++ class' method as a callback target.

Very powerful CANbus apps can be written in very few lines of code thanks to this library. Great work Collin!

News Flash: Charge.net.nz has announced that BMW wants to sponsor their fast charging network effort in New Zealand with €200,000!

Session: CHAdeMO Fast Charging Standard – Collin Kidder and Jack Rickard

Jack has decided to build a car-side CHAdeMO charging solution. This can be fitted into any electric vehicle to provide fast-charging, slashing charging time and enabling long-distance driving by reducing range anxiety and objections over long charging times.

The expensive part of the kit is the CHAdeMO connector at about $900. All that's needed in addition is two high-voltage, high-current contactors, a small automotive relay and the EVTV-developed JLD505 meter & CANbus controller, but this may be replaced by a GEVCU in the future.

The CHAdeMO specification lists output at 50V - 500V DC, but real-world testing shows some manufacturers are cheating on the spec by ignoring lower voltages in the range. Usable range is about 250V - 500V which excludes most DC-motor enabled cars. While this works for so-far every OEM manufactured car, a lot of home conversions will not be able to benefit from this.

Tesla appears to use the CHAdeMO protocol under the covers, running on 33.3kbps single wire CANbus. They read the vehicle VIN number and only function when the VIN is validated against known Tesla vehicles.

Contrary to what most people would think, the car is in full control of the charging process. The car requests initiation of charge, requests current and voltage levels and later requests termination of charge. The car requests gradual increases and decreases in current at the start and end of the charge cycle. The charger is supposed to follow these commands.

EVTV testing has shown a variety of behaviours from different manufacturers. I wish that the CHAdeMO standards body would enforce all aspects of the spec. At this relatively initial point in the rollout of CHAdeMO around the world, now is the time to get all devices in full compliance. What we need is a Networld/Interop of chargers and cars. Idaho National Labs has apparently hosted something like this and reported that everything is just fine, but we know that's not true. From this paper from a couple of months ago it appears they only tested J1772 devices, not CHAdeMO.

Here is the list of Certified CHAdeMO chargers. Note Blink is not on the list.

Session: Recording Battery Voltages into Excel using Voice Recognition - Al Gadja

Every Windows PC has speech recognition built in. Control Panel -> Sound -> Recording -> Configure. You can train the computer to better understand your voice.

He uses a $15-$20 headset with a microphone boom. Speak naturally and let the computer lag a bit behind.

As he goes down the battery pack, he speaks the voltages followed by the word "newline".
Eg. 3.125 newline 3.129 newline 3.1209 newline.

Al has an Excel spreadsheet template that applies colors to different cell voltages and graphs charged, discharged and difference values for each cell in the pack. This allows you to easily visualize the state of health of each battery, with the outliers clearly indicated in the graphs.

Session: Ladder Logic and Vehicle PLC Controllers - Al Gadja

PLCs are Programmable Logic Controllers, long used in industry to control any electrical or mechanical device. Ladder Logic is a visual representation of the flow of control of the program. You read the logic left to right. You can place different device types in the ladder, set preferences and then draw lines. When complete, you can run it in Simulation mode to see how the logic will work when installed into a PLC and run in the target device.

Everything in his Dodge Brothers truck is controlled through the PLC - nothing is directly wired. It's from the Crouzet company and cost about $575 for the PLC, relay board and power supply. It has 26 digital input ports and 26 replay output ports rated at 8A and 250V.

Session: Azure Dynamics eTransit Connect/heaters/AC/CAN - Byron Izbenhaard

Byron bought this van, has done two road trips and has put 2,000 miles on it. He bought it for $6,500 from a Ford dealer who had no idea how to fix it, and had a lot of wrong ideas. It turns out both battery pack interlocks were pulled out, and the Pre-Charge was not finishing. Once he fixed that, the vehicle was running again. One remaining issue was the heating unit was bad. The coolant channels were full of goo and the electronics board was corroded.

He has changed to Evans Waterless coolant and a new heating unit from Eberspächer, taken from a Chevy Volt, about 1/3 the size of the original and about the same power level of 6.6 KW. He made up a mounting bracket and attached it to the original heater location. He made up a new hose set with transitions to the van's larger piping.

He then did a characterization of a new thermistor using an oven and determined the difference between the original one and the new one. The solution was to add an 820 ohm resistor in series with the thermistor to get very close to the original profile.

The next challenge is to get an EVTV CANDue 2.0 board and software working to correctly drive the unit's heating capabilities. After some trial and tribulation, the heater worked on the test bench. Luckily the van already has 4 heater level CANbus messages in the diagnostic software, so he sniffed the bus with SavvyCAN to find the messages and used those to flash new firmware and drive the unit. Byron mounted it in the van and it's working quite well. The heating is controlled with the original dashboard controls, keeping the stock look and feel and avoiding the out-of-place looking switches that we sometimes find in EV conversions.

Session: CANdo Battery Temperature Sensor - Nabil Henke and Ray Schaffler

There is a growing need for CANbus-based single-function devices. After a problem with a thermal switch, Nabil and Ray have come up with a system that reads temperature and broadcasts the values across the CANbus.

It consists of a 2" x 2" x 1/2" white plastic module and up to 7 temperature sensor inputs. It can also directly control Elcon / Chennic chargers. Using a Bluetooth serial port configuration, you can install multiple modules in a car. If any of the temperatures are too cold, it will inhibit the charger from starting. Hooking up to a serial terminal port, you must set your charger target voltage and current in 1/10th of a volt, i.e. 124.5V = 1245. It is fixed at 250kbs and Extended Addressing to match the Elcon charger but they're open to a firmware update to allow for baud rate changing. They are available for $120 including 4 temperature sensors, and additional sensors cost $10 each. Jack will have them in the evtv.me store when they can give him sufficient quantity.

Session: Building The Little Lightn!ng Bike - Nabil Henke and Ray Schaffler

Last year they brought a 3 wheel bike called Banshee. The students they mentor decided to do two 2-wheel bikes called Grease and Lightn!ng and things went downhill from there. It's primary motor is an automotive alternator and uses a 48V / 10AH battery pack, built by spot-welding 18650 cells. The cheap Kelly controller they used needs 3 Hall Effect sensors which were a pain to get working. They used the 12-pole magnet ring from a CD-ROM drive.

Nabil and Ray are members of the Area 515 Maker Space in Des Moines, Iowa.

BBQ At Jack's House

We all headed down to Jack's house, overlooking the Mississippi river, for the first no-rain BBQ in EVCCON history.

EVCCON 2015 - Day 2

2015-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

Session: John Hardy - Battery Testing

Day 2 kicked off, surprisingly on time, with John Hardy from the UK. John returns again as our overseas battery testing expert. He reviewed his earlier battery testing methodology and cell types.

The Headway 38120S cell had no detectable voltage drift but the first cell failed after 600 discharge / charge cycles.

He tested a shunt balancing product which simply destroyed the pack in under 100 cycles. He is a fan of bottom-balancing your pack before assembly.

His CALB CA40fi cells lived beyond 2000 charging cycles and each of the 8 cells showed nearly identical voltage profile on the 2000th cycle, which is exactly what we want in our batteries.

John's full testing history shows that Lithium Ion batteries have no discernable drift and an extremely long charging cycle life.

John then moved to his current (no pun intended) testing of the Tesla-style 18650 LiFePO4 cells. He has developed a new charging algorithm so has asked us to not talk about his ideas until they're protected. I will say it's very sophisticated and looks very good! Hoping to hear good things in the future.

Session: Collin Kidder – CAN Bus Hacking Hardware And Software
Collin's work writing software to collect and analyze CANbus traffic of existing OEM automotive components has formed the cornerstone of the reverse-engineering innovation of the world-wide EVTV team. Due to his efforts we now can control the charger and DC-DC converters from Chevy Volts, the motor and controller for UQM/Coda vehicles, the motor and controller from Siemens/Azure Dynamics DMOC and the motor and controller from the Tesla Model S.

Collin recommends the EVTV CANDue 2.0 board as it has two complete isolated 2-wire and 1-wire CANbus connections, a temperature sensor, a MicroSD memory card slot for massive data logging and a 256kb EEPROM for persistent data storage. It is a standard Arduino shield, meant to be stacked on top of a standard Arduino Due processor board.

Another option is the EVTV Due board, which combines the features of an Arduino Due and a CANDue 2.0, but does not have a 1-wire CANbus port. It has a much stronger USB port and screw terminals for power and CANbus wiring.

Jack has developed a plug-and-play device in a box to plug directly into a Tesla Model S diagnostic port which is native CANbus and Tesla cannot disable it.

GVRET is Collin's CANbus sniffing tool, driving the hardware to capture all CANbus traffic. It is Arduino firmware and is flashed into one of the above boards.

SavvyCAN is a QT5-based app which is used to analyze the CANbus data captured by the hardware and GVRET. QT5 supports Windows, Linux and MacOS. It has sophisticated tools to visualize and filter messages and can also play back messages onto a live CANbus. This is critical to fast development of an independent controller for an OEM CANbus device with no manufacturer documentation.

DBC files are used to define signals that flow on a CANbus. As you reverse-engineer a device, DBC files save the knowledge gained and help SavvyCAN interpret the format of specific messages.

The reverse-engineering process is as follows:
- Find a convenient place to plug into the CANbus.
- Capture some bus traffic to see if it's working
- Go for a drive and capture real bus traffic
- Perform small discrete functions and save the traffic into separate small files, such as open the door lock, close the door lock, shift into neutral, press the brake pedal, etc.
- Launch SavvyCAN and isolate the meaningful messages
- Define newly discovered messages in a DBC file
- Play captured or synthesized messages back on the bus and see what happens
- Write software in a controller to perform that specific function.

Note that this is *not* easy and you will get better at message analysis as you see more devices and more ways of representing data.

Collin gave us a guided tour of SavvyCAN. There are many, many ways to visualize the data to help you find patterns and values leading to your solution.

We have to break for lunch, Collin will continue again later this afternoon.

Session: Craig Smith - Car Hacker's Handbook 2014. – Politics and Legal Environment of Automotive Security

Next up is Craig Smith, a new EVTV speaker. He's an expert in vehicle computer systems. Cars are basically rolling computer networks. He started out by talking about the current legality of vehicle hacking. He says to always talk about "hardware". We all know software is running inside all of these computers, but in the eyes of the law, it's all hardware. We are already protected in law to reverse engineer components to add 3rd party devices, so the line is blurry.

Who Owns Your Car? GM, John Deere and the Auto Alliance. GM claims they retain copyright on the software inside and we are not allowed to look at it. The basis of their opinion is the DMCA - Digital Millennium Copyright Act - which was originally intended for movie and music piracy. People have proposed new Class 21 and 22 exemptions to DMCA about reverse engineering for security research and the right to understand and update firmware. The Copyright Office has not decided on these two exemption requests yet. We are a small voice against the large corporations and their lobbyists. No one has been sued yet though, and the industry is worried about losing the suit so the only tool they have is threatening people with potential litigation.

What can we do to help? Share information. Share stories. Share data. Collaborate. Check out the Open Garages group and the I Am The Cavalry group.

Craig talked about other CAN sniffing hardware, from $60 open source to $5000 proprietary Kvaser and software such as SocketCAN and the Linux Can-utils package that you match up with them. The LAWICEL protocol is a network protocol under Arduino that handles CANbus traffic like any other network device. There are 3 CAN interfaces: Can0, SIcan0 and Vcan0.

Craig showed a demo that he created. It uses a Playstation controller to drive a virtual car with speedometer, left and right turn signals and door locks via CAN traffic.

There are additional software layers available that run on top of CAN such as UDS that provides higher-level functions such as ECU reset, diagnostic codes, VIN number and data upload and download.

There is an important packed called TesterPresent. It is issued every 2 or 3 seconds and tells the car a diagnostic tool is connected. Some functions may require this.

SecurityAccess tokens are required to update firmware. It's a multi-step handshaking protocol to prevent easy hacking.

Craig showed up pictures of his test bench with a junkyard dashboard and ECU and pots for changing simulated data values such as fuel level and RPM.

We had a good Q&A session to wrap up before Craig had to leave for the airport.

Jack gave Craig an EVTV Due board to see if he can use it in his research. Big thanks to Craig!

More Cars!

Session: Jack Rickard - Tesla Drivetrain Demonstration

We moved into the workshop area where Jack's Tesla drivetrain test bench is located. He showed us the control panel which operates contactors and simulated the brake pedal. He showed us the Arduino code that drives commands to the motor controller, and then he engaged drive and spun the unit up. He demonstrated forward, reverse and neutral and creep mode.

Here is a short video from his demonstration.

For longer video and a far more detailed description of the reverse engineering of the Tesla drivetrain, please see the relevant EVTV videos here.

Now we're packing up to go to the BBQ at Jack's house. It looks like this will be the first year we don't get rained out.

EVCCON 2015 - Day 1

2015-09-30T07:17:00.001-07:00

Session: Introduction - Jack Rickard

This smaller event is being held at the EVTV workshop, as was originally envisioned five years ago. We have about 45 in attendance people this morning. Even before the cancellation, registrations were only about half of EVCCON 2014.

There are big changes happening in the world of home electric conversions and the world of EVTV, Jack's trying to listen to the signals. Cheap Nissan Leafs, the non-2016 Chevy Volt, staff turnover at EVTV, home conversion component suppliers going out of business, and many other factors, so he's moving away from specialty suppliers towards OEM components to use in your electric conversions.
If you use a Chevy Volt charger in your car, if it fails you just order another one from GM, it will be available for years and years. We just need to know how to hook them up and control them. We are still in the Innovation phase in the Standard Adoption Curve so things are chaotic. The Early Adopter phase normally starts when the technology is at 2.5% penetration, we are still at only 0.7% electric vehicle penetration vs. Internal Combustion vehicles.

The auto industry seems to have settled on the use of CANbus for communication between electronic devices around the car and that standardization helps us. The component suppliers don't generally publish the command structures for these devices so we have to reverse engineer them.

Jack thinks there is a lot of innovation left to be discovered, like urban transportation solutions. You'll understand if you've ever tried to park in Boston. Storm Sondors set up a kickstarter project for an electric bicycle for $500 and 55,000 people signed up. Shipping was slightly delayed but the bikes are getting on the road. Sondors set up another kickstarter with a $75,000 goal and now has over $1M in subscriptions.

We also have to teach the market about the benefits of electric transportation.

Tesla is a bit of an outlier as they have proven to be very innovative, beyond what most people could imagine and making it a reality.

Session: New Zealand Fast Charge Network - Steve West and Nick Smith

Steve launched Charge.net.nz to promote electric vehicle uptake in New Zealand. Previously, he developed the DJ software called Serato. After becoming fabulously wealthy, he now has a stable of a Nissan Leaf, a Tesla Roadster and two Tesla Model S. Nick is a Mechanical Engineer and is in the final stages of a Mazda Miata conversion and has joined Steve in the Charge.net effort.

Steve and another Model S owner Carl decided to do a road trip from the far north to the far south of New Zealand and they quickly realized there is a big problem with the lack of EV charging in the spread-out nature of the country, which is hindering the uptake of EVs. Steve came up with the idea of rolling out his own DC fast charging network of about 75 stations using Tritium chargers from Australia. The goal is to have the chargers spaced about 80 km apart.

New Zealand is well-placed for EVs as the grid is about 80% renewable energy with a massive slice of hydro power, followed by geothermal and wind. Solar is not strong there due to a lack of government incentives and low wholesale energy prices. Many people have an easy location to park and charge their cars and the daily average distance driven is 20 miles. This is good for a Nissan Leaf-like car, but bad for longer trips. Hence the need for a strong fast-charge network.

The electricity market in New Zealand is broken into 4 parts: the generation companies, the grid transmission and distribution companies and the retailers. In order to place a charger, Steve has to locate a willing partner with a strategic location and ample electric supply such as city councils, retailers, and even gas stations, come to an agreement with 4 companies to get an electricity contract, install the hardware and publicize the new station.

Every location in the country has access to 3-phase power and power is delivered at 230V at 10 amps so high-power charging is viable both at home and at charging stations.

Currently there are only 350 EVs in the country and not all of them have a DC charging port, so the business case for deploying charging stations is very poor. It takes someone with long-term vision to make the decision to move forward with a plan, in anticipation of a strong growth curve of EVs.

Steve's pricing model is 25 cents/kwh and 25 cents/minute. The electricity cost is about the same as a car owner would pay at home and the time charge encourages people to charge and leave quickly, making the charger available to more customers.

The Tritium Veefil charger runs at 50 KW with CHAdeMO and CCS Type 1 plugs. It will charge a car to 80% by default and shut off or the user can ask to push to 95% full.

Customers register on the charge.net.nz web site with a credit card and can request an RFID tag. Users plug into the charging port then log in by swiping the RFID tag, using the PlugShare mobile app or coming soon sending an SMS.

Steve has developed the backend software in an open and collaborative way so there is interoperability between other charging networks.

Session: An Introduction to CAN networks - Jack Rickard

Jack's order of 6 Brammo electric motorcycle motors arrived during lunch and one can be yours for the low, low price of $2000. They're 40 kw peak and 25 kw continuous power, permanent magnet, water cooled and weigh 13 kg. Sevcon offers a compatible controller that you'll have to chase down on your own.

Vector is the primary company in the world of CANbus and it is extremely expensive. Jack's Arduino-based boards and Collin Kidder's software have nearly replicated the functionality of Vector's product.

Craig Smith did a session at DEFCON where he showed how to "hack" the CANbus in automobiles.

Bosch invented CAN in the 1980s as the solution to reduce the weight of the proliferation of wiring up many computerized devices in cars.

Jack then described the nature of the two-wire CANbus wiring, termination, device attachment and differential signaling. He showed the standardized layout of a data packet and its sub-components.

CANbus can run at several speeds, most devices we've seen are 250 kbps or 500 kbps. A lot of protocol overhead is handled in hardware for you by the transceiver, you as a programmer will only care about the message id and data payload.

Masks and filters are part of the protocol and are normally handled in hardware, allowing the programmer to only be notified about interesting message ids, which significantly reduces load on the software processor. Two devices can start transmitting at the same time and the one with the lower message id wins and is allowed to control the bus.

It was mentioned that some car devices are using Ethernet for increased bandwidth needs but this is unlikely to completely replace CAN any time soon, due to the increases in wiring requirements back to a hub or router.

Session: Arduino Programming - Jack Rickard

Jack showed us the CANbus 8-button, LED-lit device that Collin found. Each LED ring or backlight is individually controllable over CANbus.

He then discussed the customized Arduino-based controllers that Paulo and Jack have developed. Jack decided on using the Arduino controller universe due to the open nature, the hundreds of plug-on shields and the programming tools and libraries available. EVTV developed the "EVTV Due" board, adding isolation and protection on all input and output pins, CAN transceiver chips, an EEPROM for persistent storage and screw terminals for power and CANbus cables.

Jack then showed the Arduino programming tool, displaying a sketch program and described the various aspects of the source code.

Last, Jack showed the Arduino-compatible shield "CanDue 2.0", codenamed "Teodora" for Paulo's mother. It contains CANBus transceivers for two CANbus buses, Single Wire CAN and has a MicroSD card for logging data. This is useful if you already have an Arduino board in your design and want to add CANbus handling. This is useful for capturing data from Tesla cars.

Session: Bearing Protection - Tom Brunka / Helwig Carbon

Tom is a speaker again this year, not for his company's DC motor brushes, but for a special brush that prevents corrosion of the bearings in a motor, called a shaft-grounding brush.

Any motor driven by high-frequency Pulse-Width-Modulation is susceptible. Motors get current and voltage induced into the rotor. This energy tries to go somewhere and it normally finds a path from the rotor, through the bearing and into the metal shell of the motor which is usually bolted to a grounded part of the vehicle.

This added brush acts as the least-resistant path to ground, sacrificing itself to save the bearings. Testing has shown very little wear on this brush, about 1/1000" loss during 6 weeks of continuous running. The brush on one motor in use for 10 years wore only about 1/2". The brush material is 91% silver, so they are quite expensive. Tom wouldn't commit to a price.

There is no need to "seat" the brush for full effectiveness. The brushes can be mounted so they contact the shaft or the face of the rotor, depending on available space. The "other" bearing will have very small residual current and voltage which can be completely removed by adding a brush on the other bearing also but this may be cost-prohibitive.

Tonight is hang-around-the-shop and dinner on our own.