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Button?
OpenEVSE Support
The button footprint is still present on the LCD board. It can be used by soldering to the pads or soldering a 3 pin JST PH connector.
connector - S3B-PH-SM4-TB(LF)(SN)
The button doesn't seem likes it for sale anymore in the parts section. Is that correct?
OpenEVSE Support
Correct. Both the mechanical buttons and touch had issues that we have yet to overcome.
First, both posed a security issue for any publicly accessible station. Passers-by could mess with the settings of your station or stop a charge.
The mechanical buttons require a cutout in the enclosure and despite having seals and "Waterproof" buttons, it could be challenging to keep water out.
The capacitive touch buttons were the solution to the waterproofing issue as there were no cutouts in the enclosure, however they had their own challenges. Insects and weather could sometimes trigger the sensor, occasionally stopping a charge session. This is not ideal if you depend on your vehicle to commute to work.
The button was controlled on the OpenEVSE controller, which ideally should only be handling safety related functions. The memory is very limited so the button only had a few functions. We are planning to move the button code over to the WiFi controller at some point which will allow more functionality, we could also use a RFID card to enable the button solving both the security issue and insects/weather. The latest WiFi hardware has a pin and connector dedicated to a button. It is a low priority at the moment, but we would certainly support a developer who wanted to contribute some code.
Just got the 48A Advanced unit with the new TFT LCD. I know the button is removed but would love to have it back. But what I'd like is to have an override button so it can toggle between Manual/Auto(timer). So when switched to manual mode, it charges regardless of the timer. Then when the charging is done, it reverts back to Auto for the next scheduled charge.
The new TFT LCD now comes with a qwiic port. I'm hoping to get this qwiic button on it.
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15931
I'm not good enough to figure out where to even put this code to get it working, so if anyone out there figures this out, it would be awesome!
OpenEVSE Support
HI KL,
Are you using Home Assistant? If so you can add a button like this and have Home Assistant perform whatever action you wish.
https://www.shelly.com/en-us/products/shop/shelly-button-1-white-us
No I try to keep devices offline as much as possible. That's why I particularly like the Openevse. But reading the Shelly it looks like a pretty neat device, being it doesn't require to be on the cloud. I will have to see about getting one to play with.
Long term I would love a solution for a hardwired button. Maybe the screen can be sealed through a button through a membrane switch like the Zappi. That way it's more water resistant.
https://youtu.be/C6g4tKuL3cE?t=179
The good thing about having a switch that is hardwired is that it's not relying on wifi to make it work or having an external power source to power some other device. It just works no matter the condition.
I can hack code, but figuring it out from scratch is probably too taxing for me. If there was code that already did something similar then I can usually figure out how to hack it to do something else. So hoping someone can figure out how to add button functionality back into the Openevse!
So I received the Shelly button and is there a way to make the button work directly without going through another intermediary like the Home Assistant or MQTT? It looks like your Rapi commands are now deprecated and removed so there's no easy way to map it previously (http://192.168.1.197/r?rapi=%24FD to send the $FD command). Instead now you have to use the HTTP api with a PATCH HTTP request to toggle the manual override. The Shelly as far as I know is just a simple GET HTTP request. I've never heard of PATCH until now so that took a little bit of reading. Any direct way to use GET that Shelly supports natively?
Jon Vanderwoude
So I got my openEVSE's and I was hoping to add a button to simply act as an over ride for the schedule, idea was to make things very simple for my wife to over ride with out having to use an app.
Opened them up and don't see a port on the LCD board for a button like is in the documentation.... has the button port been moved, or removed in newer hardware version, or am I just missing it?