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I’ve had my openEVSE for a year or so now. Initially when connecting our Smart ForTwo 451 ED it would start charging and fully charge the car (usually overnight). Then I tried to get clever…

I set a schedule so it would start charging at midnight and stop by 07h00 and at first, it did that.

At this stage I should point out that it makes no difference to cost as we have no special overnight charge tariff, but it was to practice for when we do.

After a few months of the car happily charging from midnight, it began to occasionally not do so and obtain no charge overnight. In fact it soon never started charging at midnight.

I have read of this issue with other cars, when it goes to sleep before the charge start time set for the EVSE and hence even after the specified time, it simply doesn’t request any charge as it’s gone to sleep. I am quite prepared to believe Smart would have written such dumb software, but since it did originally work, this cannot be the case.

I tried to disable the schedule (without deleting it) but that seemed to make no difference. Just meant we ALWAYS had to use the override button. So when plugging the car in, we had to press the override button, usually several times with no apparent consistency as to how we got it to charge. But it sufficed for many months and I have now deleted the schedule.

A few days ago it became impossible to start the car charging. The EVSE sees the connection, but the orange LED at the car's charge port (negotiating connection) continues to flash and charging (green LED) does not start. Pressing the override button and unlocking/locking the car in some impossible to remember arcane sequence has occasionally allowed charging to start. The EVSE relay clacks and the display shows the usual start of charge display, but before the amps begin to ramp up, it clacks off again. So again, no charge.

Thinking the car must be at fault, I extracted the mains (13A in UK) charging cable (granny charger) from the car and tried that. To my surprise, it worked perfectly. The car instantly did what it should and charging commenced. I have subsequently used a different portable charging cable and that also works perfectly. So…

The problem is clearly with the openEVSE.

I then recalled that about this time, I updated the openEVSE firmware to the latest (8.2.2.EU). Is perhaps this the problem?

Whether it is or not, my openEVSE is not working. Well it shows a pretty display (not the latest large LCD), but is currently incapable of charging the car which is, after all, its raison d’etre. It is now incapable of doing what a basic granny charger does without issue.

I just bought another openEVSE, but obviously, I need to get to the bottom of this problem before trying to set that up. So…

Please advise.

Thanks for the quick response.

It always changes to 'Connected', so it knows it is, but the car apparently does not.

Here's something odd though. While reading some other problem threads here, I saw that it may still have schedule times stuck in the system, even though the web GUI is showing no schedule and sending the RAPI command ST 0 0 0 0 will ensure they are cleared out. So I did that.

It returned something about it being 'undefined', but an hour or so later I plugged the car in again to check something and it completed connection and started charging, as it should.

I am almost more puzzled now though. I guess I'll have to check for a while and see that it behaves itself.

Yes what you say is clear, but I am still left puzzled as to why it was working, then not, now working again.

For the last few days I have repeatedly plugged in the OpenEVSE and it would not charge, but plugging in either of the portable/mains charge cables I have worked every time. Do those charge cables work differently from an actual EVSE?

It now occurs to me there was something else. I had begun to set up the OpenEVSE in Home Assistant. But when I realised it was not charging, I disabled all that in HA but still not charging so I thought it not relevant to the problem. Maybe though it did change something that was not changed back when I disabled the HA connections?

I was trying 2 different methods of connection/control. One is the OpenEVSE integration that I assume uses the same protocol as from a web browser. I also tried OCPP as that is more universal and I'd like to use that if possible.

Am I right though that when switching the EVSE to OCPP, it literally switches over to that alone and control is no longer possible using the normal method? It seemed I was not able to control it from the web GUI and it only wanted to talk OCPP, rather than responding to commands from either 'channel'.

I switched OCPP off in the EVSE and also in HA and shortly after that realised it would not charge. Was it perhaps trying OCPP that could have caused that charging problem?