Support

I am considering buying the new juicebox retrofit board to get myself started in the OpenEVSE world. I have exactly zero experience with OpenEVSE, and some experience with DIY electronics (ESP-home).

Could someone help me figure out, before I jump in:

* Is that board all-inclusive, or is any additional hardware required?

* Is it compatible with a screen, or at least a button?

* Is it pre-flashed, or do I need to get a programmer too? Which one?

Thanks in advance.

@openEVSE Support

Yes the station changes from Ready to Connected. I can hear the relays in the car and Juicebox click on and then immediately back off again.

I am also seeing the Earth Ground Check Failed.  First inspected all of the connectors and made sure all of them are in the right place.  And got the same error. Then tried charging and get a blue light on my car for a second and then nothing. And the LEDs also do not work.

I'm adding a picture of my JuiceBox Pro unit because there does seem to be some variation.  Sunday I'm going to inspect the board for solder issues as was pointed out by another poster. 

I'm also having trouble configuring the network.  My unit keeps coming up in "host mode" instead of joining my WiFi network.  The WiFi network name is there it just (for whatever reason) doesn't want to join. Just get a "connecting" message and then on the next restart back in host mode.  Maybe because of the error code it thinks it should stay in host mode.

Hi Joe,

Where can you see that you unit is in "Host Mode". Mine was doing something similar. I could "connect" to my wifi network but it showed the network strength as 0dbm and also had a red X next to "Connected".

Also similar to you I could not connect to the unit through my wifi after configuring it. Even after restarting I could only connect directly to the unit via 192.168.4.1.

I submitted a ticket about the charging, ground, and wif issues last Wed, still no response.

Basically the same experience with the network.  Next time I boot the unit, I'll take pictures of the status screens and put them here so everyone can see them.  It sounds like OpenEVSE knows what the various problems are and, being a small company, are figuring out how to sort things out, especially if this may involve software, hardware & manufacturing issues.  I posted a support ticket this weekend. I suspect everyone who received these boards are having these problems.

I have to do an inspection of my board (would recommend you also do so by carefully removing the board) to check the solder connections since one person said that there was a solder flow problem that he fixed by reheating the solder.  That's not something most people should try since you can cause unintended consequences like shorts.

I am encouraged by the fact that some of the posters are serious electronics engineers (pro or hobbyist) who have access to oscilloscopes and logic analyzers. The goof-up on the LEDs is a black spot.  That was highlighted in a review by Transport Evolved News and it was on the basis of her assertion that the bugs in the proto units would be fixed in the production units that I submitted my orders (yes, I've got V1 & V2 upgrade boards in my possession - unfortunately I have a V0 JuiceBox as well - might as well get burned on all 10 fingers).  

And I don't know what your experience was, but the original assemblers way overtorqued the case screws and they had molecularly bonded to the case (joke).  The hex or torx screws just stripped so I had to drill the screws out (please don't say just use a propane torch - heat & electronics don't mix).  So hate to contradict the support note but this is not a 5-10 minute job.  

Finally the installation instructions with photos were quite unclear.  I may do my own video on how to do this correctly for the units I have since the instructions provided were ambiguous at best and the labels on the board are all over the place because the board is used for multiple applications.  Again this upgrade is not appropriate for folks without some familiarity with electronics.

Sorry this has turned into a bit of a rant but did expect more.

Disappointed Joe

@OpenEVSE Support I opened ticket #88949 for over a month now and have not heard back. I have the same issues with the LEDs not working correctly and 6 no ground faults. Thank you

Just a follow up... I was able to get my V1 upgrade board to connect to our WiFi network.  We have an extender that had gotten into a weird state so rebooting that got the OpenEVSE board connected.  The support note I got suggested updating the WiFi to the Dev release which I did but that did not solve the Earth Ground Check Failed error so it looks like we're going to do a board swap.  He also said that there is an LED fix board to sort that out and I'll be getting one of those also.  Finally, he said that there were multiple variants of the V1 JuiceBox and that's what they are dealing with. 

@openEVSE Support I have a v1 that needs an LED strip. When you say a picture of the lid, do you mean inside? Or are the outside graphics enough? I have this one: 

No, I still have the original JuiceBox LED lights. They used to be a different color each, now all of them have the same color and lighted regardless of the box status. Is that how it should work for the retrofit? I thought the LEDs should stay the same or at least be dependent on the box status. I can say they are slightly changing color, like when the box is off and unconnected to the car, all 3 are a greenish blue color, when the car is charging, all 3 are slightly bluer, but all 3 are always the same color regardless. I have not seen yellow, red, purple or orange since I changed the board, only greenish blue and bluish blue...

I had a look at the Repo and it doesn't appear that anyone is assigned to fixing this.  The post requested the reporter of the bug to provide a code snippet because the person didn't have the hardware to test this. It doesn't sound like there is any firm date for this as a result.  As an old programmer with time on his hands, I may look at the code myself to see what the issue is.  No promises.  I have a Nissan charger that I'm using while my JuiceBox is in the ICU so I'm not feeling any pressure but there might be people out there who have to revert to their JuiceBox boards to keep charging.

From Support:

The No ground error is a false positive each time the station loses power. We are working on a firmware fix to not register an error until the state is present for more than 1 seccond. We are tracking the issue here: https://github.com/lincomatic/open_evse/issues/176

From GitHub:

sorry for the delay in response, just noticed this. i haven't seen this error, and wattzilla has been shipping w/ the current code w/o issue. i have a prototype v6 that you sent me a while back, and it didn't exhibit the error, either, when i hacked it with jumpers for testing. since i don't have hardware to reproduce it, do you want to just give me the code snippet that fixes it on your side?

I would help sort out the bug except that it is unclear which GitHub repo the JuiceBox code is built from.  In addition, from a cursory look at several repos, this bug will probably require someone with some experience with the code to sort out since we're talking 240V.  Putting in a delay into code that monitors for error conditions could lead to potentially dangerous results since a second can make a difference if 240V is shorting out to the case or some such. I've survived being electrocuted at 120V - one would not be so lucky at 240V.  So everyone out there should be very very careful, especially if you run with the case open (no safety interlock on the case!).  

FWIW, I think it is a good thing that the current firmware is extra careful about the Earth Ground check since that Earth/Ground could save your life (or your car's internal charger).  

Finally, this is not a criticism of OpenEVSE but as I mentioned before, there doesn't seem to be a path from the Earth Ground check failed bug to a solution at present so it would be good to get some visibility into what has to happen including the testing - are we looking at a couple of weeks or a couple of months?  I would be willing to test a firmware fix with my currently non-functional JuiceBox Pro since it was stated that no hardware was available for testing.