Zombieverter: Open source VCU for reusing salvage EV components
openinverter.org
openinverter.org
Two weaknesses of the project are spotty / outdated / unclear documentation and support. This is not because the community doesn't care, it's because keeping the documentation up to date is hard. And support is hard, because you have like 3 core commenters on the forum answering 90% of questions. They know the stuff inside out, but they take strain from having to answer 'my hello world is broken' type questions over and over again.
It's hard to demonstrate this to software people. You know the endless 'works on my machine' swamps people would get stuck in in the bad old days? Imagine that, but you also have no assurance that the machine the person is using has a hard drive connected, or a cooling fan. You have to cover _all_ the hardware related root causes before you can even begin to address and software related issues people run into.
I think the best support this community could get is more resources dedicated to documentation and support. That would also serve to make the learning curve less steep.
EDIT: I think it's also worth saying that once you set one of these once, it becomes very easy. It's just figuring it out the first time that's hard. If anyone buys one and has trouble, hit me up and maybe I can help.
This man has been working for years on repurposing old EV hardware and using it to electrify cars, sometimes in really wacky (and extremely entertaining) ways on the Youtube channel “evmbw” - I suggest giving it a watch! Some of the cars are really scrappy, but he obviously knows very well what he’s doing.
We use a production VCU hardware with custom software and currently support most of the VCU functions you would find in a production vehicle, including in-built CCS2 and NACS charging on the single controller.
We are looking to raise to go to the next stage, would love to hear from potential customers or interested angels?
I appreciate the somewhat open-source nature of car repair work, and I would hate for EVs to become all proprietary, locked down systems that are not repairable. At least the standardization of PCs means I can kitbash some parts together into a usable daily driver. Not so for EV's, it seems.
So, from the perspective of someone who may be a single-unit customer in 10 years when I want to revive an old Prius or Bolt or whatever used car comes my way, I wish you all the best.
In terms of ideas or advice -- I assume you've seen or talked with the RichRebuilds youtube channel or other EV repair youtube channels to see what they need in a VCU... If they like it and praise your product on their channel that might get you some buzz / street cred. Beyond that I assume it's just a matter of becoming golfing buddies with the CTO or electronics head of a automotive startup (Slate and Telo recently came up in my news feed. They might be too far along to switch VCUs for their first car, but if they had teething issues they might be interested in swapping to you for their second car...)
Our next project is to get those VCUs into the hands of people like yourself (and like OP) and not just corporations. Thanks for sharing.
Worth a read through for folks like me that are mechanically inclined but don’t know/have time to figure out how the various puzzle pieces in an EV “talk” to each other (because of their proprietary nature.)
Does this "ZombieVerter" have a high chance of being blamed for an incident involving death/injury or very expensive property damage?
I just put 43 liters of gasoline in the tank this morning.
The rail is as much as 65psi, and it's inches from a hot exhaust manifold.
It's fine. People can be competent.
This is not only street legal, but insurable too.
Even if it can eventually be proven (to the judge/jury) that the ZombieVerter performed perfectly, and that you were not at all negligent or reckless, that's going to be drawing suspicion and blame.
While defense costs bankrupt you.
No.
Best rating you can get on those ESP modules is "blue PCB".
If you like, you can leave it on and monitor your EV data via the web interface. But if the D1 flakes out the VCU will be unaffected.
At present, the Zombieverter supports:
Chademo CCS by interfacing with the BMW i3 LIM CCS by interfacing with the open source FOCCCI CCS controller.
The FOCCCI CCS controller is an associated project. See https://openinverter.org/wiki/Foccci
FOCCCI is the newest kid on the block, but it has been successfully integrated into several conversions now.