janosch_123

Oooh! I am literally talking to game devs today for ways to visualise knowledge about

+ Lithium batteries

+ Battery management systems

+ Embedded coding

+ CAN-Bus communication

+ Inverters & DC DC converters

I made my own electric cars and am now sharing everything I learnt in a series of mini games & flashcard trainers. Duolingo for learning energy tech:

https://foxev.io/academy/

There are so many abstract concepts that could easily be taught with a string of 2-3 Minigames that don't have to be harder than the average balloon pop game or a portal2 puzzle.

A while ago I played a little game that taught you vim commands and let you traverse an RPG style landscape doing it.

There are plenty of different buses, these six are the most common ones and I knew none of them before I started embedded development to build my own electric cars.

CAN-Bus is the most common one today, Automotive Ethernet is rising fast due to more and more sensors and higher bandwidth applications (ADAS, Sensor networks) but the old ones are still around: UART & SPI, then finally the one-wire LIN bus for turning pumps on and off.

I hope this helps someone as a starting point.

I hope this helps someone who moves from buisness programming (SaaS, startups) to embedded. That was my route and I wasted a lot of time on these:

- input filtering: this cost me a week I am sure, a 1 is not necessarily a 1, it might be 0.98 and sometimes dip to a 0 on the signal line, every analogue value you read is really a time series of values

- you need to spend time on shortening your feedback loop, or you will spend half your day plugging devices in and out rather than delivering new features

- modifying libraries: horrifying! My embedded peers would just download a C++ library, copy what they need and willy nilly modify the methods in it and add it to their project - if I saw a python programmer start changing code in a PIP package I would freak out, but in embedded behaviour like this is normal

- destroying hardware is almost unavoidable if you want to develop fast, be prepared for it, have sacrificial components and make sure you have a stock of expendable components

- pre-allocated memory, I didn't waste time on this one, but was surprised how that works, and how little memory you really have on an STM32

I taught myself embedded programming when building control modules for my electric cars - quite a steep learning curve for me, I hope this video helps someone have a softer landing!

Lunio.ai also 4 day week but didn't find them on the list.

Shame, I thought they had great potential.

Very interesting, someone did that to a project of mine 10 years ago.

They registered $my_projectname.org and loaded my site in a full screen iframe with ads over it.

Traffic was up to 500 users per day that I was never able to monetise, I doubt they got a lot from their iframe either.

But they beat me and some other similar sites on SEO very hard, very fast and I never quite figured out how.

I ended up serving a white page to that referer.

Another overnight success - after 16 years of work.

Well done, very inspiring.

It's a high level overview, a starting point for googling the keywords really, there will be future videos illuminating separate aspects in more detail.

I spent 5 years building my own electric cars and am now sharing everything I know in videos like this and am making a little app as well, like Duolingo or brilliant but for learning energy tech.

I hope this helps someone and is enjoyable to watch.

Thank you for your feedback. I will make the highlighting more obvious, that's easy.

For the questions, maybe I should show supporting sources when the user gave a wrong answer because that's where the learning happens!

For the specific question: if you start with a liter of petrol then yes, burning that to drive the car strikes me as more efficient, like you said (would need to do the maths). You will only be able to use about 30% of the energy as motion, the rest is released as waste heat.

You don't have to start with petrol though, if you start with energy from hydro/nuclear, the same amount of energy will drive an EV further, this is going back to kJ in fuel and kWh in batteries. Maybe I this is a whole new video.

If I can bounce some ideas off you going forward maybe sign up or email me, thank you for taking the time to help.

If you are interested in batteries, the C-rate should interest you. I build my own electric cars, and am now condensing important theory into these 3min - 5min videos. This one is about the c-rate for batteries. Big auto and battery manufacturers like AESC, CATL, BYD and Panasonic spend a lot of time optimising their batteries, and carefully determining the so called C-Rate. In one sentence: It measures the rate at which a battery can be charged or discharged, relative to its capacity.

I make these videos so it can help someone not ruin expensive equipment (like I have done!) and still get the knowledge.

Additionally I am working on "duolingo, but for learning ev tech" and made a little hello world quiz. Answer 10 questions and then get a little breakdown where you are strong and where you are weak: https://foxev.io/academy/

Given that this is HN I expect everyone to be strongest with "Software".

I hope this helps someone, sorry about the influencer glasses, and I am aiming to make as many of these videos as possible to break down complicated and sometimes misrepresented facts as easy as I can, with exactly one concept per video :)

Looking for EV tech expertise? I built multiple electric cars and designed my power-trains, wrote firmware and designed custom control units. Now I am available as a CTO/fractional CTO & advisor for your charging/mobility/renewable startup. There is so much to do in energy tech, happy to help where needed.

  Location: UK
  Remote: Of course
  Willing to relocate: Yes, global, incl. EU and US
  Technologies: Python, Battery Management System, Embedded C++, CAN, UART, I2C, SPI, Battery Software, Power Electronics, KiCAD, CCS, ChaDeMo, J1772, IGBTs
  Résumé/CV: email me and I will send it through :)
  Email: hello@foxev.io

https://youtube.com/@foxev-content <-- this is how I speak!

https://foxev.io/ <-- more details

Happy to have a conversation :)

Thank you!

I built custom electric cars, and now I am sharing my knowledge for free in a knowledge base and in a YouTube series:

https://foxev.io/batteries

https://youtube.com/@foxev-content

I hope this helps someone :)

My knowledge is EV and renewable energy knowledge from first principles and for an open source tool.

https://openinverter.org lets you re-purpose the drivetrain from any EV, like Toyota Prius or Tesla Model S and put it into another car.

For this I offer paid support at $200/call and have about 2 of them per month.

I am trying to turn this trickle of revenue into a more predictable stream, suggestions welcome. The videos are meant to give free help and at the same time serve as lead-gen.

From 2018 - 2023 I built custom electric cars. Now I am recording a series of videos for you where I explain the concepts I taught myself for you to learn faster than me.

People get confused by series & parallel battery configurations (including me when I started out), so this is my 7th video on basic EV concepts. Questions like the following I had, and others ask me now:

- How can I merge two battery packs?

- I want to add capacity, why can't I just put it in parallel when I need the extra capacity like a range extender

- ...

It seems intuitive but isn't always.

I also made a little widget where you can move the sliders and see sample battery packs.

I hope this is worthwhile and easily digestible. I animate as much as I can to make the concepts clear to understand.

Let me know if this helps.

I've put a Nissan Leaf on a bench before and run it just like you did and would never do it again.

This approach is so much harder than it seems. "once everything works then it'll be straightforward to remove what's left and dramatically reduce the rats nest qualities of this setup" We thought the same initially, it turns out the system depends on many more components than you would think.

I imagined the EV system to be like an onion where you can take layers off, not so!It is much more like an egg, once you smash it, you have a few shards that you can re-use but you end up with a mess due to high connectivity between systems. (Leaf refused to turn on without original power steering and wipers connected).

Surprisingly what is more straightforward is putting together your own drivetrain with something like https://openinverter.org and building it back up from first principles. Or you isolate the inverter and motor and make them believe they are still in the original vehicle by replaying CAN messages, ZombieVerter is a project with that approach. Both of these are open source projects.

Happy tinkering!

Sure, Tom Scott drives it in this (he doesn't talk about it being electric): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWREtcDVBE

Here is a review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2xWbfSz8Ug

Here is all the media: https://openinverter.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49051

My video tutorials are linked above.

here is a review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7wRu1xcyQY

Those guys channel is worth checking out by itself, they are making Ferrari Testarossa's electric and reviewed our taxi on the side.

I do not. I know people use https://openinverter.org for boats

Just yesterday I stumbled upon https://vesc-project.com/forum where they are doing something similar with a focus on ebikes and drones.

You are talking full-sized aeroplanes right? I think some of the sail-gliders can be homebuilt, there must be communities for those guys.

Thank you very much, there is a community of a few hundred of us that have succeeded and not died in the process.

Check this forum section here: https://openinverter.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

You are a legend!

I built 3 electric cars from 2018 to 2023 and drove them 20k miles. My own firmware and controllers, with an https://openinverter.org motor controller

Now I release my knowledge in bite-sized chunks on my new YouTube channel to help others:

What's a battery management system? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QsMoCrSTYc

What is the C-Rate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDu1fRtKfsA

What is battery balancing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYLPOlT45A

etc. etc. I focus really hard on answering exactly one question in a concise and engaging way and trying to keep every video under 5 minutes. Oh, and to make the videos solution independent, so not specific to a product, but convey the underlying knowledge so it has a longer shelf-life.

Full list is here: https://foxev.io/batteries/ I am planning to turn this into a knowledge base with playlists for "learning paths" like "everything to watch about batteries" or "here is what you need to watch to make a motor spin on a bench". I will add interactive functionality like quizzes and widgets to make the knowledge even more sticky.

Sure, they say it costs up to twice as much, and that is true if you rapid charge all the way to your destination. If you have any sort of home-charging arrangement the article is disingenuous?

They give Diesel as £0.125 per mile and Petrol as £0.145

For EV they give a minimum as £0.165 and assume 3.3 miles per kWh

Just checked British Gas for home charging electricity prices.1 kWh = £0.225 If you get 3.3 miles out of that, thats £0.068 only per mile.

With 5 minutes of Googling I could disprove a claim in the article.

Of course you can't home-charge on a long journey, but you fill to the brim before you set-off & charge at the destination on a home-charger ideally. Daily commute certainly cheaper than putting petrol in and closer to my number than theirs.

If you only drive London - Penzance and do that twice a month, get a hybrid or take the train, I agree! If your load pattern is mixed and mostly commuting and the odd longer trip, numbers for the whole year will look very different.

https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/kilowatt-hour-exp...

"giant explosive mass that is current lithium battery tech" <-- full petrol tank is the same, anything that is energy dense like that will have problems with uncontrolled release of that energy.

Equivalent market exists, but is less established, some keywords that might be worth looking at:

- OpenInverter, Fellten, EVWest, diyelectriccar, Lunaz, Everrati, RaleighEV, BradshawEV, LegacyEV, RichRebuilds

I have built multiple EV conversions and used DC charging.

- AC is easier to start with

- DC charging protocols you need to communicate & negotiate with the rapid charger in the street

- There is no reason why you couldn't DC charge any conversion in principle, just comes down to time & effort

If you want to read more, AC is J1772 and is just a voltage dividing resistor with some PWM https://www.fveaa.org/fb/J1772_386.pdf

For DC there are two (three?) protocols

- ChaDeMo is being phased out despite being the best one (V2G & simplicity of use)

- CCS2 is what the big manufacturers have come up with and it is hilariously complicated. My friend Uwe developed the FOCCCI project that has reverse engineered it

- In the US Tesla are using NACS (not sure on the details)

I am recording a video series where I illuminate the tech behind EVs, charging and energy, you can find it in my submissions.

Yep, especially the project forum is full of successful conversions:

https://openinverter.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

Also, this community is built around open source (software and hardware) components.

Absolutely. But they may be willing to pay someone to swap a component. EV hacking is a small community still, but with more of them on the road every year more and more people get interested. If $100k are turned into a $0 brick and you can turn it back into $100k there is a commercial as well as academic interest there.

I can't crack encryption I am afraid. Got a link? It's the first I hear about this.

Depends, but it's possible: All vehicles I built were signed off by the licensing bodies & fully insured. We told both the lawmaker and the insurer about all our modifications and with some paperwork it was possible.

The community I linked above is full of people doing this kind of stuff. Some if it illegal, some of it legal.

Jailbreaking an EV I haven't thought about yet, but if the original manufacturer is bust, and you can show some degree of care to the licensing body I am sure it's negotiable.

Obviously it would be better to not be in this position in the first place, but problems are fixable.

I am with you of course.

What I am highlighting is that if enough people are affected by a bankrupt OEM, it is not the end of the world to fix them so all is not lost in that case.

I also don't think it is a particularly smart idea to have your car needing to chat to the mothership before it decides to do it's job of driving you somewhere. At least for the consumer I see limited benefits of this trend.

I built some custom EVs & drove many miles with them. I used hacked/reverse engineered OEM parts for them.

While the servers going dark might be annoying, you still have access to your cars hardware, giving various attack vectors in making your car "go" again.

- CAN protocol between components is relatively straightforward to reverse engineer, and on a fundamental level all modern EVs work "the same"

- you/someone can put a new circuit board into the remote-disabling component and tell the rest of the car "everything is fine, please drive"

- depending on how much the OEM has invested in preventing this, it might get harder, but it will always be possible (last resort, swap to new brainboard)

So, all that said, this is of course a worry for the consumer (liability as well when modifying the car of course), but if you control the hardware and enough other people have the same car as you I believe they will be reverse-engineerable.

You can check my submissions, I am making a video series about how modern EVs work, also check out openinverter.org community.

One more anecdote: Fisker Ocean was in a similar place recently and I started looking at their owner groups to see if there would be a business case for me to get more involved, but I haven't pursued it further.

So in the same way that "life will always find a way" in Jurassic Park, I think if you bought something that enough other people have bought, someone will hack it/share a solution (albeit voiding the warranty in the process).