Local data access without the cloud

General Discussion
1

Hi,

I’m in the process of looking for an EV charger (in Tasmania, Australia). Looking at the feature set, the E2 Core seems good, but looking around for Home Assistant integrations, it seems data access is only via a cloud API.

I don’t want to be reliant on a remote server to control local systems. While I don’t have specific requirements in terms of which protocol is available, I would really appreciate a local-only protocol to fetch data and control the charger without depending on cloud infrastructure. This will ultimately weigh in my purchase decision.

Are there options or plan for (ideally) a local API (reading the rest of the forum, it looks like no) allowing to access the data and/or control the charger?

Alternatively, I see there’s an RS-485 port labelled as “proprietary” https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66a6f44c9279e5bd842b2c80/691ea33a04eafdb52c622ac2_Evnex-E2-Datasheet-V251119.pdf. Is the protocol documented somewhere so that one could implement a client for it?

Finally, I saw some discussions about OCPP (sometimes misspelled OCCP?) support, but that seems to have gone from no longer supporting it ca 2021 Matching charging rate to solar generation - #5 by edharvey to it driving design decisions ca 2025 Workaround for 28 day network cutoff - #4 by edharvey . This also seems to be used to talk to some remote infrastructure, and is presented as a continuity plan in case the cloud services were shuttered. But it’s unclear if it is possible to change the address of the endpoint Cloud Dependency - #6 by Lindsay .

So, my question is about what the options for local-only access currently are (maybe I missed / over-represented some above), whether there are any plan to provide/stabilise some in the (not to distant future), and what priority this would have on the product roadmap?

Thanks!

2

+1

I’ve had quite a few requests for the evnex home assistant plugin to have local-only support too.

1 Like
3

I’d be one that wants it. Getting data from the cloud only 5 minutes polling is a killer. Understand for infrastructure costs and reliability, but there needs to be a way of using this locally.

1 Like
4

The RS485 port is used to talk to our proprietary external power sensors rather than control the charger, so that’s not going to work for you I’m afraid.

I don’t want to say that a local API is never going to happen because I can see lots of value there for a power user. However it’s not a high priority for us at the moment since we’re focused on making our chargers as simple as possible for a mainstream user. Which essentially means it has to “do what is expected” without any integration work on the part of the user.

Kind regards,

Tom

5

Hi Tom,

I suppose the question is, why can’t it be able to do both?

Additionally, the algorithm sent me this blog today and was wondering what Evnex stance was on it? It suggests that the EECA wants communication to be direct, without a cloud intermediary.

Interesting.

6

If and when we develop it I would expect it to do both. The constraint is largely developer time - we don’t have the capacity to build every good idea and so have to prioritise.

We’ll be responding to the EECA consultation at some stage over the next few weeks.

Tom

1 Like
7

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Look forward to the response.

Andrew.