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[Shadow]

I was hit by a left-hander in October of 2018 (no comments about this pending litigation) so I don't have any more improvements i.e. CANbus to share. For the money this is as cheap as it gets and charging performs as described above. In concert with the S/DS stock charger it was good enough to pull the maximum current on a 20A mains circuit without tripping the breaker. For anything more than that use I would suggest to drop the weight of the stock charger and substitute for a water-cooled 6600W charging module adapted for this and documented with isolated CANbus functionality. I did receive the connectors for the bike's stock charger harness plug and they appear to be correct as listed.

My editorial opinion:  Less than ~6kW charging on a new EV is a waste of time and money. The Zero SR/F Premium being sold now has 3kW+3kW stock charging and the new 6kW chargetank is an available OEM retrofit for Zero 2015+. In most situations for S/DS just get the 6kW OEM chargetank...  and for FX remove the deadweight stock charger and get to work documenting the 1800W (less than ZF7.2) and 6600W (ZF7.2 or better) TC units 

I may yet contribute to a CAN bus "brain" design as an excuse to learn RISC-V uC development. If anyone familiar with board layout would like to do one for the SiFive Freedom E310 with some isolated CANbus that would get my attention. I am thinking the HiFive1 revision B is an interesting prototyping board. There's several commercial products out there of proprietary design to interact with CANbus though nothing in my more general area of interest with open design.

Meanwhile the Teensy boards have CAN interfaces available but would need isolated transceivers. Easy to prototype anyways and there is some existing effort by others to write "brain" code for controlling the HK-J charging modules.

[NoMoreIdeas]

Oh man I hope you have recovered well.

I have a FX and looked at the 6.6kw unit, since it would match up really well with the 7.2 battery, but its just too big to fit onboard and theres already limited space to work with on that bike. I found some area in the rear shock well that I think a 3.3kw unit could fit. I'm looking at fabricating a bracket / rear subframe around a 3.3 unit that will replace the bottom plastic on the tail (the plastic tail consumes alot of wasted space right under the rear seat). With the heatsink / fan I think its going to be too tall so I may have to do some water cooling set up as well as finding a place to rig in a j-plug. 3.3kw +  .6kw onboard is almost 4kw charging on the FX, which will definitely be a game changer for me. At least thats the next big project.

Theres already a couple people who have contributed to a can-bus shield on an arduino to talk to the TC chargers, that sounds like a cheap and flexible set up. I havent found anything developed for reading the j1772 pilot signaling but i cant imagine it would be hard to code. I'm debating on going the arduino route and tinkering with it, or taking the easy route and just ordering a thunderstruck charge controller. I'm worried with the non can version that I wont have enough control over the charger to be happy.

[togo]

> ... Meanwhile the Teensy boards have CAN interfaces available but would need isolated transceivers. Easy to prototype anyways and there is some existing effort by others to write "brain" code for controlling the HK-J charging modules. ...

Are the teensy canbus known to work with the TC chargers?

I just got the pi zero w/waveshare rs485 can hat combo to work to control the 3.3kw units this past weekend, if you prefer raspberry pi/linux platform to arduino, that's an option.  I used lennart otten's and daniel montero's arduino code for reference: https://github.com/Lennart-O/TCCharger-voltage-current-control and https://github.com/DanyEarth/TC-Charger-CAN-controller respecitvely.

[NoMoreIdeas]

My 3.3kw unit arrived from EVComponents a few weeks ago. I ordered the anderson connector, some beefy wire and some canbus modules off of Amazon. I'm using an arduino and the code from Lennart as mentioned above because it was the most simple to go with. I choose to go the Arduino route just because there is no boot up time and its simple as well. I've wired in the LCD keypad shield and will write a menu structure soon to adjust current / max SOC on the fly.

Anyway, I finally got everything working last night and it works great! I'm using the stock charger and the 3.3kw unit as an off-board charger for the short term. Charge time on my 7.2FX at 82%soc was 2 hours with just the onboard charger, and 16 minutes with the 3.3kw unit + onboard.

[NoMoreIdeas]

Screenshot of charging

[Shadow]

My 3.3kw unit arrived from EVComponents a few weeks ago. I ordered the anderson connector, some beefy wire and ...
...
Anyway, I finally got everything working last night and it works great! ...

Can you share a detailed view of how your order to EVCompomponents was written? Particularly I am ever curious if the module can have both CANbus and a default pre-programmed charging profile; what information did you give exactly that you got a unit responding to CANbus?

[NoMoreIdeas]

My 3.3kw unit arrived from EVComponents a few weeks ago. I ordered the anderson connector, some beefy wire and ...
...
Anyway, I finally got everything working last night and it works great! ...

Can you share a detailed view of how your order to EVCompomponents was written? Particularly I am ever curious if the module can have both CANbus and a default pre-programmed charging profile; what information did you give exactly that you got a unit responding to CANbus?

Sure thing! I emailed them prior to ordering to make sure I was ordering correctly, they just asked to specify the canbus model in the notes. I also asked about enable charging (pre-programmed) and canbus, and I guess its either one or the other. They also stated it couldnt be re-programmed to the other after ordering; I have a feeling it can.. but wouldnt be easy. I opened it up and its all potted in silicon.

Here are my order details:

Elcon TC HK-J 3300W Charger
Battery Type
Litihum-ion
Number Of batteries In Series
28
Nominal Voltage of each battery
3.65
Amp Hour(Ah) of Battery Pack
57
AC Input Voltage
90VAC~256VAC
Other Requirement(not required)
Will be controlled via canbus, need the canbus controlled charger option

I have a feeling only the input and output voltage (nominal V * cells) are all they really need for it as everything else is controlled via CAN. It wasnt fast, It took about a month for them to program / prepare the charger and get it shipped. There's only one shipping option, and thats the $90 2 day shipping via DHL. It did only take 2 days to ship, so from time to order to my door step was about a month and a week.

[NoMoreIdeas]

I plan on doing a write-up on the can-bus interface with it when I code the menus I want and get that all sorted out.

[gt13013]

I do not understand why the CAN-bus version of this charger should be programmed.
Perhaps the addresses for the communication ? But it seems that they are always the same...

There is a lot of mystery around the TC Charger, the way it works and how it can be programmed or controlled.
I spent a lot of time last year, trying to get some information, and I did not success.
If you can bring some good information, it would be great !

[NoMoreIdeas]

Address is one of the things that is programmed. When I asked them about canbus they sent me a spec sheet on the detailing the can frames.

[tbombadil]

[ . . . ]
In most situations for S/DS just get the 6kW OEM chargetank...  [ . . . ] 6600W (ZF7.2 or better) TC units 
[ . . . ]

Any tips for getting an additional 6kW on top of the OEM chargetank? I'm interested! I have a 2019. Would the data I'm working with be any different than what's been provided here mostly?

[Shadow]

Any tips for getting an additional 6kW on top of the OEM chargetank? I'm interested! I have a 2019. Would the data I'm working with be any different than what's been provided here mostly?

For less heating and less damage to the battery charge cycle, you should have a ramp up/down of charging current to avoid full charging current when either the SoC is very low (<92Vdc?) or high (>104Vdc?). My figures here are a guess. It is somewhat more complicated by the existing Zero Chargetank - I think you will be reverse engineering the CAN bus signals to interoperate with it.

The MBB may have a hard limit if it senses too much current for some time (say 30 seconds) to force the contactor open and throw an error state. If this is done under load at higher current the contactor can be damaged. OEM would be within their rights to not cover such damage under warranty; replacing the contactor is possible to DIY if you're a battery building expert... so stay clear of pushing your bike to that limit. Whatever Ah rating for your ZForce pack is probably also the instantaneous limit, most bikes so far have MBB limit of 1C for 30 seconds. Do the math and keep under that limit it should be fine. It might be sensible to chart what the peak output current of the Chargetank is and set that aside in the power budget.

[talon]

How did I miss this thread? Thank you for all your work and risk Shadow. I have written down the connector name for the AC input *somewhere*; I will try to find it (not that it matters much as one of my connectors heats after <40 cycles). I believe it was a very rare "Sumitomo-equivalent" on all these TC chargers. I too am very concerned about the robustness of the connections to the charger as well as the DC output wire protection--you may be wise picking the smaller unit. I'm working on mounting my HK-J's inboard of the Happy Trails rack on the plate so I can remove them easily when not going on trips. Not ideal for CoG but it is certainly no worse than having a passenger. Water resistance is my number one concern so I mount high and may switch all connectors when I find something suitable.

[talon]

Some of the connections are named per:
https://www.elconchargers.com/f/HK-J-H99-40-verA1.pdf
and the manuals on this site, but not the 1800W strangely enough.
https://www.elconchargers.com/manuals.html
These AC inputs appear to be a clone of an obscure Sumitomo connector. I swear I just need to dig through all my accounts and see where I recorded it.
Perhaps it was Tyco or Delphi.
DJ7031-4.8-11/21 does result in an ebay listing at least--https://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Sets-3-Pin-Electric-Fan-Plug-Harness-Connector-with-Terminal-DJ7031-4-8-11-21/312216872200

Sumitomo TS Sealed 4.8mm Series, Sumitomo P/N: 6189-0165 sounds very familiar to me.
http://prd.sws.co.jp/components/en/detail.php?number_s=61890165
which mates to 6188-0129 http://prd.sws.co.jp/components/en/detail.php?number_s=61880129 (these are just the housings).

If I can just remember where I put it I could confirm compatibility and make it so you could likely get it from your local auto supply (Toyota Corolla fan/injector plug for certain year) for instance.

The other connectors (at least on the HK-J) appear to be knockoff's (the flashing on the seal is TERRIBLE) of the AMP/Tyco Superseal Series.. not sure the pitch
https://www.corsa-technic.com/category.php?category_id=102

I'm posting some exciting news about TC chargers in a new thread.

[Shadow]

Yes, noting also the HK-H may be a discontinued part now, superseded by HK-L and HK-M.