Is it possible to add a LAN (Ethernet) socket to the EV charging station. I have already run power and ethernet cables to where a EV charging unit with be fitted. It is outside the range of my WiFi. It would be prefered to be able to fit the Victron charging point and intergrate with my existing system.
Many thanks,
(Enjoying recent changes to vrm, especially the improved custom widget axis/scale options.)
David
As far as I remember, the hardware doesn't have an Ethernet PHY, so that why there is no wired ethernet connection available on it.
I appreciate that it may be wishful thinking, but there are several EV chargers out there that include a LAN connection and are cheaper (but seemingly lesss versatile) than the Victron model. I doubt that they are all designing there own chips so possible there is a hardware option that would allow a revised version to include this. Here's hoping. You can only ask to indicate a demand.
I think it may be to do with weatherproofing. It seems daft, but an etherenet-wifi transceiver from eg TP-Link would sort you out for ?£50. It could perhaps go inside the garage out of the way. I use one to get data from my inverter up in the loft, but it should work equally well over a few inches!
My main gripe is having to pay for a 3-phase capability I cannot use. Obviously designed for the mainland European market where domestic 3-phase is more or less ubiquitous.
Good points @sharpener, thanks. I can see your point re 3 phase, but I can imagine that it is not economical for suppliers to produce both single and three phase versions for the existing UK market.
I don't really follow the weatherproofing explanation as even the cheapest outdoor security camera, etc provide weatherproof connectors for the ethernet cable, so it should be trivial to provide an additional input gland.
Many thanks for prompting me to explore the access point option and I see several neat solutions there I was unaware of. But going down that route is massive overkill and an unfortunate increase on house base load, which even at 500Wh per day isn't necessary, ~180kWh per annum.
I shall delay installation for a year or so to see what develops.
Thanks for the helpful comments, much appreciated.
Simple answer might be to use an access point? If you already ran an Ethernet cable to the evc you could quickly just plug in an ap and connect the native wifi.
An IEEE802.3 PHY (LAN8710, for example) is about 2 EUR for 1 piece (when you buy in large quantities, the price will be much lower). The MagJack (connector+transformer+LEDs) is around 1 EUR per piece -- once again, much less in quantity.
Water tightness can be maintained by providing a 2nd gland for the Ethernet cable on the bottom, next to the one for the power cable.
The problem, however, is neither the price, nor the space. The problem is the SoC (ESP32-WROOM-32U) chosen and its limited number of GPIOs -- the Ethernet PHY would consume 8 of those and this may mean that, for example, the display and/or the LED ring may not be usable anymore.
There is also a more subtle issue: the EVSE is a high power device and the potential for damage or malfunction when a 2nd cabled connection is involved is much much higher than if using a wireless link (e.g. ground loop etc.). So it may also be that it was a conscious decision not to have an Ethernet port.
