Zombieverter: Open source VCU for reusing salvage EV components
openinverter.org79 points by trainsarebetter 8 days ago
79 points by trainsarebetter 8 days ago
I've got one of these, and it works great! The core developers behind this work very, very hard on it, and I am amazed that it works to the degree that it does. Like, there are cars on the road running with this VCU.
Two weaknesses of the project are spotty / outdated / unclear documentation and support.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.
I thought “This sounds a lot like the logical next step to what Damien Maguire has been working on” and sure enough it is!
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.
You accidentally transposed some letters there. Looks like it’s https://youtube.com/@evbmw
Hey, my startup is currently working on something like this.
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?
Cool! I am not a "car guy", but I have (with my father-in-law) changed my own oil and replaced the shocks on my (ICE) car.
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...)
Hey, thanks! We’re actually very far along and have put VCUs in heaps of things so far. Not Telo and Slate, but other brands you might have heard of!
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.
Given that battery fires and automobile crashes happen, and that there are business and legal cultures around that for stock vehicles...
Does this "ZombieVerter" have a high chance of being blamed for an incident involving death/injury or very expensive property damage?
Well, if you modify a vehicle, generally you need to take it back to your DMV / TUV / MOT for inspection. Those are the bodies responsible for determining that your car is road legal. And if you don't have a proper BMS, emergency cutoff, adequate cooling and engineering, it won't be certified road legal. Not sure why an EV conversion should be treated any differently to an ICE conversion.
And when you're sued and/or criminally charged, your lawyers can bring that up that your vehicle passed inspection (unless it was still being built in your garage), before the lithium battery fire that involved the "ZombieVerter that you built from plans you found on the Internet".
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.
> Does this "ZombieVerter" have a high chance of being blamed for an incident involving death/injury or very expensive property damage?
No.
Dude, I built my own fuel system for my car.
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.
It's a special case, but in times like this I think about the antique cars. There are still Model T owners out there driving around with oil-soaked cotton brakes. That's the same material my pants are made out of. And it's not one brake per wheel, it's one brake for the entire car! Also, the wheels are made from wood.
This is not only street legal, but insurable too.
This is a great resource with pragmatic solutions for reusing commodity EV parts.
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.)
I love the line in one page: 'If you combine a LHD transmission with a RHD inverter (or vice versa) you might end up with a motor that is juddering, not spinning. IN this case you need to swap any two phase cables of both MG1 and MG2. '
It's always a little jarring to me to see a seemingly competently laid out automotive grade PCB, with a cheap as dirt Amazon special D1 mini ESP board lovingly stapled in one corner.
Best rating you can get on those ESP modules is "blue PCB".
The D1 board on the Zombieverter is just a piggyback board to allow web interface access to the VCU. Once you've set everything up, you can remove the board. It makes configuring the Zombieverter significantly easier since you don't have to mess around with serial cables.
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.
Ah, that makes more sense then, good idea! I have personally blown up a laptop by having the USB section of a board it was plugged into hang around too close to an exposed 24V supply.
It's cool that it has/claims support for DC fast charging. All the custom conversions I've seen are AC only.
The child comments are a bit all over the place, but I can clarify.
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.
It’s CHAdeMO - much simpler - and not CCS2
I am for sure not educated about the difference between CCS and CCS2 but it does say it's not just CHAdeMO https://openinverter.org/wiki/ZombieVerter_VCU#:~:text=ccs%2... and further down they cite a BMW i3 which I had and it fast charged to my satisfaction