Closed ToastySefac closed 4 months ago
I finally got my ZJ Beny connected to OCPP today. I get this issue as well. BCP-AT2N-L firmware 1.0.31. Though I am stoked to be able to use the on/off via HA instead of the tedious Bluetooth control!
I appear to have the same issue. During charging, the charger becomes unavailable for 25 seconds or so. Then recovers after 40 seconds. This cycle repeats throughout the charging session.
BCP-AT2N-P by Benyi Firmware: 1.0.31
On the Charge HQ site, it mentions a similar issue: https://chargehq.net/kb/zj-beny-ev-charger-configuration#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20known%20issue,caused%20by%20the%20charger%20itself.
There is a known issue where ZJ Beny chargers will frequently disconnect and reconnect to Charge HQ. This can happen tens or even hundreds of times per day. You may see a "charger offline" error message in Charge HQ which appears and disappears frequently.
This issue is caused by the charger itself. It doesn't generally lead to any problems, as the charger should reconnect quickly each time.
We are hoping that this issue will be resolved by a firmware update from ZJ Beny.
Although, when I've used Charge HQ, it seems to work fine. Maybe they have worked around any bug... Have either of you had any success in Charge HQ?
Thanks for covering the Charge HQ side, I'd been wondering about that. I assumed similar to above - that Charge HQ users must get the same issue, but that they must have worked around the bad data in their OCPP implementation.
I got in touch with the company that sold me the ZJ Beny, Ultipower in Australia. I wasn't expecting much but they've got in contact with ZJ Beny and at least by appearances we're getting engagement.
A few days ago I tried to dig into the error and the code to see how one might workaround the charger bug when using this HA project. Other issue threads has people mentioning that it's possible, I think I saw for the Grizzl-E. But I couldn't figure out how to edit (permanently or in a nice way) the messages.py in the underlying OCPP Python project that this HA project uses. I'd appreciate any tips, though I suspect any workaround like that could be truly nasty. Best to get ZJ Beny to fix. How long that will take, who knows.
I got this response from ZJ Beny:
I have sent your information to our engineer this morning.
But he want to get below informations of Home Assistant, so that we can solve this issue.
1) URL address:
2) WEB or APP Account:
3) Pile Number:
So could you please provide your account of Home Assistant for our reference?
I think they're asking to access my server >.<. Which is not something I'll be doing as I haven't setup any remote access yet. I honestly don't know how to respond and assist them just yet. If anyone can safely provide them their server I can connect you.
I just connected my Benyi to ChargeHQ. Connection State = Online. Status = Charging. Looks stable over several minutes. Chargehq says they've tested Benyi firmware 1.0.14 and 1.0.23. But my 1.0.31 works ok.
CP-AT2N-P by Benyi Firmware: 1.0.31
I think they're asking to access my server >.<. Which is not something I'll be doing as I haven't setup any remote access yet. I honestly don't know how to respond and assist them just yet. If anyone can safely provide them their server I can connect you.
I bought from Ultipower as well. Their contact at ZJ Beny has sent me a similar request.
I've setup a sandboxed home assistant install with the charger connected and sent them the details to access it. So, hopefully that helps them work out the problem.
Here's the response I got back from ZJ Beny after I followed them up. Pretty disappointing.
Sorry for the late reply, due to the customer visited us last week.
Our engineer have login and test the Home Assistant. This program is a free charge software, and will be often offline after connected. Their Open Source Server has the problem, will not respone the message from EV Charger.
It is better to use our EV-BOX (EVB) App, free charge to use, more stable than Home Assistant.
Please note and feel free to let me know if any question, thank you.
Anyone got any suggestions on what to reply with? I'm not technical enough to work out if the "Message is not valid JSON" is the root cause, and the supplier's limited answer in the email doesn't really help.
wow that's quite disappointing. They should do better, and present a much better argument than "HA is free open source therefore it's bad".
How to reply and continue.... hmm. So it's not that I think that the JSON error is an absolute smoking gun. We can acknowledge the ambiguity coming from an interface between the ZJ Beny and a server.
I'll email them in my own thread as well, but I think the pressure to apply is in OCPP capability and compliance. While we cannot assess compliance with our level of knowledge, we an argue that their charger is not demonstrating OCPP capability. Their suggestion to use their App does not address the fact their charger is sold as OCPP capable.
Home Assistant is showing offline because ZJ Beny is dumping what seems to be invalid input messages. The engineer on the ZJ Beny side is possibly having an even worse time of it on a remote connection.
Body of what I sent to Ultipower + ZJ Beny rep:
The engineer has said that the issue is with the Home Assistant software, due to it often failing to respond to the message.I suggest that this is an incorrect conclusion - in that with the evidence we have, the ZJ Beny is sending an incorrect message to the OCPP service. The suggestion to use the ZJ Beny app does not address many elements of the functionality we as users are looking for. At a high level, using the app does not meet OCPP, which this ZJ Beny charger is sold as capable of. So focussing on the ZJ Beny's OCPP compliance, can the engineer do further troubleshooting and justification of why the Charger is transmitting the message that is invalid? The Home Assistant software which the engineer says has the problem is used by many users with other brand chargers via OCPP.
I've sent a similar response.
I got another message back from ZJ BENY and they have released a beta firmware update 1.0.33.
I updated my unit and it's now working properly with Home Assistant! Might need some time to check that there are no errors, but I tried a few different settings and current levels and it responded as expected.
Here's their email with the right firmware link for BCP-A2N-L OCPP.
Thank you for the information, helpful for us and we have found the problem.
Please upgrade the firmware as per the instruction as attached.
Your charger model number is BCP-A2N-L OCPP, so please select first URL address for updating. Household EV charger, Signel phase with cable http://106.15.78.131/V_DEBUG/BCP-A2N-P_SW1_0_33_HW1_DEBUG.bin
It is Beta Version, we will launch a official version around May.
Thank you for the update. The new version 1.0.33 BETA appears to work correctly on my BCP-AT2N-P! I will monitor it and report back any issues. Thanks again!
Yeah outstanding, I was surprised by the same reply this morning. I only had time for a quick look in the docs for how to update the firmware over OCPP. I know I've seen it talked about in other threads but couldn't find any documentation. Sorry if I've missed something obvious, would one of you mind pointing me at the right process to update via OCPP? Or just the best way to update? Hopefully without factory resetting to use the Bluetooth connection
I changed the server over to use my Charge hq account. In there you can tap on your charger and update the firmware. Just need to paste in the url from the post above
Just make sure you can reach the firmware server first with your computer. For some reason my router was blocking it.
Ocpp integration Firmware upload status: Installed
It worked first time!
I have been running the OCPP version of the ZJBeny charger for about 18 months. The only issue I have is that after a firmware update, one needs to perform a ´Clear Profile' otherwise one cannot change the current. On the ver 31 update, I also needed to power cycle the charger. Personally, I think it is a well priced Charger (also sourced from Ultipower). Currently running Ver 32 firmware.
Thanks PeterBofai for the details of firmware update. And @GuzziDoug for mentioning the current change issue. If you might be able to continue to help, I seem to have that issue, however I can't Clear Profile. I've tried power cycling the charger (turn break off and on)
Y_CHARGER: send [2,"[key]","ClearChargingProfile",{}]
Y_CHARGER: receive message [3,"[key]",{"status":"Unknown"}]
WARNING (MainThread) [custom_components.ocpp] Failed with response: Unknown
Calling the Clear Profile Service from Home Assistant. I looked at the YAML but I can't figure out what data {} I might want to put in from a crude dig of the code https://github.com/mobilityhouse/ocpp/blob/d96d243c8fb3e042f6837aa4ccecda5356598064/ocpp/v201/call.py#L47
fyi, I had trouble with the Clear Profile. But after I power cycled the charger, I found initially it ran full tilt (ie max rate), but if I moved the current setting on the Overview page, the current changed to the setting. So, the secret may be to try changing the current on the overview page,
regards, Doug
On Sat, 20 Apr 2024 21:37:42 -0700 Conradical314 @.***> wrote:
Thanks PeterBofai for the details of firmware update. And @GuzziDoug for mentioning the current change issue. If you might be able to continue to help, I seem to have that issue, however I can't Clear Profile. I've tried power cycling the charger (turn break off and on)
Y_CHARGER: send [2,"c54169c6-42fa-46fd-891f-177dbe3c0d3a","ClearChargingProfile",{}] Y_CHARGER: receive message [3,"c54169c6-42fa-46fd-891f-177dbe3c0d3a",{"status":"Unknown"}] WARNING (MainThread) [custom_components.ocpp] Failed with response: Unknown
Calling the Clear Profile Service from Home Assistant. I looked at the YAML but I can't figure out what data {} I might want to put in from a crude dig of the code https://github.com/mobilityhouse/ocpp/blob/d96d243c8fb3e042f6837aa4ccecda5356598064/ocpp/v201/call.py#L47
-- Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/lbbrhzn/ocpp/issues/1078#issuecomment-2067901405 You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Message ID: @.***>
Stale issue message
Version of the custom_component
OCPP: v0.5.1 ZJ BENY: v1.0.31 BCP-A2N-L
Describe the bug
When I change the charging current it starts giving errors and the device goes offline for about 25 seconds before coming back online, then repeating.
I can see in the logs that it is reporting that the message is not valid JSON and ChatGPT suggests the issue is the leading comma before the first object in the 'sampledValue' array. Would that be causing the unit to become unresponsive. If so, does this mean there is an issue with the firmware, or is there a possible work around to get the unit stable?
Debug log