Inside the minimalistic enclosure, you will find the brains of the charging station, the OpenVolt Controller
If you are looking for a simple solution, the OpenVolt_1 Charging Station is all you need. There's no need to understand the internal electronics. However, if you would like to build your own personalized enclosure, keep reading below.
The OpenVolt Controller features a 16x2 Liquid Crystal Display(LCD) stacked on top on the main Printed Circuit Board(PCB). On the main PCB we have the ATMEGA644A microcontroller, which has the firmware for the basic functions of an EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment). We've also added a socket for an optional LED controller, which plugs into the board and can be used to drive a sting of smart LEDs. This is a feature we dive into in our next blog post, where we explain how we use our open source hardware to build a custom wheel charging station.
The main board also exposes a serial communication channel to the microcontroller. This is extremely useful and can be used to extract live data from the ATMEGA644A.
Our schematics and firmware are all open source. You can download them from here. Make sure you tag us if you use our hardware to build your own cool charging station.