I've always read that anything Tesla doesn't play well with others. Does whatever software/hardware not care that the battery pack is from a tesla? It seems like so many vehicles today the canbus is looking for a token or system check to verify authenticity if you will.
Mosltly correct - for example, the battery modules I use are all Tesla but to use them, I remove the Tesla BMS from each module and connect a pass-through connector so I can run all the modules to a central Orion 2 BMS.
As for that, everything you need to know can be dealt with via Orion BMS - cell voltages, cell temps, resistance, cooling info, silly stuff like that.
BUT, I'm also using the Tesla cooling pump - an absolutely fantastically designed pump that's also controllable with PWM so, it has 4 wires coming out of it, the usual, (+) & (-) and two other wires that control the PWM. Well they just won't tell us how to control that. SO, a bunch of like minded nerds take it upon them selves and they black-box the living **** out of it till they have a PWM table. BUT, and this this the cool part, the pump doesn't need anything, it has a fall back mode, the default mode, that just pumps when power is applied after it does a little giggle and starts. Self priming (mostly), auto off if fail BUT tries again at intervals, really, a great design.
Another one is the Octovalve - no kidding, genius engineering at every level. That took the
Motivated two years to decode! AND, as cool as it is, it has almost ZERO value to the EVC market because NOBODY can make a DIY cooling system as complete and complex as Tesla.
The thing is, and I alluded to this in another response above by nthach, there is no real way to take say a 2-24 Chevy Bolt and then magically say 'Well, I'll just take everything apart to it's little bitty components and put them in my 1978 Pinto that I've been savin' for just this project and it'll all work because I'll put it in all the same places as the Chevy Bolt - I'm the smartest man ever and I deserve a medal.'.
That was
NOT an attack on NTHach! - EVERYONE has that general thought - it's just so logical and 'American'; '...well, it it works in this crappy little Chevy Bolt, I can just buy a junked one and off I go!'.
Nope, not even close.
You gotta' source your entire build so that every thing talks to everything else and you can control ALL that and yes, everything is on a CAN Bus and yes, you can make and learn ALL of that, but it's hard.
BUT, there's good news: the market is really maturing and all vendors are beginning to work on a set of standards that follow OBDII and the like. So, you can buy your OBC (On Board Charger) from Elcon and your BMS from Orion and they know how to talk to each other.
Alright, I'm boring the crap out of most of you, sorry. Hope I answered that somewhere in that rambling.
- Patrick
