Home › 2016 › March

Month: March 2016

By Posted on Posted in ZOE

Dutch forum member OlafH dissected the pedestrian horn a bit and posted this picture.

dab98f91a852a7d004bc4a3cf90e042e

The horn is a bit hard to get to, one has to remove the front bumper to get to it. I tried to analyse it a bit. Here is a summary of the most important components. Prepare to be amazed.

SPC5602: A generic processor, though aimed at the car industry, made by NXP. It’s current id is MPC5602P. It has 64KB data flash, 20KB RAM, 256KB code flash, and a PMW generator. MPC5602P

TPA3111Q1: A 10 Watt D-class (PWM) mono audio amplifier by Texas instruments. No real surprises on this one. TPA3111D1-Q1

UJA1076A: CAN transceiver, a nifty little chip, made by NXP. It can also acts as a power supply and watchdog. UJA1076A

25P16vpa:  16Mbit (2MB) flash memory, made by ST Microelectronics. I bet the sound files are stored here.  Enough for 2 minutes mp3 encoded data or 12 seconds of raw sound files. 25P16vpa

1334A: Stereo DAC. Hell, this horn is CD quality, they didn’t even use the PMW output of the main processor!!!! Also NXP. 1334A

7342: Dual hexfet. Basically an on-off switch, by International Rectifier, now Infineon: 7342

The horn resells for about 180 Euros. It is hooked up to the Electro CANbus, power, and a few more wires. While I haven’t touched it myself yet, I bet the sound selector push-button is wired directly to it.

By the way. Another name for a Pedestrian Horn is Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians or VSP, though this is officially a Nissan name and developed system.

Edit: Matthew posted a link to an in depth description of ZOE’s VSP in the comments. I’ve copied the file here on the CanZE blog should the link go dead. Thank you Mathew.

Edit: Thanks you Rudi42 for the additional picture of the location, and of course the custom project.

By Posted on Posted in ZOE 4 Comments

Renault has been selling the official Zoe granny charger for a while. The official name is AFAIK the “Flexi charger”. It retails for a bit over 700 euro’s. Charging current is fixed to 10 amps. Slovenian forum member “pirpy” dissected it (partly) and noticed there is a control wire to the Schuko plug to change the maximum power setting to 13 amps. It is done by using a “special socket”, that is coded to supply that current using….. a strong magnet!!

See this forum entry and a few posts down. “pirpy” decided to use this knowledge to recode the flexi charger to 13A permanently.

renault-flexi-granny-magnet

In all fairness user “Crf” in the UK SpeakEV forum pointed me to this and I fully admit I thought he was pulling off a pretty decent April 1st joke, but it is really true!

Edit: as expected the Flexi charger has two relays so it can switch polarity. That was impossible to do in my granny charger, simply because there was no room for it.

By Posted on Posted in ZOE 1 Comment

Since Renault started giving out some Europe maps for free (and those not fitting on the standard non-Europe TomTom SD card), a couple of people have stepped up the work to try and clone & resize these cards. SpeakEV User Sandy posted this tedious but awesome procedure to get it done. It’s unverified, but it seems we’re getting there. See the 7th post in this thread.

Edit: I created a more detailed step by step instruction here. All credits to Sandy though!

By Posted on Posted in Car 5 Comments

The Zoe (and as far as I know, all Z.E. models) have at least three CANbusses: The main bus (Renault calls this the Vehicle bus), which is what the dongle connects to, a Multimedia bus, which is also wired to the SAE J1962 connector, but on pins 12 and 13 which are not wired in a cheap dongle, and the Electro CANbus, which connect the BCB, EVC, LBC’s and even the pedestrian horn computer. More on that last one in another post, but as a teaser, it is a serious (and expensive) computer!

The Electro bus is gatewayed to the Vehicle bus through the EVC but of course this hides the goodies from priers like us. But don’t despair. In the Zoe, the Electro bus is wired to the cabin and there is a small connector.

EDIT DECEMBER 2016: EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS WRONG. THAT CONNECTOR IS NOT THE ELECTRO CANBUS BUT A WIRE TO A SENSOR IN THE AIR CONDITIONER. I WILL POST AN UPDATE WITH NEW PICTURES IN A NEW POST SOON.

It is located to the right of the accelerator pedal against the middle console, and snugged in a blind (un-wired) connector. Here is a picture and we are looking up and a bit to the right from the accelerator pedal.

Diagnostic commands send to those ECU’s are passed on by the EVC, but we know nothing about the traffic on this bus, other than what is clearly passed on by the EVC, which is probably just the information that is needed by the rest of the car. Anyone taking up the challenge? 🙂