Grizzl-E Smart - need to plug in twice to start charge?

Q

quietlyspinach

Active Member
Any Grizzl-E Smart charger owners out there?

When I plug in my car to charge, the first time I plug in the Grizzl-E light turns green, and the car shows the yellow charging circle on the dashboard which has the percent charged visible, but nothing happens; the yellow circle isn't animating, and the app doesn't say the car has begun charging, and the light at the charge connector is light blue/white colored.

But if I unplug the cable, then plug it in again a second later, everything works instantly. The charge connector light starts pulsing yellow, the dashboard shows the animation, and the app immediately tells me when the car will be at 100%.

This doesn't happen to me whenever I plugin at any of the commercial stations.
 
Looks like I have the same problem first plug charging in 50% slower time second plug in 15 second 100% up to factory specification .I’m using Cripper Creek charger 32 amps. 240 volts. Public chargers no issue.My dealer working on it he have no idea when EF26FA6C-BB55-4D6F-82CA-63ECD25CE993.webp he check a car saying nothing46764471-B74A-45C1-B28E-C3CC52778BFE.webp 0A0E5AA5-9AE8-4566-AC38-8C17158FEDBB.webp E4ED749F-9EFA-4AFD-B6D7-91888CDC7261.webp wrong with a car. He is contacting BMW headquarters looking for answers .Wander what will be an answer?
 
I know what is wrong but they not listen maybe my dealer learn in few month bc so far he saw only my SE as first EV in his facility .In my car is faulty high voltage contactor or mechanical relay which job is to safely connect and disconnect battery when I plug a car to charger .They can fix only ICE EV is to much for this facility.
 
The chief mechanic at my dealership took a week-long intensive training in SE servicing just before I bought my SE. His reaction to that training was one of the (many) factors in my decision.
 
I’m going to see different dealer soon I have only 4 a closes 25 miles next 50 miles next 65 miles where I bought my SE and Manhattan Mini where I don’t want to go at this time but I’m going to see all of them one after another to fix my crab .
 
Rexsio - that is interesting, and I wish you well getting that resolved. That's not what's happening to my car at all. Once the charge starts, everything works normally. I get no errors, the charge goes to 100% and my car operates normally. It just takes 2 connections of the plug to get it to start; nothing else.

I've contacted United Chargers, the makers of the Grizzl-E to see what they have to say.
 
That’s what I do 2 connections of a plug to get it to start and charging is correct to 100% and time is correct but only 1 plug in take twice longer to charge and I don’t like bc it shouldn’t be that way car have only 900 miles should work as design I don’t flip my lights switches twice to have a light in my rooms .
 
revorg said:
The chief mechanic at my dealership took a week-long intensive training in SE servicing just before I bought my SE. His reaction to that training was one of the (many) factors in my decision.
Click to expand...
My dealer sent a mechanic to MINI's SE service training and a saleslady (my MA) to the sales training. Then my dealer closed the day after they delivered my SE. That mechanic used his special training to plug in and charge a single SE from 5% to 100%. I wonder if he found a job at one of the two MINI dealers in Michigan still doing business?

My MA is now selling Hondas where I purchased my Honda Clarity Plug-In Hybrid, three Honda Insights, and a Honda CRX Si (and in 1973, a new Porsche 914 2.0).
 
quietlyspinach said:
Any Grizzl-E Smart charger owners out there?

When I plug in my car to charge, the first time I plug in the Grizzl-E light turns green, and the car shows the yellow charging circle on the dashboard which has the percent charged visible, but nothing happens; the yellow circle isn't animating, and the app doesn't say the car has begun charging, and the light at the charge connector is light blue/white colored.

But if I unplug the cable, then plug it in again a second later, everything works instantly. The charge connector light starts pulsing yellow, the dashboard shows the animation, and the app immediately tells me when the car will be at 100%.

This doesn't happen to me whenever I plugin at any of the commercial stations.
Click to expand...

Do you have your charger wireless enabled and connected to Chargelab or the echarger portal? If so there is a handshake and I don't get the impression their software is bug free. They seem to fix one thing and something else pops up. At the moment they won't let me charge at all when wireless is enabled. Something about ChargeLab's back end.

In the past the suggestion has been to disable WiFi (there is an internal DIP switch) and see if it charges without issue. You may want to try disabling the wifi.
 
ColdCase said:
Do you have your charger wireless enabled and connected to Chargelab or the echarger portal? If so there is a handshake and I don't get the impression their software is bug free. They seem to fix one thing and something else pops up. At the moment they won't let me charge at all when wireless is enabled. Something about ChargeLab's back end.

In the past the suggestion has been to disable WiFi (there is an internal DIP switch) and see if it charges without issue. You may want to try disabling the wifi.
Click to expand...

Thank you ColdCase - that was exactly the issue. I flipped the internal DIP switch to re-set the Wifi and did not connect it to anything; it's doing the flashing blue/purple LED now.

The car charges instantly as soon as I connect it. Looks like Grizzl-E and Chargelab need to work on their firmware. :(
 
Just to follow up, Grizzl-E sent me a replacement smart charger as the old one would not connect to chargelab. I see normal behavior with the new one, it seems to work as it should but with much less functionality and eye candy.

So you could try going through the setup again as I think the firmware gets an update during the process.
 
Probably most of the OCPP functionality is useless to anyone except a hobbyist, so "much" is subjective.

For example:
Using the free echarger portal, you could send OCPP 1.6 commands to your smart charger and view responses.
Eye candy included a minute by minute graph of charging current.
The GUI provided a bit more flexibility in scheduling.

To get similar function today for free, you will likely need to host you own OCPP 1.6 server on your host. But then I dunno of an OCPP server package that you can get for free.

Currently, for free, chargelab provides the actual kw number the charger reports pulling from the grid per session and a record of sessions. Thats useful for billing. You can also schedule/limit charge times. I think that is provided by the mini app, except the app estimates how much kw was taken from the charger. Given that the app provides an estimate, dunno how useful it is for estimating charger efficiency.

A paid chargelab subscription gives you the capability to offer your charger publicly and collect real money. Another subscription facilitates using other chargers on the network.... handy if you are driving in the Toronto area :)

There is another to be offered to the public soon, but it is even more industrial/fleet oriented.
 
I can tell that I've tried 2 open source OCPP servers and neither of them work for me. In both cases, it seems to fail because it won't do the initial negotiations; at least, my logs look like the ones in the super-long thread:

The project:
https://github.com/lbbrhzn/ocpp

Check this thread here for what others have already tried:

https://github.com/lbbrhzn/ocpp/issues/442


This is the other OCPP server that I tried:

https://github.com/RWTH-i5-IDSG/steve

Interestingly, someone tried it out with firmware version 5.41 and apparently back then it worked, although it says "working (partially tested)". But I was not able to get it to work at all.
 
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ColdCase said:
Probably most of the OCPP functionality is useless to anyone except a hobbyist, so "much" is subjective.

For example:
Using the free echarger portal, you could send OCPP 1.6 commands to your smart charger and view responses.
Eye candy included a minute by minute graph of charging current.
The GUI provided a bit more flexibility in scheduling.

To get similar function today for free, you will likely need to host you own OCPP 1.6 server on your host. But then I dunno of an OCPP server package that you can get for free.

Currently, for free, chargelab provides the actual kw number the charger reports pulling from the grid per session and a record of sessions. Thats useful for billing. You can also schedule/limit charge times. I think that is provided by the mini app, except the app estimates how much kw was taken from the charger. Given that the app provides an estimate, dunno how useful it is for estimating charger efficiency.

A paid chargelab subscription gives you the capability to offer your charger publicly and collect real money. Another subscription facilitates using other chargers on the network.... handy if you are driving in the Toronto area :)

There is another to be offered to the public soon, but it is even more industrial/fleet oriented.
Click to expand...
Thanks for all this! The free app should be plenty for me, pretty much cementing my decision to get it — at $699 it’s a half-ton cheaper than the smart flo or any of the others.
 
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