Monitor public chargers?

[dheera]

For those of us that live in apartment complexes with a few shared chargers, any possibility of being able to monitor these chargers to know if there is one available?

[mbillow]

It’s definitely possible. I’m not sure there is a user friendly way of getting the charger IDs that would be needed to set this up, though.

The only way I’ve been able to find them in the past is to MITM the app as it’s making API requests. I guess we could take map coordinates and use the map search API. We’d need to support that API in the Python ChargePoint library though.

Is this something you’re interested in working on or just a feature request?

[dheera]

Might be interested if it fits into the existing framework. The other thing I imagine is the public chargers probably don't need any credentials?

[dheera]

I think the charger IDs can be gotten from the website by clicking on a charger and looking at the URL.

[mbillow]

Might be interested if it fits into the existing framework.

Yah, if we can just tell people to get the charger IDs from the web URL, then it would just need to be a change to the config flow to allow users to provide a list of charger IDs to monitor and then adding the individual binary_sensor entities for each charger.

The other thing I imagine is the public chargers probably don't need any credentials?

Yah, this would make the config flow a bit more complex on our end, but we could ask if they have a home charger or public charger only available via ChargePoint Connections. Then only conditionally collect credentials.

I think the charger IDs can be gotten from the website by clicking on a charger and looking at the URL.

This is awesome, good find. If you end up making the changes, please include this in the documentation.

[MoFa85]

Hi there,
just found this great HA integration and was hoping it's able to display the public chargers, too...
Maybe there's an easier way by polling the favorities in HA? I've marked a couple of public charge points as favorities. Can you feth that data from the account.
This way the authentication method would be kept as is and any charge points that you're interested in just have to be setup within the account :-)

[chilicheech]

Interested in monitoring public chargers as well and I like the idea of it using the favorites. However, manually inputing the IDs is also good.

Another thing I'd like to be able to do is to have a switch to Stop Session whether I'm using a monitored or unmonitored charger.

[MoFa85]

Hi @chilicheech
I am using the chargecloud integration for this feature

Works like a charm.

Gives back "CHARGING" or "AVAILABLE"

[cannondale0815]

+1 for the idea of using public IDs for this.

Alternatively (or in addition to specific public chargers), what would also be cool is if this integration had the ability of just telling me when I'm charging my EV at any ChargePoint station, showing me the KWh, duration etc., just like the ChargePoint app does.

[bb17660]

Hey, just now got this running on my home CPH50 (yay!)...
But as the likely admin for a group of public chargers to be installed in a condo complex (two dual-port CPF50s). Wondering if this should “just work” with the admin credentials?

FYI: Looking to have a notification for the property manager when someone is idle for too long (plugged in, no power for XX min) , but also…. maaybe in combination with a parking sensor to know if someone is ICE-ing the spot (parked + not plugged in for XX min. = Call a Tow Truck!).

[mbillow]

Home chargers have their own APIs, so even giving this plugin public charger management credentials won’t surface public chargers.

Being completely transparent, I don’t have a lot of interest in using something like this, so I don’t have a lot of ambition to write the code. I’m more than happy to review and merge the changes if someone wants them though! 🙂