OCPP CSMS (OCPP 2.0.1.)

Charging station Management system for electric vehicle charging stations.

Based on: OCPP-2.0.1 (Full protocol documentation: openchargealliance.org/downloads)

_ Under development _

Working principle

E.g. incoming BootNotificationRequest:

charging station -> websocket-service -> GCP Pub/Sub topic "BootNotificationRequest" -> device-service

charging station <- websocket-service <- GCP Pub/Sub topic "BootNotificationResponse" <- device-service

Functional features:

• Implemented OCPP messages:

Implemented OCPP Messages	Microservice name
BootNotificationRequest, BootNotificationResponse	device-service
HeartbeatRequest, HeartbeatResponse	device-service
StatusNotificationRequest, StatusNotificationResponse	device-service
TransactionEventRequest, TransactionEventResponse	transaction-service
AuthorizeRequest, AuthorizeResponse	user-service

Technical features:

• microservice-based architecture
• GO: managing multiple websocket connections easily with goroutines, multithreading would be more tedious in many other languages
• Google Firestore for simple data persistence
• Google Cloud Pub/Sub for async messaging between services (using watermill.io)
• REST API for managing charging station information (API description: swaggerhub.com)

Quick Start

1. Create a Google Cloud Platform project. Follow the google guide.

2. Create a service account and create JSON credentials for it. Follow the google guide (see the "Service account credentials" section). When you create the service account, under "select a role" choose Pub/Sub Admin、Firebase Admin、Cloud Datastore Owner、Firestore Service Agent and Firebase Rules Firestore Service Agent (note: for production use, you may want to restrict these to lower roles, needs to be tested).

P 3. Enable Cloud Pub/Sub API、Cloud Firestore API and Cloud Datastore API.

• Set from APIs & Services -> Enabled APIs & services -> +ENABLE APIS AND SERVICES

4. Enable Datastore from https://console.cloud.google.com/datastore/welcome?project={YOUR_PROJECT_ID}

5.Once you have the JSON credentials, place them in the following directories, under the name 'PRIVATE.json':

• credentials/PRIVATE.json

Note: you can use the same service account and the same JSON credentials file in all places, or you can create separate ones for extra security if you want

4. Create a Cloud Firestore database Follow the google guide

5. In the docker-compose.yml file, replace chargerevolutioncloud name with the project id of your own GCP project.

6. Install docker and docker-compose if you haven't already

7. If you are deploying on a remote machine or VPS, open up port 3000 and port 5000 so you can access the system from your own machine.

Important: For actual deployment you should add a reverse proxy layer or some other security measure to protect your open port. A good place to start: How To Deploy a Go Web Application with Docker and Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04

7. Build and run the docker images with

   docker compose up --build
   

   or

   docker compose up --build -d
   

   to hide console output

8. The device service should now be running on localhost:5000. Use Postman or some other tool to send a post request and create a charging station (API description: swaggerhub.com) For example, you can send something like this in the request payload:

   POST: localhost:5000/chargingstations/create

   {
       "id": "CS123",
       "serialNumber": "5",
       "model": "CS-5500",
       "vendorName": "ChargerMaker Inc.",
       "firmwareVersion": "1.8",
       "modem": {
           "iccid": "24",
           "imsi": "24"
       },
       "location": {
           "lat": 41.366446,
           "lng": -38.1854651
       }
   }
   

   If this is successful, a collection named "chargingstations" and a document named "CS123" should have been created in the Firestore database of your project.

   Can here see the data from https://console.cloud.google.com/datastore/welcome?project={YOUR_PROJECT_ID}

9. The websocket service should be running on localhost:3000. Connect to port 3000 as a websocket client (use the station id you have created in the previous step):

   ws://{HOST}:3000/ocpp/{stationid}

   Tip: Postman now supports websocket connections (beta version), but only on the Windows desktop app I believe. This could be useful for testing. Or you can have a look at my basic charging station simulator: gregszalay/ocpp-charging-station-simulator

To-do

• secure websocket connections (wss)
• full implementation of all basic messages (reset, getconfig etc.)