Germany-based PHYTEC, which produces embedded components for industrial electronics, and EV software charging firm PIONIX have introduced the EVCS-Cube, a development kit for EV charging systems.

EVCS-Cube combines PHYTEC’s phyVERSO-EVCS charger controller and PIONIX’s BaseCamp operating system, which is based on the open-source firmware stack EVerest. The ready-to-use development kit is designed for EV charging station developers and manufacturers to use in order to start testing and developing their products quickly.

There are two versions of the kit. EVCS-Cube Basic includes all components such as power meters, contactors, residual current detection, charging indicators and a stop button. The EVCS-Cube PoC enables DC charging, and includes additional components such as DC power supply unit, insulation monitoring and power meter. Both versions can be optionally expanded with WiFi, LTE, display, NFC, fan, temperature sensor and other modules.

The Basic version is available as an AC test kit. The PoC version will follow during the first quarter of this year.

“PHYTEC and PIONIX are addressing one of the most pressing challenges currently facing the electromobility industry: interoperability between the various components and modules of the charging infrastructure,” the companies said.

“The package of tried-and-tested charging electronics and future-oriented operating system supports common industry standards (IEC61851, ISO 15118-2 (AC+DC) DIN SPEC 70121 (DC) for CCS and TYPE 2 charging solutions, OCPP 1.6 and OCPP 2.0.1), application scenarios such as Plug & Charge, and the communication protocols relevant for communication with the infrastructure, vehicle and payment system.”

Source: PIONIX