OCPP 1.6 Central System and Charge Point Emulator

The goal of this hackathon was to setup a test where 1M Charge Points connect to the high availability Central System using the emulator provided in this repository.

Hackathon requirements:

• use of Docker,
• SSL offloading,
• maximum latency of 250ms (on average).

Install

1. Download Node.js.

2. Go to root folder of repo (where package.json file is present) and run:

   npm ci

Running the server

Open shell in root folder and run:

npm run server

Running a client

Open shell in root folder and run:

npm run client

Docker image

Attached Dockerfile is used to generate the container image of this project. The latest image is hosted on DockerHub: glusk/hackathon-2021.

Creating/updating the image

First, build and tag:

docker build -t glusk/hackathon-2021 .

Then, push to DockerHub:

docker push glusk/hackathon-2021:latest

Docker Swarm orchestration

Refer to: ./deployment_template/

Some general info on inner flow

Server

1. Server accepts client connections and upgrades them to websocket connections.
2. It responds to various OCPP messages.
3. Occasionally, it sends a PING to determine which clients are still alive.

Client

1. When a client connects to the server via a websocket, it sends a boot notification.
2. After a response is received, it reads the heartbeat interval from it.
3. It sends heartbeat message according to the interval.

Environment variables

Environment variables that client script uses

1. CS_PROTOCOL defaults to ws. possible values are: ws, wss (for SSL)
2. CS_HOST defaults to localhost. host to connect to
3. CS_PORT defaults to 8080. port to connect to
4. CONCURRENCY_LEVEL defaults to 1. Number of clients to create
5. LOG_PAYLOAD verbose logging of data exchange between client and server
6. LOG_LIFECYCLE = log lifecycle events (connect, reconnect, ping/pong)

Environment variables that server script uses

1. WEB_SRV_HOST interface to bind to (could be only one)
2. WEB_SRV_PORT port on bind interface
3. HEARTBEAT_INT_MS the interval at which we check client connectivity
4. LOG_PAYLOAD verbose logging of data exchange between client and server
5. LOG_LIFECYCLE = log lifecycle events (connect, reconnect, ping/pong)