If you get the installer app on your phone, don’t have to sign in, just follow the instructions for WiFi and dongle update, to see if yours needs updating.
Thanks for the help so far, but still I`m stuck.
The only barcode on the side of the EVC is the serial number of the device. This barcode will not scan via the givinstaller app, and manually typing in the value next to it (marked “S/N” - a mixture of numbers and letters in the format “X11111X111”) doesnt work.
The Givinstaller app is reporting this “dongle serial number is invalid” and “Must be a valid givenergy serial format” - this error appears regardless of whether you select internal wifi adapter or external dongle.
Are you sure the givinstaller app can update the built in wifi adapter of the EVC?
The GivInstaller app is not for the EVC.
The EVC is a “customer led” setup so it’s done using the main GivEnergy app.
The EVC does not have a “dongle” like their other products does. All firmware updates come from GivEnergy over the air, there is no local update option (if there is it hasn’t been publicised).
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The EVC has a completely different firmware update procedure than their other products. It can only update OTA via FTP.
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It indeed does not refer to Ethernet.
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Thanks for clarifying. My EVC is offline yet again, so theres a good chance tonights scheduled charge will fail. Givenergy support are not answering my ticket. I`m completley lost how to get this sorted out.
On phone so sorry for brevity, is the schedule set on the EVC? It should still charge whilst offline but I’ve also seen it not do that.
Yes the schedule is set and has not been changed. I`ll plug in and see what happens.
@djbenson - does the EVC`s wifi adapter prefer the 2.4 ghz, 20mhz band ?
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If you need it to charge tonight, kill the power and reboot it so it should be OK tonight at least.
I have just checked mine and I have it set to 2.4 GHz only. This maybe the issue as well if it is trying to swap between 2.4 and 5 GHz then going off line.
My AP in the garage is meshed to another AP in the kitchen over 5ghz and serving it’s clients on the 2.4ghz frequency.
I’m curious specifically about whether the WiFi adapter in the EVC prefers the 20mhz band.
Question for all…
Has GE provided a clear definition for when their systems (portal and app) achieve (or at least show) a status of “offline”?
Doubt it, I asked ages ago “please GE would you update the app, so we get notifications if any of the kit goes offline. No answer 
Just for reference, I managed to fix my issue and my EVC is now reliably connected and has not been reporting as “offline” for the last few days.
In case it helps anyone, what I did was to create a dedicated wireless SSID (2.4ghz, 20 mhz) just for the EVC. I made sure this SSID was only being broadcast on the access point closest to the EVC. I then went through the wireless setup and connected the EVC to this new, dedicated SSID.
This setup ensures the EVCs wiress radio cannot roam onto another (further away) access point which may be shouting louder and encouraging the EVC`s wireless adapter to roam onto a device which it will struggle to talk back to (i.e. A distant access point is “shouting” and EVCs little radio is “whispering”).
Obviously the above information is only useful to people with more than one wireless access point in their home.
But it goes without saying, if you can hard wire with ethernet, you should do. Wireless can be complex, unpredictable, and unreliable.
I cannot give a definitive answer, but in my investigations for my specific issue, each time I properly checked the Wi-Fi, when the EVC was reporting offline in the app, it had definitely dropped off the network entirely, and each time it reconnected, it did report successfully as “charger online” (with a lag of a 30 seconds or so)
I was initially confused about this because I didn’t spot that the EVC had actually roamed onto a range extender inside the house.
They are not stupid, they know that such a “feature” would likely increase the volume of calls to GE technical support significantly.
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Your info has been useful as I looked at the issue from different angle…BUT…
My network system:
- BT router that supports all the GE systems including EVC
- EVC is hard wired to BT router
- a TPLink mesh (network with 5 AP’s) supports house ‘systems’
- this morning until 11:00 the EVC was offline but I could still PING it… BUT it was displaying about 6% “timeouts”
- powered EVC off/on. EVC then came back online
- another PING series showed connection but again with about 5% “timeouts”
- the BT router log has a (very large) number of the following message…
- “2.4G client Mac: A:B:C:D:E:F Deauthentications (Reason:Deauthenticated because sending station is leaving (or has left) IBSS or ESS)”
- I cannot find (using BT or TPlink device ‘listings’ and ARP -a) a connected device with the MAC address in the above log message??
Question: could this phantom MAC be the EVC WiFi MAC address trying to find an SSID to connect to? Could this be a conflict with the actual hard wired connection? Does the EVC WiFi function need to be disabled? If so, how?
I had very little involvement in the EVC install process so my knowledge of it is minimal!
Sorry for the ramble, just hope it makes sense…
Blockquote Question: could this phantom MAC be the EVC WiFi MAC address trying to find an SSID to connect to? Could this be a conflict with the actual hard wired connection? Does the EVC WiFi function need to be disabled? If so, how?
If you have an EVC connected to your home network over wired ethernet, you dont need to concern yourself with any activity on your wifi.
Your next logical step should be to gather screenshots to very clearly show you can ping the EVCs network adapter at exactly the same time that the app is showing that the EVC is “offline”. You also need to demonstrate you are pinging the right IP address by showing the EVC`s MAC address is assigned to the IP you are pinging.
My suggestion is to gather / record that evidence, and then get a ticket raised. Given how hard it is to get a response from support, you may want to do that via your installer. Perhaps they will have better luck.
Based on my recent experience, I would be surprised if, after proper scrutiny, you have a properly connected EVC at a network layer and the app reporting the EVC being offline at exactly the same time. Prove that first, then go from there.
I am having a same problem for a some weeks now on my EVC with firmware v1.14 installed (WiFi operation).
I noticed a while ago that sometimes when I plugged my car in during the day the EVC would start charging my car like it was in Plug-and-Go mode, and I would not be able to turn it off in the GivEnergy app, nor through MQTT.
At first I thought it was a problem with my Home Assistant setup, so I looked a bit deeper into this and noticed that there were 2 stages to this failure: first the EVC would disconnect from the API (showing offline in the GE app/cloud), though I could still ping the unit, and it would show up among my connected devices on my network. A day or two later the Modbus control would also cease to work (can still ping the unit at this stage), and it is at this stage when I plug in my car during the day charging would start immediately. Only by multiple power cycles can I restore the unit’s operation, after which it would work for a couple of days, and the issue would resurface again and again.
During the summer the mains voltage at our estate goes rather high (265-270V) due to excessive solar generation, which would cause the EVC to reset daily due to a “ground leak” problem. I think in the past this daily reset kept the EVC operational and “reliable” in my mind. Now that there’s no sun and the voltage stays below 250V, the EVC does not go through regular reset cycles.
I’ve had this charger for about 9 months now, and in the last 6 months I have not modified anything on my WiFi network (I’ve not even added new devices to it). The firmware was updated to v1.14 months ago as well, so I can’t even say that the new update has done something funky.
I have a feeling that GE’s cloud is having some issues, which then creates a deadlock of sort in the firmware. Repeated resets resolve the lock. @TheDragon_Giv, please can you help us? Happy to provide more information or test beta firmwares.
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Try as I can, I cannot replicate this with my own 2 EV Chargers
They both drop off to reSync the TLS tunnel, but always re-connect just fine after 8 mins.
It would be good to see wireShark captures of your EVC, to see exactly what is going on at the point before and after it goes offline.
Do you have a Mesh network? Could this be a factor?
My own and that in the Lab is a regular multiple access point setup, no EERO or similar.
I use TP LInk
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I have a 812Gv2 router from my network provider, so I’m quite restricted on that front. I do have an unused RPi4 in my drawer that I’ll hook up between my router and the WiFi AP to try to monitor all traffic to and from the EVC.
I have a Plume WiFi mesh router with 2 nodes. Some people above said they had ubiquiti, so this could be a common denominator. I’ll post my results here once I captured something interesting.
The TLS tunnel resyncing is an interesting piece… Wondering if there’s an obscure leak there. If the EVC cannot resync, local pinging would still work I think.
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