Minimal ZombieVerter for Kangoo ZE BMS on STM32 Bluepill?

[Federico]

Hi everyone,

I’m new to the forum and appreciate any help you can share.

I’m trying to wake up a Renault Kangoo ZE battery pack outside of the vehicle. My question is: would it be possible to extract only the BMS-related parts of ZombieVerter and run them standalone, for example on a small MCU like the STM32 Bluepill?

The idea would be just to:

- Communicate with the Kangoo BMS over CAN (log voltage, current, SOC, temps, etc.)

- Send the periodic messages required so the BMS keeps the contactors closed for charge/discharge


Has anyone attempted something similar?

Thanks!

[Bigpie]

In the Kangoo, the BMS doesn't control the contactors, but it would be pretty simple to send the required can message and decode the can messages it sends. Could be done with a bluepill or even an lilygo tcan

[eee291]

Look up battery emulator from dala on GitHub.

[Federico]

Thanks a lot to both of you for the tips, really appreciate it!
One more thing I was wondering – do you know if there are any limitations I should expect from the Kangoo BMS in second-life use? Like, could it shut things down if it sees too much dispersion between modules?

[eee291]

At 25% soh the battery emulator will not allow any further cycling.

Also I'm looking for 22kwh Kangoo battery parts. I would buy the BMS and harness off you before you scrap it.

[Bigpie]

I've taken my 36kwh kangoo pack down to 0% without issue. Over current does little more than set a flag on the can bus.

[Federico]

Thanks again for all the insights, it’s been really helpful.

In the coming weeks I’ll have access to a complete Kangoo ZE battery pack with its original BMS. My plan is to connect with it using the Bluepill + CAN transceiver setup already prepared.

Before I actually get my hands on the pack, I’m just trying to figure out if there are any common gotchas when hooking up to the original BMS on the bench. Like, is it usually enough to just power the BMS and talk over CAN, or does it tend to expect other stuff too (extra pins, wake-up lines, messages from other ECUs)?
I’m mainly aiming for two things:

Logging the usual data (voltages, currents, SOC,SOH, temps, etc.).

Keeping the pack usable for charge/discharge through its own contactors.

Any advice on what to watch out for when working directly with the Kangoo BMS would be much appreciated!