Communicating with SDU

[RobCote]

I'm a little confused as to how to establish communication with a small drive unit control board in 2025. According to the product page on the webshop, there are three options - use the on-board wifi module, no on-board wifi, or wifi over CAN. I realize that the product page is a bit dated and the on-board wifi module was removed in later revisions of the board (which is what I have) due to connection reliability issues. I don't have a CAN in the subject vehicle, so setting up wifi over CAN seems unnecessary and more effort than it would be worth. Is it possible to connect to the board without on-board wifi?? How would that work?

Several months ago, I tried pretty exhaustively to push my boundaries in this area and setup a basic wifi module to be able to change the parameters. While there was a period where it was unclear, I don't think I ever actually was able to connect to the control board. Again, this is going back several months, so I've lost a lot of the details. I've had to shift focus off the project to other things, but I want to dive back in and at this point I have two SDU boards that both need initial setup, so I'm hoping to get some clarity. If I remember correctly, I think I was able to navigate a laptop to the wifi network, but the parameter page came up blank?

Anyway, would anyone be so kind as to dumb-down the process for me just slightly? I realize a lot of you have taken slightly different paths to establish communications. I read a ton back when I was trying to get it to work, and each thread had a slightly different solution. I tried a handful of different wifi modules (I think BOTH ESP32 and ESP8266?, both "blank" chips AND integrated modules) with no success. I think I mostly understand, but have a nagging sensation that there's some fundamental piece I'm missing to make it work.

Again, if it's possible to just forego wifi and communicate more directly, I'm not opposed to leaving a wired connection accessible, at least for now, and deal with integrating wifi later. The inverters remain easily removable in the vehicle once installed. I'd love to get past this milestone and move onto the rest of the work.

[Arlin]

Try this thread. Its not easy to program the ESP8266 with what you need to do. There is 2 major steps and I am sorting mine out right now as well. I will also post in this thread to keep things easier for others to find in the future. viewtopic.php?t=5725