BMW Wallbox Basic

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DanielS

New member
Joined
Feb 17, 2018
Messages
3
Hi everyone,

My wife and I are proud owners of a BMW I3S Protonic Blue and we've stacked it with everything we could get. Yet the only thing we did not get was the wallbox. Why not, well... were upgrading from a Vauxhall Ampera (Chevrolet Volt) and already had a charger on the drive way. Yet when we discovered it took about 8 hours to charge the car. (3,4kw an hour...)

So on a friday afternoon I was browsing the local Ebay... and geuss what... a BMW Wallbox is there. So what I do is give the dude a call... we negotiated the price and on saturday morning I am now the proud owner of a Wallbox that acording to the previous owner is just a couple of months old.

So after getting my main electricity work done (we have 3x 25A household) and getting all the wires pulled I installed the Wallbox today... and this is were i need some help. The Wallbox installation is all done as the manual sets. Yet the big status light is telling me 4 reds... so call the service technician. Yet the LED near where the network cable goes is flashing red and greens. So it's proberbly trying to tell me whats wrong, yet... I don't know what!! Does anybody have the translation of the these flashing lights... Hopefully I can get it sorted without the help of an external technician.

(ps... we;re living in the Netherlands...)
 
Most of the world does not use a 3-phase EVSE, so you will probably need to find someone local. Did the Wallbox come with the manual? Can you find it online?

Just a general thought...make sure all of the connections are tight and there are no stray strands of wire that might be shorting somewhere. Pay attention to the safety ground wire.

Do you have a multimeter? What voltages to you get? I'd measure ground to hot, then one hot to another, until you have a list of all combinations.
 
I found the installation manuals online https://charging.bmwgroup.com/web/wbdoc/bmw-i-wallbox2 and in the installation manual it is really streight forward. You can't really go wrong. One must hang the Wallbox at the right height... insert the power cables through the back (this is a bitch if you are using these fat cables) and hook them up correctly. Offcoarse with the main power being off and grounding it all correctly. And then adjust all the dipswitches to the correct settings. In my case 3x 16A Meaning 11 KW/H.

After you have done the above you can set the BMW Wallbox to a "Self Test" mode but I obviously don't have a testing device. And in the manual there is a little status led in one of the compartments and this LED is the flashing one, but there is not a list of error codes in the installation or user manual whats happening. If someone would have this that would be great!

Just to be completly clear I put the measurements below I have done at my mains box.

1. Brown Wire Measures 400V between 2 and 3 and 230 volt with N.
2. Black WireMeasures 400V between 1 and 3 and 230 volt with N.
3. Gray WIreMeasures 400V between 1 and 1 and 230 volt with N.
N. Blue WireMeasures 230V between 1, 2 and 3.
PE. Yellow/Green Wire.... not sure how to measure this one. But I know its fine as it's hooked into the same as the rest of the house and this was checked by the electrician.
 
So this sunday morning, the sun is shining, it's about -3 c. and I have to believe this is some stupid error in the connections of the BMW Wallbox.

So first things first... I opened up the entire Wallbox, the 2 covers at the top, The right one is where the DIP Switches are and the left is where the power connectors are. These are all held together with a philips + screws. Then I removed the botom half of the wallbox cover... you know where it says, warrenty void messsage... there are 4 Torx screws holding these together.

Next step is slowly removing the front cover, mind you, the front cover has a data connection cable to the Wallbox and this is a very Fragile cable. So I removed this and the Front cover part and then slowly removed the front part. (I know... should have taken pictures... but it was cold... my bad...) Now this is where you get a black cover plate that is protecting most of the motherboard of the Wallbox. This is actually only held onto the motherboard with 2 philips + screws. One in the top left and one halfway on the right... I removed these after unclicking the connectors halfway trough en at the bottom and removed it carrefully... now I had access to all the internals of the Wallbox.

So what I did was double check all connections and to my surprise I discoverd that the data cable that I mentioned earlier was not connected correctly to the motherboard of the wallbox... Obviosly this would confuse the wallbox. So what did i do, I reasembled and connected every thing and put the power back on and voila... I have a blue line... all accross the the Wallbox!! :cool: ready to load baby!!!

Only thing I am having trouble with it the App... The Wallbox is connected to my home network, I can login to the device call the IP Settings, yet when I open the BMW iV App on my Google Pixel it will find the Wallbox but when I select the New Device option it tells me there is a mistake trying to configure the device... anybody got any thoughts and this?
 
Well, that's progress!

I don't know for sure, but it may take awhile for the BMW server to log and recognize the wallbox. While it may or may not be a factor, sometimes, it takes awhile for all of the servers to synchronize and update.

Suggest you try again. Being the weekend, not sure if that's an automatic thing, or is an operator thing, so may not happen until Monday. If all else fails, contact BMW.

Did you try plugging in the car to see if it would charge? It might, even without the internet connection.
 
I have the BMW I Wallbox. This is the basic one without any connecting to a network. I also got it as used and had some issues at beginning.
After update the firmware to V.3.08.4 a had no problem with charging.
 
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