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Charger Station integration for Gladys Assistant

Charger Station integration for Gladys Assistant

Follow your charging stations in Gladys, live, through the OCPP protocol.

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Read-only supervision. This integration observes any number of OCPP 1.6 charge points and shows their state in Gladys (connector status, charging state, power, current, voltage, total energy) — there is no way to start, stop, or limit a charge from Gladys yet.

How it works​

flowchart LR
    CP(["Charge point"]) <-->|OCPP, WebSocket| Relay["OCPP relay"]
    Relay <-->|OCPP, forwarded| Cloud[("Vendor cloud")]
    Relay <-.->|state and config, HTTP| Gladys[("Gladys")]

The integration runs its own OCPP relay. Every charge point connects to the same URL — the relay tells them apart by the identity each one announces on connection. The moment a charge point points at that URL (see Setup below), the relay supervises it automatically, with no need to declare it in Gladys first: it answers it normally, so charging itself keeps working. But until you attach it to its own origin cloud, that cloud is completely out of the loop — nothing that goes through the vendor's app (remote start/stop, live status, charge history) works during that window, since the vendor's backend has no connection to the charge point at all. Attaching the origin cloud changes that: the relay then also forwards the charge point's traffic there, and the vendor's app works exactly as before again. The relay only observes what passes through it to build the state shown in Gladys; it never invents or withholds anything on the wire, in either mode.

Prerequisites​

Gladys 4.85.0 or later. The charge point state is published using Gladys's charging-station device features, which older versions don't know about (they would refuse to create the device).

Each charge point's vendor app or portal must let you view and change the OCPP server URL it connects to. Not every vendor exposes this — if yours doesn't, this integration cannot be used for that charge point.

Before changing anything, write down the OCPP server URL currently shown by the vendor app. It is the only way back to the vendor's own cloud if you ever want to stop using this integration for that charger.

Setup​

Five steps, once per charge point. Nothing is lost along the way: the charge point keeps its own connection to the vendor's cloud, Gladys simply sits in the middle and watches.

  1. Write down the OCPP server URL your charge point currently uses, from its vendor app. This is your only way back to the vendor's cloud — keep it somewhere safe.
  2. Point the charge point at Gladys: in that same app, replace the URL with the one shown in the walkthrough on the integration's Configuration screen — it's filled in for you, address and port included. The same URL works for every charge point.
  3. Add it to Gladys: it connects immediately and appears in the Discovery tab, already supervised. Add it from there.
  4. Give it back its cloud: on the Configuration screen, run the "Add a charge point" action, pick it from the list, and paste the URL from step 1 — exactly as the vendor app showed it, including any trailing query string some vendors use (e.g. ending in ?sn=).
  5. Done. The charge point reconnects on its own within seconds and carries on talking to its vendor's cloud exactly as before, through Gladys — which now follows it live.

Repeat for every other charge point: same Gladys URL, its own vendor URL, even a different vendor.

To fix a mistake or change a charge point's origin cloud URL, run the action again for the same charge point with the corrected URL (check its current URL on its device card first). To detach a charge point from its cloud and put it back into local-only supervision, run the action for it with an empty URL — takes effect the next time that charge point reconnects (it keeps relaying through its current connection until then).

If you delete a charge point's device from Gladys while it still has an origin cloud configured, it disappears from the picker and the action can no longer change it — the relay keeps using that cloud. Add the device back from Discovery to regain control of it.

Starting over​

Uninstalling the integration removes everything it created: its devices, its stored configuration, and the relay's own container and data. Nothing is left behind, so reinstalling starts genuinely fresh.

To go back to your vendor's cloud directly, put the URL you noted in step 1 back into the charge point's app — it stops going through Gladys at its next reconnection.

What you see on a charge point​

Each connector reports two state features, plus its measurements (power, current, voltage, total energy):

  • Status — what the connector itself is doing: Available, Occupied, Reserved, Unavailable, Faulted.
  • Charging state — what the session is doing: Charging, Vehicle connected, Paused (vehicle), Paused (charger), Idle.

OCPP 1.6 charge points report a single, more detailed status, which is split across those two: Preparing and Finishing both show as "Occupied / Vehicle connected" (a vehicle is physically connected in both cases), Charging as "Occupied / Charging", and SuspendedEV/SuspendedEVSE as "Occupied / Paused (vehicle)"/"Occupied / Paused (charger)". When no session is in progress, the charging state reads Idle. Both features stay empty until the charge point has reported its status at least once.

Values update as they happen, within a few seconds: the relay tells the integration about every change it observes rather than being asked at intervals. A charge point that connects for the first time also appears in Discovery on its own, without waiting for a refresh.

Multiple connectors​

A charge point is one device in Gladys, whatever its number of physical connectors. It starts with one connector's worth of features (status, charging state, power, current, voltage, energy); if it has more than one physical connector, the extra ones appear as additional features ("Connector 2 - ...", etc.) once the gateway has actually seen them report their status at least once. If you've already created the device, Gladys shows an Update button once new connectors are picked up — nothing is added silently to a device you already created. If a connector doesn't appear yet, try Rescan from the Discovery tab after using that connector.

Security note​

Exposing the relay's OCPP port makes it reachable by anything on your LAN, without authentication — this is inherent to how OCPP charge points connect to a server. The relay only ever observes what passes through it and never makes decisions on its own (it never invents a transaction, never authorizes a charge): at worst, a rogue device on your LAN could feed misleading data into this integration's view, but it cannot affect a real charge point, which keeps its own independent connection to its vendor's cloud through the relay. Keep this in mind on a shared or untrusted network.

Known limitations (this version)​

  • The relay's state resets on restart (host reboot, a crash): it only remembers what it has seen since it last started, including which charge points are configured — the integration re-sends the full configured set as soon as it reconnects to Gladys, so this self-heals within seconds and does not require re-running the action. Freshly restarted, already-known charge points briefly disappear until they reconnect (normally within seconds); this does not delete any device you already created in Gladys.
  • Starting a charge session while a charge point is still locally supervised (no origin cloud attached yet), then attaching a cloud mid-session: the charge point may keep referencing the session it started locally once it reconnects into relay mode, which the real origin cloud never saw. A rare overlap in practice (attaching a cloud is usually done once, right after first connecting) — if it happens, the affected session's data may not reach the origin cloud correctly; the next session is unaffected.
  • No control from Gladys. Starting, stopping, or limiting a charge is not possible in this version.

Troubleshooting​

Check the integration's logs from the Gladys UI (supervision block → container selector) for the main container and, separately, for the gateway sub-container — that is where the OCPP relay itself logs every connection, disconnection, and relayed message (full payload, both directions) for every charge point.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Charger Station asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Connecting a charge pointsectionNoIn your charge point's app, note down its current OCPP URL and keep every setting you find there: that's what lets you get back to normal operation if anything goes wrong. Replace that URL with ws://{{gladys_host}}:{{port:ocpp}}/ - the same one for every charge point. Your charge point reconnects right away and appears in the Discovery tab: add it to Gladys. Then come back here, in the Action section below, select your charge point and paste the OCPP URL you noted in the first step - that's what lets it keep talking to its vendor's cloud, now relayed through Gladys.

How to install Charger Station in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Charger Station appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/sescandell/gladys-ocpp-integration:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/sescandell/gladys-ocpp-integration.

Charger Station requires Gladys >=4.85.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

Charger Station is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by sescandell, not by the Gladys core team.

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