To get a general overview about the features and architecture of the Open Charging Network (OCN) v1.1, check out our technical documentation: OCN 1.1 - Documentation
This document provides details on the relevant business cases tackled by the OCN, specifically for Charge Point Operators, eMobility Service Providers and other Service Providers, the functionality of the OCN and its technical architecture: relevant components, information exchange and communication between involved actors and systems.
The documentation is primarily intended to be read by people with knowledge in the e-mobility ecosystem, specifically electric vehicle charging. It is advised that the reader also has a basic understanding of the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI).
The Open Charging Network v1.1 is released for production use! Among other improvements, this release includes:
The OCN Service Interface
Support for the HubClientInfo OCPI module
A great resource to learn more about the motivation for the OCN Service Interface is the recent Medium post: Third-party services for the OCPI community: A billing example.
The release consists of the v1.1.0 release of both the ocn-registry and ocn-node. The v1.1.0 ocn-node is available to download at https://bitbucket.org/shareandcharge/ocn-node/downloads/ (linux/amd64) or as an image on Docker Hub. The v1.1.0 ocn-registry is available as an npm package at @shareandcharge/ocn-registry.
We hosted the first Open Charging Network Developer Community Call on August 11th! Topics covered included an update on the current status of the OCN, an outline of the roadmap including the upcoming release of OCN 1.1 to the production network, and a review of the open and high-priority issues. A recording of the call is on Youtube at https://youtu.be/xi_jr4O0ZZs.
We plan on holding a developer community call every second Tuesday of the month to communicate and align the development of the OCN. Anyone interested in the development of the OCN is welcome to join. Details on how to join the next call on September 20th can be found here Developer Community Calls.
To stay up-to date on OCN development in between calls, take a look at Issue list across repositories for a list of all issues and email partners@shareandcharge.com to join the Share&Charge Slack workspace for questions and support.
See you on the next call!
We have just published an initial Open API 3.0 specification for version 1.0 of the Open Charging Network.
You can find the specification document in the OCN Node repository, here: https://bitbucket.org/shareandcharge/ocn-node/src/master/examples/openapi-spec.json.
Using this specification, it is possible to generate client code and test implementations. For more information, see https://swagger.io/docs/specification/about/.
Note that this document was generated using unmodified source code in the master branch. As such, certain features of the specification format might be missing, such as examples for HTTP requests and responses.
We will be adding to the specification in the coming months, particularly with our 1.1 release which will see the HubClientInfo module added.
We have updated our issue trackers for the following open source repositories: OCN Node and OCN Notary. The trackers provide an overview of open issues we have on our radar, allowing the community to comment on and propose possible solutions for them. They also serve as an introduction for new collaborators wishing to get their hands dirty with the source code.
Clicking on an issue in the tracker presents you with further details, including a description:
As well as its type (such as bug, enhancement etc.) and severity (minor, major, etc.):
Here you can also add comments and vote for an issue if it is relevant to you. Of course, new issues can be created by anyone and added to the tracker. Anyone is also free to submit a pull request relating to a particular issue.
In addition to the public issue trackers, various quality of life proposals can actually be found in the source code itself. This is particularly true for the OCN Node, which has a larger codebase than the OCN Registry and Notary. For example, opening the Node repository in IntelliJ reveals a list of TODOs marked in the source. This can be viewed by clicking the “TODO” tab at the bottom:
Double clicking on a particular TODO will take you to its location in the source code:
Hopefully this has given you a taste of how it’s possible to contribute to the OCN Node. There is no issue too big or small and we hope that, over time, the community can grow into something truly special.
If you aren’t familiar with the languages used in the development of the Open Charging Network, here is an overview:
OCN Node: Kotlin (with Spring Boot)
OCN Registry: Solidity (for Ethereum smart contracts) and TypeScript (wrapper; command line interface)
OCN Notary: Kotlin (JVM library) and TypeScript (JS library)
If you aren’t yet familiar with some of these technologies, now could be a great opportunity to give them a try! 
We hope this inspires you to get involved in the cutting edge of eRoaming!
We have published our initial OCN Node v1.1 release candidate (rc0) on Bitbucket. Head to https://bitbucket.org/shareandcharge/ocn-node/downloads/ and download the ocn-node-1.1.0-rc0.tar.gz archive to test it out. Note that it was built on linux/amd64 architecture.
Included is a CHANGELOG.md file which details the new features of this release candidate version. To summarise, this release sees a number of QoL improvements, among the addition of our initial HubClientInfo module implementation. Documentation has been updated to reflect this release, and can be found both in the archive and in the develop branch of the OCN Node.
The OCN Node by eMobilify on the public test environment run will be updated shortly to 1.1.0-rc0, for connected parties to start testing.
We are now providing pre-built packages for JVM and Docker, starting with our v1.0 release of the OCN Node. Now you can easily download the package or pull the image and get started straight away with running your own OCN Node. Note that both have been built on linux/amd64 architecture.
To find the package for JVM, head to https://bitbucket.org/shareandcharge/ocn-node/downloads/. From there, click on ocn-node-1.0.0.tar.gz to download the archive.
For the Docker image, visit https://hub.docker.com/r/openchargingnetwork/ocn-node.
To get a general overview about the features and architecture of the Open Charging Network (OCN) v1.0, check out our technical documentation: OCN 1.0 - Documentation.
This document provides details on the business benefits of the OCN, specifically for Charge Point Operators and eMobility Service Providers, the functionality of the OCN and its technical architecture: relevant components, information exchange and communication between involved actors and systems.
The documentation is primarily intended to be read by people with knowledge in the e-mobility ecosystem, specifically electric vehicle charging. It is advised that the reader also has a basic understanding of the Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI).
We are happy to annouce the Launch of the Open Charging Network. As of today, a first OCN Node is available. With this launch the following things have changed:
The OCN Node, OCN Registry and OCN Notary are released in their version 1.0. You will find them in the
Master Branchof their respective repositories.To get informed about the Production Network please visit this page: Production Network
The Public Test Network was updated, which unfortunately means that all data and connections to the previous Public Test Environment are deleted. If you were connected to the Public Test Environment before you need to redo your connection to the network. Please follow the documentation about this here: Connecting a service and here: Public Test Network.
Please visit the Maturity Model, Feature Roadmap and Releases page to learn more about future releases.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are looking forward to the future ahead.
The Open Charging Network is a community project by and for the Electric Vehicle Charging community.
Its mission is to provide the EV Charging industry players an open, secure and efficient network for digital interoperability. This is why the core components are developed open source under the Apache license Version 2.0.
The community can contribute to the source code in the form of feedback, raised issues, pull requests and dedicated working groups.
The article under the following link should provide you with some guidance in how you can contribute to this project: Contributing to the Open Charging Network
The Public Test Environment of the Open Charging Network has now gained a second publicly usable OCN Node.
Developers that want to test their OCPI services against the OCN can connect to it from today on. This supports the OCN community to also test the routing mechansim of OCPI messages between different OCN Nodes.
The new node is available under https://ocnnode.elaad.io/.
Please follow the instructions for Connecting a service when you want to use it and reach out to Harm van den Brink from Elaad NL to obtain a registration token.
We have been working hard over the last few months to provide a secure Open Charging Network. Our focus has partly been on developing message signing and verifying functionality. Today we can introduce our method for enabling secure message transfer across the network.
As message signing may be a new concept for some, we aim to introduce it slowly. Right now, in the node provided in the public test environment, message signing is optional. The OCN node currently has a feature toggle for message signing, wherein turning it on enforces OCN Signatures in request headers and turning it off means that the signature will only be verified if the header is present. The provided public test environment node has the message signing requirement turned off, so that users can experiment and play around with it first. Once the production network launches, message signing will be a requirement.
For more technical information about message signing, visit our wiki page here.
The OCN Client project has been renamed to OCN Node, based on community feedback. This rename was done to avoid any confusion over existing client-server architectures.
Changelist from rename:
New registry contract address on public test environment
0x0A5f27Ee1EbDC68034aDbd9446F9375783aeF7DC
registry methods renamed:
updateClientInfo=>updateNodeInfoclientAddressOf=>nodeAddressOfclientURLOf=>nodeURLOf
/ocn/registry/client-infoendpoint renamed to/ocn/registry/node-info
Today, we have launched the first public test environment for the OCN in its current state of development. Charge Point Operators, eMobility Service Providers and any other interested parties are invited to connect and test their own electric vehicle charging products against it. Just follow these four simple steps on our Developer Resources page to get started.
We wish you happy testing. Please do not hesitate to contact us via our Gitter community, to ask questions on Stack Overvflow or to contribute on our Bitbucket repositories.