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Testing with EVerest

Before continuing, set up the necessary prerequisites.

If you don't have a charger that supports OCPP 1.6, 2.0.1, or 2.1, we recommend using the Linux Foundation Energy project EVerest (repository here). They have built an open-source charger firmware that can also be used as a simulator. They support OCPP 1.6, 2.0.1, and 2.1. To set up EVerest yourself, you can follow their documentation and build the project, following the docs here.

Running EVerest#

We have created helpful commands to run the EVerest charger simulator locally, targeting CitrineOS, with minimal configuration required. Running these commands will start the EVerest simulator in Docker, represented through three running containers. You may choose to execute these EVerest commands in the following ways below.

Via pnpm citrine --everest#

Before running these commands, ensure you're in root directory citrineos-core. You can add --everest or --everest for EVerest 2.x and 1.6, respectively, to run alongside the CitrineOS stack: 

pnpm citrine --everest
pnpm citrine down --everest

Refer to the README for more information about the remaining flags.

Via pnpm start:everest#

If you prefer to control when EVerest spins up, you can run it using pnpm. Before running these commands, navigate to the apps/ocpp-server directory:

cd apps/ocpp-server

Commands#

Running EVerest OCPP 2.1#

Run the following command to start the EVerest simulator for OCPP 2.1:

pnpm start:everest
Running EVerest OCPP 2.0.1#

Edit the package.json command for start:everest so it runs EVerest with OCPP 2.0.1:

scripts: {
    ... the remaining package.json scripts
    "start:everest": "cd ./everest && cross-env OCPP_VERSION=2.0.1 EVEREST_IMAGE_TAG=2025.6.1-dt-esdp docker compose up -d",
}

Then run the following command to start the EVerest simulator for OCPP 2.0.1:

pnpm start:everest
Running EVerest OCPP 1.6#

Run the following command to start the EVerest simulator for OCPP 1.6:

pnpm start:everest:16

Containers#

UI#

When the three EVerest containers are running in Docker, you should be able to navigate to [localhost|ip]:1880/ui/ to view the EVerest simulator UI, from which you can simulate events such as the pause/resume charging and plug/unplug.

NodeRed#

You can also view the EVerest NodeRed UI [localhost|ip]:1880/, but it is not advisable to make any adjustments here unless you have a good understanding of this configuration.

Manager#

The manager container will contain any and all logs regarding the EVerest simulator.

Changing EVerest Target URL#

Running EVerest using the commands above will connect the simulator to ws://host.docker.internal:8081/cp001 by default. To change the target URL, you can do the following:

1. Navigate to the everest folder:

cd apps/ocpp-server/everest

2. Open start.sh in a text editor of your choice.

3. Edit the EVEREST_TARGET_URL variable to the desired URL.

4. Take down the EVerest containers (if they're running):

docker compose down

5. Rebuild the EVerest containers:

docker compose build

6. Navigate back to ocpp-server and rerun EVerest:

cd ../
pnpm start:everest

Viewing OCPP logs in EVerest#

To view the OCPP logs in EVerest, we have utilized Node http-server, which you will see being initialized in the Dockerfile. We initialize a simple HTTP server on port 8888 and expose this port so that it is mapped in the compose file allowing you to navigate to localhost:8888. This HTTP server is configured to serve the contents of the /tmp/everest_ocpp_logs which is where EVerest stores the OCPP logs in the Docker container. The logs are in HTML format, so they're viewable in the browser.

Running EVerest Manually#

You can also use their demo repository that hosts a Docker packaged EVerest image. See here for Github Repo To get EVerest running on the side while developing and making changes, you can follow the steps below.

  1. Run your CitrineOS instance locally with docker compose up -d in the CitrineOS repository.
  2. Clone the EVerest Demo repository and cd into the repo.
  3. With CitrineOS running execute an "add charger" script at ./citrineos/add-charger.sh This adds a charger, location and password for the charger to CitrineOS.
  4. Bring up EVerest with docker compose --project-name everest-ac-demo --file "docker-compose.ocpp201.yml" up -d.
  5. Copy over the appropriate device model with docker cp manager/device_model_storage_citrineos_sp1.db \ everest-ac-demo-manager-1:/ext/source/build/dist/share/everest/modules/OCPP201/device_model_storage.db.
  6. Start EVerest having OCPP2.0.1 support with docker exec everest-ac-demo-manager-1 sh /ext/source/build/run-scripts/run-sil-ocpp201.sh.