More Hearts than Stars: Smart Charging & Community Funding

evcc talk at the FOSS Backstage Conference 2025 in Berlin.

https://25.foss-backstage.de/session/more-hearts-than-stars-smart-charging-community-funding/

Transcript

1. more heats than stars smart charging & community funding x Michael Geers, evcc Core Team, 10.3.2025 4,2 k 7,1 k
5. Agenda 1. What is evcc? 2. The Community 3. Sustainable Funding
6. Who am I? Michael Geers naltatis github, mastodon.social, bsky, … Software Developer frontend focus E-Commerce & Architecture as a real job evcc Core Team to save the planet
7. What is evcc?
8. open source smart EV charging started 5 years ago acronym: evcc = electric vehicle charge controller
9. since 2020 fi rst use-case charge your car with solar energy vendor-indepentend connects hardware you already own acronym: electric vehicle charge controller
10. How does it work? solar system grid meter battery system state of charge charging data EV charger electric vehicle CO₂, price, solar control forecast control energy data
11. Where does evcc run? Linux macOS Windows your hardware, your data, no cloud, no tracking Docker NAS systems mini PC, homelab, … Raspberry Pi, …
12. solar charging EV charger solar system + →
13. Web UI Android & iOS appnew vehicle session house modes
14. cheap & clean grid charging dynamic tariff EV charger +
15. supported devices
16. The Community
17. 🧑💻 Code Contributions 98 contributors in docs https://github.com/evcc-io/evcc 333 contributors in core 18 contributors in app Docusaurus, Markdown, Englisch, German Go, Vue.js React Native, Android & iOS
18. 🏳🌈 UI Translations https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/evcc/ 29 languanges via weblate.org
19. 📸 Photography https://hee.se
24. Community Portraits
25. Sustainable Funding
26. evcc Core Team • cross-functional team • decide on scope and direction • maintenance the boring stuff • issues, pull requests, bug fi xes, releases, new features • spreading the word like right now https://github.com/sponsors/evcc-io
27. GitHub
28. sponsor token unlocks all EV chargers $2/mo or $100 one-time free contributor tokens, trial token code is 100% open source smart switches, community friendly & open hardware chargers don’t require sponsoring https://docs.evcc.io/en/docs/sponsorship
29. company sponsors - device integration collaboration - active code contributions - fi nancial support individuals that picked a higher sponsor tier 💚 https://evcc.io
31. sponsor sticker letters https://bsky.app/pro fi le/wichety.bsky.social/post/3ljp fl zo4a22k
32. places we’ve sent stickers to https://kepler.gl
33. https://kepler.gl
34. 🙃 https://kepler.gl
35. thoughts
36. 🤘 Community Funding Rocks actual users pay you to work on open source 🤩
37. 🤘 Community Funding Rocks project direction & user needs align naturally no VC money, startup obligations and growth targets, business foo
38. 🤔 Why does this work for us? grateful target group users save money
39. Doesn’t work for everyone https://pocketbase.io/faq/
40. 🌱 How to Continue Sustainably? Beyond GitHub sponsors? Do we need a legal entity?
41. thanks project: evcc.io me: geers.tv