Charging Floor Monitoring Hardware
A charging platform tells you what the chargers are doing. It does not tell you that a cable has gone, that bay four is blocked by a van, that the bay indicators have been dark for a week, or that there is standing water at the far end. Those are the things that stop a site earning, and none of them appears in charger telemetry. They need hardware on the floor.
What we build for the charging floor, the four things it watches, how occupancy differs from charging state, and the discipline of alerting on few things rather than many.
Talk about unattended sitesFor An operator of unattended sites, especially basement and podium parking where the floor goes unseen for days.
What charger telemetry does not tell you
Swipe to compare
| Situation | What the charger reports | What is actually true |
|---|---|---|
| Bay blocked by a non-EV | Available | Unusable |
| Vehicle finished, still parked | Available | Occupied, and blocking others |
| Cable cut or removed | Nothing until a driver tries | Bay unusable, and it can be days before anyone knows |
| Bay indicator failed | Nothing | Drivers sent to a bay that is already taken |
| Standing water near a unit | Nothing, until it fails | A safety problem developing |
| Access route blocked | Available | No driver can reach the bay |
| Charger physically damaged | Possibly nothing | Out of service |
Every row is a bay earning nothing while the dashboard shows it as available. On an unattended site that state can persist for days.
The hardware, and the four things it watches
This is custom hardware we build for the floor, installed alongside the chargers and reporting into the same management platform. It exists because the four conditions below are the ones that take a bay out of service, and a charger can see none of them.
- 1
Charging cable and theft
BLE beacons on each cable, paired to the session management device at the unit. A cut or a removal breaks the pairing and raises an alert within seconds, whether or not a session was running. This is the same detection covered in full on the cable theft page.
- 2
EV bay occupancy
Whether a vehicle is standing in the bay, which is a separate fact from whether a session is running. The pair of facts is what identifies the van parked across a charging bay and the car that finished two hours ago and has not moved.
- 3
Bay signage indication
The indicator at the bay itself, driven from live state, so a driver arriving at the level can see which bay to take rather than walking the floor. It is also monitored, because a signage unit that has failed is worse than none: it sends drivers to a bay that is taken.
- 4
Water
Detection at floor level, which matters most in basement and podium parking. It is not a charging fault and it is the condition most likely to become an expensive one, and nothing in the charger will ever report it.
Each of the four is independent. A site can take occupancy and signage without cable monitoring, or water detection alone, and the sensing is specified against the floor rather than sold as a fixed bundle.
Occupancy and charging state are different facts
This is the distinction the whole page rests on. A charger knows whether a vehicle is connected to it. It does not know whether a vehicle is in the bay.
- Occupied and charging: working as intended
- Occupied and not charging: the state that causes arguments, and the one that needs a policy rather than a sensor alone
- Empty and available: what everyone assumes when the charger says available
- Blocked and available: a vehicle in the bay that is not an EV, or is not plugged in, which the charger cannot distinguish from an empty bay
Only the combination of occupancy and charger state separates the last two, and the last two are the ones drivers complain about.
Environmental conditions worth watching
- Water. Basement parking floods, drains block, and a charging installation is the worst place for it to happen unnoticed
- Temperature. Enclosed spaces with charging equipment and no ventilation get warm, and warm equipment derates before it fails
- Ventilation. Where it is required, it needs to be confirmed as running rather than assumed
- Lighting. A dark charging area is a wayfinding problem, a security problem and a complaint
None of these are charging problems and all of them stop charging happening. They are worth monitoring precisely because nobody owns them until something goes wrong.
Alerting on few things
The failure mode of site monitoring is alerting on everything, which produces a channel nobody reads and a system that has effectively been switched off.
- 1
Alert on the actionable
Something a person would go and deal with tonight. Water, a failed unit, a security event, a site that has gone dark.
- 2
Report on the trend
Utilisation, blocked-bay frequency, lighting faults. Read weekly, not at two in the morning.
- 3
Log everything else
So it is available when something is being investigated, without demanding attention in the meantime.
- 4
Review what fires
An alert that has fired forty times and been dismissed forty times is not an alert. Either the threshold is wrong or the condition does not matter.
If you add cameras on top
The hardware above uses sensing rather than vision, and covers the four conditions without a camera anywhere. Where a site adds cameras as well, usually for security rather than for monitoring, it acquires obligations it did not have before, and they are not optional.
- Signage, so people know they are being recorded
- Retention limits, and deletion that actually happens rather than a policy that says it does
- Access control on the footage, since a camera feed that anyone in operations can open is a problem waiting to be discovered
- A defined purpose. Security and safety are defensible; watching how long individual people take is not
- In residential buildings, the residents' association usually has to be consulted rather than informed
Want this applied to your own site?
Talk about unattended sitesTechnically reviewed by Deepu Joy, Director of Products and Delivery. Last reviewed 2026-09-10.
Frequently asked questions
Why is charger telemetry not enough?
It reports on the charger, not on the floor. A cut cable, a bay blocked by a van, a dead bay indicator and standing water are all invisible to it, and every one of them stops the bay earning.
How do you detect a bay blocked by a non-EV?
By combining occupancy with charger state. The charger alone cannot distinguish an empty bay from one occupied by a vehicle that is not plugged in.
What should trigger an alert?
Something a person would act on tonight. Everything else should be a weekly report or a log entry. Alerting on everything produces a channel the team stops reading.
Do we need cameras?
No. The hardware uses sensing rather than vision and covers cable, occupancy, signage and water without one. Cameras add capability and add obligations, and the obligations are not optional.
What is the most under-monitored condition?
Water in basement parking, followed by lighting. Neither is a charging problem and both stop charging happening.
Sites you do not visit for days at a time?
Tell us what has gone wrong in the last year and how you found out. That identifies which of the four is worth fitting faster than a sensor list does.
Talk about unattended sites