JoltBridge
JoltBridge lets a Jolt charger with a healthy internet connection act as a relay for nearby Jolt chargers whose connection is weak, unreliable, or absent. Chargers find each other automatically, form a private link, and route their backend traffic through whichever unit has the best path to the internet — no extra hardware, no manual pairing, no site visit.
Why it exists
Section titled “Why it exists”Sites rarely have perfect coverage everywhere a charger is mounted. JoltBridge solves three problems operators run into constantly:
- Weak-signal rescue. A charger at the far edge of the site WiFi keeps dropping offline, while its neighbour a few metres closer to the router is fine. With JoltBridge, the edge unit simply rides through its neighbour.
- One SIM per site. Instead of a SIM router in every charger, one charger carries the SIM and every other unit chains through it — fewer data plans, fewer points of failure.
- Automatic failover. If a charger’s own connection dies, it falls back onto a peer instead of going dark, and returns to its own connection once that recovers.
How it works
Section titled “How it works”Every JoltBridge-capable charger can play one of three roles, and decides for itself which one to take:
- Bridge. A charger with a good connection quietly offers a private, hidden WiFi link that only other Jolt chargers can see or join.
- Client. A charger with a poor or missing connection joins a nearby bridge and sends its OCPP and telemetry traffic through it. Its backend link works exactly as before — the bridge is just another route to the internet.
- Midpoint. A client whose path to the internet is confirmed healthy can, in turn, offer a link to units even further out, extending coverage across a larger site in a short chain.
Chargers continuously measure their own connection quality, listen for nearby bridges, and switch only when a peer offers a meaningfully better path. Hysteresis and settling periods prevent units from flapping back and forth.
Design principles
Section titled “Design principles”- Fully autonomous. Chargers organise themselves. The backend only observes and holds an on/off switch; nothing needs to be orchestrated from a server.
- Invisible to everyone else. The private link is hidden and cryptographically authenticated. Phones, laptops, and non-Jolt devices never see it and cannot join it.
- No reboots, ever. Every transition is live. Switching routes looks to the backend like a brief WiFi blip, and an in-progress charging session carries on uninterrupted.
- Self-healing. Every state has a timed path back to the charger’s own WiFi, so a unit can never get stuck on a bridge that has lost its connection.
- Safe for locked-down networks. A charger confirms its internet path using only its configured backend, never a third-party test server, so it works on networks that whitelist only the CMS.
- Standard OCPP. Operators enable, tune, and observe JoltBridge from their existing CMS with ordinary OCPP 1.6 configuration keys — no custom messages, no new integration.
What it means for a site
Section titled “What it means for a site”- Add chargers where the mounting position makes sense, not where the WiFi happens to reach.
- Cut recurring SIM costs by sharing one cellular uplink across a cluster.
- Keep the whole site reporting to the CMS through everyday connectivity hiccups.
Partners integrating with JoltBridge — configuration, election behaviour, telemetry, and the deployment sequence — will find the full reference in the Integrator Guide once signed in.