EV Charging France
Know a charging point is free before you leave.
You drive to the charger by the supermarket, and both points are taken. Or one is “free” and turns out to have been out of service since spring. This app tells you, before you leave, how many points are free around you or at one station you use, and it is honest about how much it actually knows.
Where the data comes from
Charging operators declare their points to the French national access point for transport data, published on data.gouv.fr: one file for locations, power and tariffs, another for live availability. The app reads both directly, under the Licence Ouverte. No account, no API key.
Requirements
- Homey Pro running firmware 12.2.0 or newer.
- Not available on Homey Cloud: the app runs locally.
- Your Homey’s location, or custom coordinates on the device.
- France only. The national database stops at the border, and so does the app.
Two devices
Charge points nearby watches every station within a radius of your Homey. Tracked charging station follows one station you pick at pairing.
| Capability | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Free charge points | How many are free right now (nearby), or at this station (tracked) |
| Charge points | The total, so “2” reads as “2 out of 6” |
| A charge point is free | Alarm |
| Status | Free, In use, Out of service or Not reported (tracked station) |
| Out of service | Alarm (tracked station) |
| Stations in range and Search radius | Nearby only |
| Nearest free station, Address, Distance | Where to go |
| Maximum power | In kW |
| Tariff and Price per kWh | As published by the operator, when it is |
| Live data coverage | The share of points whose status reading is fresh, in per cent |
| Reading taken | When the status was last reported |
The widget
- Charge points shows whether it is the nearby device or a tracked station, then the station name, the number of free points out of the total, the address, and a footer with the tariff and how fresh the data is.
Pick a device from the list (type to search), or leave it empty and let the Show setting decide: First available device, Charge points nearby or Tracked charging station. Each tile shows one device, so for home and work, add the widget twice.
Five backgrounds: Deep blue, Slate, Plum, Forest and Sand.
Flow cards
Triggers:
- [device]: A charge point became free
- [device]: No charge point is free any more
- [device]: The number of free charge points changed
- [device]: Free charge points rise above [count]
- [device]: A charge point went out of service
- [device]: The station status changed
Conditions:
- [device]: Free charge points are at least [count]
- [device]: The station is closer than [distance] km
- [device]: The published price is below [price] €/kWh
- [device]: The station status is [status]
- [device]: At least [percent]% of charge points have a fresh reading
Actions:
- [device]: Refresh charge point data
- [device]: Set the search radius to [radius] km
The freshness condition is the one people skip and should not. “A charge point is free” means a lot more when you also know that most of the points around you reported this morning.
Why the app keeps saying how old things are
Availability is only as good as what each operator publishes. Across France, about a third of charge points report their status within a day, and 29% carry no readable timestamp at all.
So every reading carries its age. Each device has a freshness limit, 24 hours by default: a reading older than that is still shown, but it no longer counts as free. A point that last said “free” a week ago is not free, it is a rumour.
When the availability feed itself goes down for a while, the app keeps the last state it had rather than declaring every point occupied, and it does not fire “became free” when the feed comes back.
“No tariff published” is not “free”
The tariff field is free text. Barely a quarter of charge points fill it in, and only about one in ten contains a price per kWh that can actually be read; the rest is a sentence or a web address. The app reads what it can and otherwise says “no tariff published”. It never guesses: an invented price would feed a Flow condition, and that is worse than no price at all.
Settings
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Search radius (nearby) | 10 km (1 to 100) |
| Minimum power (nearby) | 0 kW, every station kept |
| Refresh every | 15 minutes (5 to 240) |
| Treat a reading as current for | 24 hours (1 to 168) |
| Use custom coordinates | Off: your Homey’s position |
Below 15 minutes you mostly re-read the same values: operators publish at their own pace.
One quirk: Homey does not let an app rename its own device. If you change the radius of a device paired as “Charge points within 10 km”, it keeps that name until you rename it yourself. The Search radius capability always shows the one in use.
Languages
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish.
Reporting a problem
Post here with your Homey firmware version and the app version. Then open the app’s settings page, press Generate the report and paste it: it lists your Homey’s context, the state of every device and the recent log, and contains no credentials. If a station looks wrong, give its name and town, and what you saw on site. Bear in mind that a station showing stale data is usually the operator’s silence, not the app’s.
More about the app, every widget and Flow card included: EV Charging France for Homey — Rapinology
Feedback and testers welcome.
Have fun 
