First Charging Session

Your Thorium unit is installed, powered on, and showing the home screen. This guide walks you through running your first real charging session from start to finish — selecting a charger, processing a payment, monitoring the session, and reviewing the completed transaction.

The Touchscreen Home Screen

When Thorium is idle, the touchscreen displays the home screen. You will see a list of available charger channels (up to 4), each showing its current status:

Available — the channel is ready to start a new session.
Charging — an active session is in progress, with live kWh and duration displayed.
Offline — the channel is disabled or the contactor has been manually switched off.

The top status bar shows the network connection status, current time, and the unit's serial identifier. A green "Online" badge confirms that the controller has an active connection to Thorium Cloud and the Viva Wallet payment gateway.

Selecting a Charger

Tap on any channel marked Available. The screen transitions to the session preparation view, which displays:

The channel number and charger label (e.g., "Charger 1 — Parking Spot A3").
The current pricing rate (e.g., 0.30 EUR/kWh).
A prompt asking the driver to tap their payment card.

At this stage, no power is being delivered. The contactor remains open until a successful payment authorization is received.

Tap to Pay

The driver holds their contactless card, phone (Apple Pay / Google Pay), or wearable near the Viva Wallet NFC POS terminal on the front panel of the unit. The POS will emit a short beep and flash green to indicate a successful read.

Behind the scenes, Thorium sends a preauthorization request to Viva Wallet. This temporarily holds a predefined amount on the driver's card (default: 30.00 EUR) without actually charging it. This hold guarantees that funds are available to cover the session.

Preauthorization is not a charge. The held amount is released back to the driver after the session ends, minus the actual cost of energy consumed. See Payment Flow for full details.

If the authorization is approved, the touchscreen shows a brief "Authorized" confirmation and the session begins automatically. You will hear the contactor click as it closes, connecting mains power to the charger.

Watching the Session Live

Once charging begins, the active session screen displays real-time metrics:

Energy delivered — accumulated kWh, updated every second.
Current draw — instantaneous amperage on the channel.
Session duration — elapsed time since the contactor closed.
Estimated cost — running total based on the configured pricing rate.
Session state — "Charging" while current is flowing, "Idle" if the vehicle has stopped drawing power but has not unplugged.

You can navigate back to the home screen at any time — active sessions continue in the background. The home screen will show a compact status summary for each active channel.

Session Completion

A session ends when any of the following conditions are met:

The driver unplugs the vehicle, and current drops to zero for more than 30 seconds.
The preauthorization limit is approaching (the system will stop charging to prevent exceeding the held amount).
An operator manually stops the session from the touchscreen or from Thorium Cloud.

When the session ends, Thorium opens the contactor (cutting power to the charger), calculates the final energy consumed, and sends a capture request to Viva Wallet for the exact amount. The remainder of the preauthorized hold is released back to the driver's card.

For example, if 15.4 kWh were delivered at 0.30 EUR/kWh, the capture amount would be 4.62 EUR. The original 30.00 EUR hold is replaced with the final charge, and the difference is released.

Checking the Transaction

After the session completes, you can review the transaction details in two places:

On the Touchscreen

Navigate to the session history screen by tapping the menu icon and selecting Session History. Each entry shows the channel, start/end times, energy delivered, cost, and payment status.

On Thorium Cloud

Log in to cloud.thorium.gr and navigate to your unit's Sessions tab. Cloud provides more detailed data including current waveform graphs, payment transaction IDs, and the option to export reports.

Congratulations! You've completed your first charging session. For a deeper understanding of how the system works under the hood, continue to How Charging Works.