Blink charger problems

[Sherry]

We have asked Ecotality to fix 2 Blink problems or we will consider dropping out of the Blink program in a month. They seem to have partially fixed the first problem -- random email messages saying charging has finished, with no relation to whether or not the car was even connected to the Blink, and no relation to our time zone when it was connected. Now, I get an email with the correct day and time when I remove the Blink J-plug from the car and put it back in its holder on the wall of the garage. But the message says charging has finished -- which isn't accurate, since the car timer would have finished charging at 7 am, hours before I removed the J-plug. Removing the J-plug is not the same as charging finished.

Is that the kind of message that the rest of you get? (I have not tried setting up Carwings yet.) If this is how the Blink is supposed to work, they should not claim that it can tell you when charging is finished, only that the Blink is no longer connected to the car.

The other problem -- the Blink interrupting our wireless router frequently -- has been punted to their local people. I'm awaiting a call from them.

Sherry

 

[TomT]

I have always had charging messages from the Blink turned off and use the messages from Carwings instead as they are more detailed and reliable. You might try doing likewise.

Is that the kind of message that the rest of you get? (I have not tried setting up Carwings yet.)

 

[davewill]

... But the message says charging has finished -- which isn't accurate, since the car timer would have finished charging at 7 am, hours before I removed the J-plug. Removing the J-plug is not the same as charging finished.

Is that the kind of message that the rest of you get? (I have not tried setting up Carwings yet.) ...

Yeah, the Blink only tells you when you plug/unplug. I turned them off since that is almost useless unless we're talking about public charging. The Carwings notifications are better and actually tell you when you start and stop charging, and warn you if you are at a charger but not plugged in.

 

[leafkabob]

I haven't been paying too much attention to everyone's blink problems since mine was working pretty much without issue since late May. But a little over a week ago the car failed to charge. At the time I chalked it up to not having a good connection. I hadn't waited to see the blinking blue lights (leaf timer on).

But last night I plugged the car in, waited to see the blinking blue lights, and closed up the garage.

Went out to the car this morning and found it hadn't charged.

I called Blink and they acknowledged that my blink was "within a range of serial numbers that need to have the SD card replaced." :shock:

Silly me. I figured Blink would be proactive and fix what they knew was broken.

Secon Electric called me the day after I reported the problem to Blink and made an appointment to fix the unit. They just left after replacing the SD card with the latest one. My Blink screen showed I was on version 1.7 of the firmware before he replaced the card. It now shows 1.6. He said that the old card started at 1.1 and went up higher, but it had problems the further it went. The new card apparently starts at 1.6 and goes up from there. He said it will update to 1.7 within 24 hours and that Blink will monitor the update and call me if it doesn't. (That made me smile).

He also noticed that my blink was not connected to the internet. I never check to see if it is or isn't since I only use the blink to charge the car. He installed a powerline device -- one part plugs into an outlet at my router (with a computer cable running from there to the router) and the other plugs into an outlet near the blink (with a computer cable from that part to the blink). That should solve my connectivity problems he said.

 

[bingme]

Second time event with BLINK Model WE-30CIRE SN101237 not charging. Called Ecotality support.

First event occured two weeks ago. I plugged into my Leaf to charge but did not hear the circuits clunk or see the blue lights come on before leaving the garage. Checked the unit, said it was not charging. Repeated the plug into the Leaf several times with same result. Unplugged the BLINK unit from the 220V outlet (power cycled). Plugged back in, went through screen calibration. Plugged into Leaf, charging started and was successful.

Happened again today/last night but I did not notice it until this morning. Whoops. Low on charge in the car, range anxiety kicked in. Made it to work, plugged into a 110V outlet using the supplied Nissan charger unit.

Called Ecotality support. Got an agent pretty quickly. He was knowledgable and friendly. Diagnosed as poor Wifi connection and possible problems with the microSD card. Stated early builds used a generic SD card that did not always perform properly. Opened a ticket to have someone come and replace it with a SanDisk microSD card. Stated that the WiFi connection could be fixed with an Ethernet over PowerLine Connection (PLC) and that Ecotality would provide the hardware to do this if needed. Stated that the unit has a single core processor so if it cant connect to the ethernet it keeps trying to do so and cant process the request to start charging. He recommended powercycling the unit when I can do so later today.

Just my two cents in case others are experiencing this problem as well.

 

[Valdemar]

Had Blink installed a week ago, no major issues so far (knocking on wood) but now it randomly starts charging after I punched in electric rates last Sunday. I don't have a Blink charging timer configured and my Leaf is set to stop at 80% but no schedule. What happens is that charge starts normal after the car is plugged in and runs successfully until the Leaf stops it at 80%, then some time later charge starts again for a brief period and stops, I get 2 Carwings "Charging stopped" notifications for both charge events. I'm pretty sure this started the day I entered high-peak rates, and until that I only had off-peak rate set. I'm going to reboot it tonight and see if it makes any difference. Also I have the screen set to turn off after 10 minutes, but it does lit up on its own randomly, not a biggie but the fact they can't get a simple feature right makes makes me a bit uncomfortable using this product

 

[davewill]

Had Blink installed a week ago, no major issues so far (knocking on wood) but now it randomly starts charging ... Also I have the screen set to turn off after 10 minutes, but it does lit up on its own randomly, not a biggie but the fact they can't get a simple feature right makes makes me a bit uncomfortable using this product

The Blink seems to restart at least every day or two, sometimes more, probably to mask the lockups that were happening before. The way you have you're setup, that would cause the symptoms you see. I've noticed that sometimes the screen will light up when I open my garage door. I figure the change in air pressure or vibration is disturbing the touchscreen.

 

[Valdemar]

The Blink seems to restart at least every day or two, sometimes more, probably to mask the lockups that were happening before.

Well, I guess I can say I got what I paid for +1 on the garage door, I noticed that as well. I've also noticed my garage door opener remote is way more unreliable now, likely because of interference from the Blink unit, I also have a power-line adapter for wired LAN connection, that likely adds additional high-frequency noise to power lines.

 

[DaveEV]

My Blink's wifi stopped working on Nov 1st after working as usual for a number of months.

Tried rebooting it, reconfiguring it, no go. Finally gave up - since I have a small wifi AP next to it for my solar PV monitoring system, I added a small switch so I could "hard-wire" the Blink. That got it working.

Hoping the next firmware update lets me remove the switch - the wall is cluttered!

FWIW I'm using an Asus WL-330GE for the AP and a TrendNet TEG-S50g GREENnet switch. Both are very low power - the AP uses about 2-3W and the GREENnet uses about 1W with 3 devices plugged in - pretty impressive.

 

[davewill]

... Hoping the next firmware update lets me remove the switch - the wall is cluttered!

FWIW I'm using an Asus WL-330GE for the AP and a TrendNet TEG-S50g GREENnet switch. Both are very low power - the AP uses about 2-3W and the GREENnet uses about 1W with 3 devices plugged in - pretty impressive.

I'm assuming you're using the AP to bridge into the rest of your network? In your shoes, I'd pretty up that install as much as possible, because it's unlikely that the Blink WiFi will ever become reliable.

 

[DaveEV]

Yep, the AP bridges into the rest of the network. The Blink worked well for me for a long time on wireless - not sure why it decided to crap out on me now. Maybe more noise in the neighborhood? Will have to get the AP scanner out and check.

 

[Valdemar]

My unit is hard-wired, is there option to restart it without cutting the power off using circuit breaker?

 

[Valdemar]

I looked under device info today and system up-time matched the last "charge completed" message from Carwings, so unit reboot was indeed the cause for the secondary notification. Hopefully if it decides to crash while charging the charging process will resume after restart. Wondering if rates that I entered have anything to do with it, I had no reboots for almost a week before I entered them and now it crashes daily. If crashes continue I'll try clearing them just to see if it makes any difference.

 

[DarkStar]

My unit is hard-wired, is there option to restart it without cutting the power off using circuit breaker?

There is no option from the intranet page to restart the Blink.

 

[hpage]

Plugged the Blink into the Leaf at lunch time today, the Blink displayed "Not Charging" but the Leaf was indeed charging, as evidenced by the Leaf's blue blinky lights and 4.2kWh draw on the meter (dropped to .5kWh once the J1772 connector was removed).

 

[sirfergy]

My Blink has recently starting crashing, and after I unplug/plug it in it's lost it's settings. Anyone else seen this? Should I open a support ticket with Blink?

 

[davewill]

My Blink has recently starting crashing, and after I unplug/plug it in it's lost it's settings. Anyone else seen this? Should I open a support ticket with Blink?

It hasn't really lost the settings. It tries to go through setup every time you restart it. Just turn your back on it when it asks for screen recalibration and it will eventually timeout to the main screen with all settings intact.

 

[wsbca]

First charge failure last night after 11 months of no problems - "coincidentally" the day before the big announced Blink server outage/update. I had the welcome to blink bootup screen active yesterday when I got home (rather than it being in screensaver mode and on the ready to go screen), but in all previous instances since installation last January, that has never impeded charging. Had I noticed later that it was still at that stage, might have power cycled it, but as I said, it's always gone ahead and charged (off of car timer) regardless of the state of the Blink unit before so I probably wouldn't have...in fact I'm pretty sure I did notice it and ignored it based on past history - poor assumption. Last night...luck ran out, still stuck on same screen this morning and for the first time ever the car did not get its charge. I power cycled the Blink, then toggled the car timer off (my timer normally goes from 9pm to 5am), and it's now charging. What chaps me the most is of course this morning we're leaving in 45 minutes and would have been meeting some folks who are interested in our LEAF, but now they won't be able to see it. Grrrr.

 

[ByeByePump]

Same thing here, only the first time was 2 nights ago just after blink announcement. Took ice car to work and forgot to play with it last night when I bypassed car's timer and plugged in again. No charge again this morning. Cycled the blink off & on and she's now charging.

Hope this isn't a reoccurring thing due to the blink update and I get enough juice to make it to the Leaf meeting at goggle today.

 

[mdh]

i was told by their tech support there is a major sw upgrade/rewrite happening in Dec.