What's new in L2R.1.7A firmware?

[DaveEV]

Mine finally updated this morning on it's own after unplugging from the car.

 

[IBELEAF]

My BLINK seems to reboot after I unplug the charger with this update.

 

[patrick0101]

I've had this firmware version for a couple days and I had my first error with L2R.1.7A today. I plugged in the car, it started charging, it stop charging, and reschedule. I set it to start charging tomorrow morning. Hit enter and then it starting charging immediately.

The screen showed that morning's charging time that I had set the day before. It ignored the new schedule that I just set. I tried 2 more times with the same result.

I rebooted and then it worked fine.

 

[DaveEV]

FWIW - my Blink was very stable on 1.6 - rebooting perhaps once a week. Seems like its rebooting every 1-3 days now after upgrading to 1.7.

Have gotten maybe one good day of charge data uploaded to the website. So at least for me - 1.7 appears to be a step backwards in stability.

 

[TomT]

No problems here yet after a week with 1.7A...

 

[svBackstreets]

My Blink was successfully upgraded remotely this morning. Now I can only connect to the router. I've power cycled and clicked "retry test" about a hundred times. Green green red red n/a red.

I was doing fine before the firmware upgrade.

P.S. Thought I'd check my color sequence before I posted, so I ran the test for the 101st time. All green now.

 

[Volusiano]

P.S. Thought I'd check my color sequence before I posted, so I ran the test for the 101st time. All green now.

Yeah, until you test it again for the 102nd time, then it won't be all green anymore... Been there done that, not with 1.7A but 1.5A and 1.6A. Gave up and had Blink send someone back to install the PLI.

 

[DaveEV]

FWIW - my Blink was very stable on 1.6 - rebooting perhaps once a week. Seems like its rebooting every 1-3 days now after upgrading to 1.7.

Have gotten maybe one good day of charge data uploaded to the website. So at least for me - 1.7 appears to be a step backwards in stability.

Sent an email to Blink Support - apparently the 1.7 update wasn't supposed to fix the random reboot issues - so my bad luck may be a fluke. They are working on fixing the issue, but it appears it will take another month or two for a proper fix. Not good!

 

[davewill]

Sent an email to Blink Support - apparently the 1.7 update wasn't supposed to fix the random reboot issues - so my bad luck may be a fluke. They are working on fixing the issue, but it appears it will take another month or two for a proper fix. Not good!

Since the update, mine has been rebooting about that often, too. A real possibility is that they did this on purpose. It's an old trick used by bad programmers who can't find bugs that crop up after the system has run for a while. Rebooting regularly will mask resource leaks and other things that cause problems. A "fix" for the 502 error, maybe?

 

[DaveEV]

Since the update, mine has been rebooting about that often, too. A real possibility is that they did this on purpose. It's an old trick used by bad programmers who can't find bugs that crop up after the system has run for a while. Rebooting regularly will mask resource leaks and other things that cause problems. A "fix" for the 502 error, maybe?

Could be - sounds like the code is a bit of a mess.

 

[Deleted member 770]

FWIW - my Blink was very stable on 1.6 - rebooting perhaps once a week. Seems like its rebooting every 1-3 days now after upgrading to 1.7.

Have gotten maybe one good day of charge data uploaded to the website. So at least for me - 1.7 appears to be a step backwards in stability.

I concur - my symptoms are similar, though I've missed about every other day of uploads. And judging by the errors in my Blink's system log:

Aug 29 16:17:19 L2R17A user.crit MiniKitBrowser: [MINIKIT] fatal error, initiating reboot. Received EVSE HTTP Status code 502 on call to core wrapper.

I think davewill is exactly correct. They just modified the code so that instead of hanging on the "Error 502" screen as version 1.6 did, it just reboots as a workaround.

I for one hope they get these problems fixed soon. It's quite disconcerting to have a unit that reboots about every other day, though to its credit, it's never yet failed to charge - probably because I'm using the LEAF's charging timers and not the Blink's.

Sigh.

 

[DaveEV]

Mine rebooted in the middle of the charge last night. Carwings reported that charging stopped briefly because of it, but it restarted as I got my normal end-of-charge email. It appears that I lost charge data because of it.

In my logs:

Aug 31 08:42:35 L2R17A user.crit MiniKitBrowser: [MINIKIT] fatal error, initiating reboot. Core failure. Core threw an exception from getCurrentState method during EvseIPC processStateChange call.
Aug 31 08:42:35 L2R17A user.err MiniKitBrowser: [EVSECORE] Error: 12
Aug 31 08:41:35 L2R17A user.crit MiniKitBrowser: [MINIKIT] fatal error, initiating reboot. Core failure. Core threw an exception from getCurrentState method during EvseIPC processStateChange call.
Aug 31 08:41:35 L2R17A user.err MiniKitBrowser: [EVSECORE] Error: 12
Aug 31 08:40:34 L2R17A user.crit MiniKitBrowser: [MINIKIT] fatal error, initiating reboot. Core failure. Core threw an exception from getCurrentState method during EvseIPC updateCurrentState call.
Aug 31 08:40:34 L2R17A user.err MiniKitBrowser: [EVSECORE] Error: 12

 

[SharonaLA]

Wanted to notify you that my blink crashed last night, failed to charge my car and then failed to charge it again when I returned home from teaching this afternoon.

I had to cut power to the Blink and reboot it in order for it to charge. Usually when the machine malfunctions, at least it still charges. Not this time.

I was not happy to find out I only had half power this morning for my commute to work. On the way home, I had to take city streets to conserve power and arrived home with 1 1/2 bars.

If this continues to be a problem, I will be very upset. I need this to be my reliable commuter car.

 

[DaveEV]

Wanted to notify you that my blink crashed last night, failed to charge my car and then failed to charge it again when I returned home from teaching this afternoon.

Make sure you notify Blink support of your issues.

 

[lkkms2]

I really haven't had any recent problems with charging on my Blink. A few times before it seemed to freeze up (could tell from the display that something was different) so I just would just unplug and reboot the unit. After going through the initial calibration effort by pressing the + and o symbols I could then charge again.

On Saturday night/Sunday morning, however, my Leaf did not charge up. With the newest firmware L2R.1.7.A the display looked normal. So I thought there might be something wrong with my Leaf. I pressed the start button and everything came up normal, but I realized that I had left my airconditioner on when I last turned the car off. I had remembered that I had read somewhere in the MNL about someone having a problem charging after they had left the A/C on. I believe eventually that particular car had to have something fixed at the dealers, but the initial fix was to disconnect the 12 V battery. So after trying a few other things to see if I could get the charging going including pressing the timer-off button and plugging and unpluging the Blink from the Leaf I decided to disconnect the 12 V battery. Well that didn't help (but remember always disconnect the negative terminal first or sparks may fly - you can probably guess why I am stating this.).
(Note: when I would plug and replug the Blink into my Leaf the car would beep, but no blue lights would start up.)

Anyway, On Sunday I drove down to my Dealers in National City (San Diego area), CA thinking that I would have to have them work on it. I pulled into the lot and plugged into their Avcon Charger (another check) and to my surprise it started charging. Max (Smith) who I purchased the car from, and who has always been very helpful, was there. After some discussions I decided to head back home to try plugging in my 120 V EVSE and it did indeed charge!! Now my attention went back to the Blink.

I checked the device details - the Firmware version was the same (L2R.1.7A). Everything else seemed normal, but I did notice that the last network transmition listed was right before midnight, right before my Leaf was scheduled to charge up.
On Monday I called Blink and got someone to talk with after waiting just a minute or two. Anyway they were very helpful and stayed on the phone until the issue was resolved. In the end all I had to do was unplug the Blink (or flip breaker) wait 2-3 minutes and then plug back in to reset/reboot the Blink.

I am sharing this story because the Blink screen did not show any frozen condition and I somehow went off on the wrong path to solve this issue. So, as one of the troubleshooting steps always reboot the Blink together with any other steps you think of to find/resolve the problem. It may save you an unnecessary trip to the dealers.

 

[DarkStar]

So, as one of the troubleshooting steps always reboot the Blink together with any other steps you think of to find/resolve the problem. It may save you an unnecessary trip to the dealers.

I would suggest making this the 1st troubleshooting step!

 

[TomT]

For those of you that are having WiFi connectivity problems, here is a little tip that Ecotality likely does not want you to know:

The Blink includes a CDMA modem that is on the Sprint network. This can be used for the necessary connectivity in lieu of a WiFi or Ethernet connection if you have good Sprint coverage wherever your Blink is located.

To force the Blink to use the modem, simply disable Network and Wifi connectivity at the Blink . After about 15 minutes, when it can't find any WiFi or network connection, it will enable the CDMA modem and use that from then on out.

 

[linkim]

My Blink has been partially on the blink since Sept. 2 when the display showed an orange "Self Fault Error". After discussion with Blink, it was concluded that I needed a new SD card and they would expedite the request (I can reboot the Blink and charge). Did not hear back (I called them again on Sept. 7) but no response. Then on Sept. 27 the Blink again showed error messages: BlinkSystemError, ReturnCode 6, EVSE Error 12 and another colored screen display (called them about problem). Finally on Oct. 3, I received call back from electrical firm that will come on Oct. 6 to fix the problem.

Will update after the fix.