Blink Firmware 1.8 - here's hoping

Hello Blinkers,
Has anyone noticed firmware version 1.8 got pushed out yesterday? I haven't used mine since but I sure hope it's a good one. The whole network was upgraded a week ago. I'm hopeful

Thanks for the heads up. I checked the log and 1.8A did come through December 9. I charged yesterday evening with no problems, but then I didn't have problems before. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Yep, mine updated two days ago...

Mine updated on 7 December. No problems so far....

My Blink updated and no problem charging with LEAF timer. However still can't get the Plug Events logs to change. Haven't bothered to contact Ecotality to find out the reason.

Hrm. On the midnight that separated Wed the 12/7 and 12/8, the Blink failed to charge our LEAF. This is the first problem we had since we had our original blinky Blink replaced in July. I tried the power cycle reboot, which didn't seem to work; a second did, and its been charging OK since.

I see now I'm on 1.8; wonder if the update precipitated the problem.

I rebooted it again tonight, because I'd screwed up the screen calibration when I rebooted it after its failure, making it very confusion to navigate. Network connection failed; took a few tries through to get it go work--and I'm using LAN!

The log file has a lot of unpleasant looking EVSE core 503's, and, in the middle of several entries for Dec 12 (apparently it runs on UTC time), one entry from Jan 1 (for BusyBox, which I run on my phone, I guess there's a Linux version too).

Supposedly this beta version (2.0) is coming to our Blink in the next day or two. Man, I hope that works better.

My Blink was updated 2 days 8 hours ago (Dec 9th) and has remained up since then - so far so good! Didn't even notice until I saw this thread.

If it stays online for 2 weeks I'd be willing to say that the firmware is much better - seemed like 1.7 rebooted itself quite frequently (at least a couple times a week) otherwise. Nothing abnormal in the logs at all since the new version.

I may even ditch the wireless bridge and try the Blink's built-in wireless again if 1.8 looks stable.

I don't know when/if mine was updated but this is the second week in a row that my leaf stopped charging at exactly 12am sunday night and never started again, even though I double checked my charge timers on the car.

lonndoggie said:

Hrm. On the midnight that separated Wed the 12/7 and 12/8, the Blink failed to charge our LEAF. This is the first problem we had since we had our original blinky Blink replaced in July. I tried the power cycle reboot, which didn't seem to work; a second did, and its been charging OK since.

Click to expand...

Mine seems to have done exactly the same thing. Still on 1.7A after the double reboot though.

lonndoggie said:

Hrm. On the midnight that separated Wed the 12/7 and 12/8, the Blink failed to charge our LEAF. This is the first problem we had since we had our original blinky Blink replaced in July. I tried the power cycle reboot, which didn't seem to work; a second did, and its been charging OK since.

I see now I'm on 1.8; wonder if the update precipitated the problem.

I rebooted it again tonight, because I'd screwed up the screen calibration when I rebooted it after its failure, making it very confusion to navigate. Network connection failed; took a few tries through to get it go work--and I'm using LAN!

The log file has a lot of unpleasant looking EVSE core 503's, and, in the middle of several entries for Dec 12 (apparently it runs on UTC time), one entry from Jan 1 (for BusyBox, which I run on my phone, I guess there's a Linux version too).

Supposedly this beta version (2.0) is coming to our Blink in the next day or two. Man, I hope that works better.

Click to expand...

My Blink got updated Saturday night and it too failed to charge my Volt on Sunday. I too had to reboot it twice. Seems to be working okay now, but this is disconcerting.

Well my Blink on 1.8 rebooted in the middle of charging last night. So not fixed yet.

I too have had the 1.8 firmware reboot itself, so the problem still isn't fixed. Sigh. If I were Ecotality, I'd be

ahagge said:

I too have had the 1.8 firmware reboot itself, so the problem still isn't fixed. Sigh. If I were Ecotality, I'd be

Click to expand...

Ecotality is in a terriffic position. They won a bid for a large-volume sale of their design to a government bureau that will pass them off to end-users who will be contractually bound to put up with any teething problems the Blink prototypes have in the field. They'll have the whole run of the EV Project to refine their design and its firmware, and be well-prepared to provide EVSEs just as (if the crystal balls are working properly) EVs are really taking off. The only question would be whether they'll actually use the opportunity to improve their products sufficiently so that people who have a choice in the matter would actually buy them.

Hello Blinkers,
Mine seems to be working OK and the logging on the web site seems improved. Two of my power graphs show charge interruption though.

bowthom said:

Hello Blinkers,
Mine seems to be working OK and the logging on the web site seems improved. Two of my power graphs show charge interruption though.

Click to expand...

My Blink again failed to initiate a charge yesterday. One reset of the unit got it going again.

Something is definitely wrong with 1.8.

My Blink locked up with 1.8.

It won't go past the circle calibration screen with (according to the rep on the phone) pushing just below the screen.

Hello,
Yes, now that it has been a few days my blink is crashing, rebooting during charging and failing to send data. Same old problems, core exception failure during network time and communication calls. What's up with these people writing code?

Same here -still crashing, rebooting, & not recording data.

On the "there's hope on the horizon" front, this beta release hasn't had any problems. So far. Fingers crossed (so excuse any typos).

Oh, except today, mid-day, while car was with me away from home and the Blink was just hanging out, I got a Blink notification on my Android phone (the kind sent when it changes state from unplugged to plugged, etc). It said: ERROR. That's it. Never seen that before.

Plugged it in tonight, said it was waiting to charge, so whatever ERROR it had, it seems to have gotten over it. Oh, it just turned midnight, and I got the charging notification, so yay for that.

What with all the excitement about Firmware 1.8 and a couple of failed charging events, I took a closer look at my Blink as well as my online account. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my Blink dashboard had the message "It seems like you have not charged your car in a while...". Indeed, the last charging event they had was from late November. That's not good.

When I tried to access the Blink over my network it was non responsive. It is attached wirelessly and I never had any issues with it - until late November, apparently. Now it won't stay on the network for more than a minute. I haven't changed anything so it seems my luck must have run out or the Blink's wifi degraded. What to do? Routing a cat-5 cable down to the garage would be a pain, but it needs reliable network access or they'll take it back and kick me out of the Project.

I went up to the attic and found an older version Apple Airport Extreme base station that I had abandoned when I was trying to debug wireless issues with an iPad 1 (good times!). I took it down to the garage and daisy-chained it to my network and plugged the Blink into one of its ports. A quick network setup exercise and presto, Blinkie was back on the network. The first thing it did was download Firmware 1.8, so it was obviously not the source of my charging failures. The few charges I've done since have all worked flawlessly.

So, add another data point to the 'Blink has horrible wifi' tribal knowledge. Whether lost network connectivity can effect charging remains to be seen.