Blink charger problems

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Folks,
My Blink charger has also been working flawlessly since install last May, until 01Dec when it aborted charging in the middle of the night. The Blink box says last contact was 3:42am...

Wi-Fi connectivity is now inoperative. Scan for Wi-Fi networks is mostly defunct, and it can't get an IP address. I power cycled and went through setup -- tried manual setup of IP, mask, DNS, etc -- no help there. This thing appears to be a dead duck now.

I wonder if it's a bad firmware load?!? My current version in L2R.1.7A 1.10. I wonder if those folks are scrambling to get a new firmware load ready, and if a lot of us are going to be installing it via long Ethernet cables etc. or calling service because the Wi-Fi driver is hosed???
 
My firmware version is L2R.1.7A, 040A, 1.10. I remember it's been on L2R.1.7A for a long time now, but I don't remember the bit about 040A or 1.10. Maybe that bit is new. But so far so good.

My Blink's wifi never works well so they gave me that power extension device that connects through the house wire (forgot the name). Maybe people with hardwire Ethernet or the power extension device like mine are able to download the new firmware better. But even if your wifi mess up the firmware download, it should still not have hosed up anything and the old firmware should still be intact and the new firmware just simply fails to download.
 
  • I've now read the last 17 pages of this, and find that there's not really much new in my Blink experiences. It just took longer for mine to get to this state. As a summary,...
  • Worked for awhile: This unit did pretty well, from May until October. After that, things went downhill.
  • Failed to charge: It failed to charge one Friday night in late October, and i didn't need it on Saturday. Pretty good track record, overall.
  • Charged nonetheless: While it is a monument to cranky software, I am glad it has at least remembered to do what any cheap EVSE is expected to do.
  • Self Test errors (Red Screen): This is probably the only error I never got. It probably relates to defective hardware.
  • 502 Errors (Orange Screen): I used to get this from the Web site over the wireless link. And then it would reboot itself. I think it's an internal check some of the Web page scripts do to discover they didn't load all the way. This became less frequent after some firmware updates. After the WiFi failed completely, I naturally quit seeing them as much...
  • Downloading FW: It always was able to get the updates, somehow. But they generally did not make the bugs go away. They did let the screen go off and other such stuff as has been mentioned. I don't know when the 1.7 update came in, but that may have been when the Blink really started to suffer.
  • Not talking to Blink HQ: Whereas the WiFi only worked about half the time, it always managed to chat with headquarters enough that the data showed up on their website. It was only around November that I noticed the "last communication" entries were lagging. They haven't spoken to each other since Dec 1, and I think that was when I tried the...
  • Hardwired Ethernet: This worked as everyone had suggested. What I hadn't noticed is that you all warned me the network tests all fail. I figured that out subsequently. But it's not practical to run a cable permanently from the living room to the garage.
  • Reboots: Not only does the unit reboot itself, giving me "last charge was 0:01", but I hear that beep a lot. I think the user interface restarts itself regularly, without a complete reboot of the unit.
  • Says "plugged in" when not: This includes the "has been charging now for 18 hours" screen. This sort of thing is a tribute to Javascript, which can do wonderful things without any connection to reality.
  • Says "Please plug in" when charging: Kinda suggests something is wrong when the car is charging, and the screen says it's not even plugged in.
  • Charges upon plugin, outside of timer: Much like the above, it will sometimes begin charging when I plug in, rather than waiting for the appointed time.
  • Says "Processing..." and gets stuck. This is an optimistic promise, wherein the system believes that it really isn't stuck in a loop.
  • WiFi troubles: I saved the best part for last. Folks on this forum swear up and down that the WiFi is deaf. But there are a few facts that just don't jive here. The first one is, that when configuring the link, it will one moment say there is nothing to connect to, and in the next moment show me a list of all my neighbors WiFi links! Including one halfway down the street! That's pretty good for something that supposedly doesn't hear well. So, I took that extra long Ethernet cable, and an extension cord, and I arranged for the WiFi router to be sitting right next to the Blink. It acts no differently that way than before. I have a photo with the router, laptop, and Blink, all together. The laptop is displaying a blinknetwork.com page, showing that the router is online; meanwhile, the Blink is displaying the "failed network test" dialog. So I conclude, it ain't about the signal strength!

Given all the foregoing, I decided to call the Blink folks to see if they had any tried and true remedies. And they said, yes, the bad SD card is the cause of it all. It causes the WiFi connection to fail (not sure how), which causes the system to access the card a lot, which gets a lot of errors, which causes the main system to hang and do all those other goofy things. So, the plan is for the Blink Squad to come out next week or so and change out the card, and then we'll see how much it fixes. Maybe I'll get lucky.

They had me disable the network by configuring it for Ethernet, and then not plugging in a cable. They seem convinced that upgrading to version 1.8 would kill the unit completely, and wanted to make sure there was no chance of that happening.

As to why Blink never contacted me when I dropped off the map, my guess is they are taking care of the folks who are calling in, before they get around to fixing up the rest.

So, the moral (so far) is, that if your unit is old enough to have one of those "non-SanDisk" SD cards, that could be the cause of any number of problems. And they will assume this to be the case, anyway, so get that done first. My Blink was installed in April. I don't know when the switch to "reliable" cards was made.
 
gbarry42 said:
So, I took that extra long Ethernet cable, and an extension cord, and I arranged for the WiFi router to be sitting right next to the Blink. It acts no differently that way than before. I have a photo with the router, laptop, and Blink, all together. The laptop is displaying a blinknetwork.com page, showing that the router is online; meanwhile, the Blink is displaying the "failed network test" dialog. So I conclude, it ain't about the signal strength!
Thanks for doing that test! Although it quashes my hope that everything would be fixed if they just sent an external antenna not shielded by metal and adjacent to power electronics. :-( I was going to do the same thing you tried in hopes of getting a firmware update since my Wifi has been down for about a month on v1.7a, but it looks like I need to avoid v1.8 at all costs since v1.7a at least charges the car, and wait to do anything until they release v2.0. After all, I don't need a network connection for anything. They want a network connection to collect data, and they're welcome to connect to my network at any time they have a device capable of doing so.

Given all the foregoing, I decided to call the Blink folks to see if they had any tried and true remedies. And they said, yes, the bad SD card is the cause of it all. It causes the WiFi connection to fail (not sure how), which causes the system to access the card a lot, which gets a lot of errors, which causes the main system to hang and do all those other goofy things. So, the plan is for the Blink Squad to come out next week or so and change out the card, and then we'll see how much it fixes. Maybe I'll get lucky.
Now in turn I'll quash your hopes that a new SD card will fix everything: it won't. I got a new SD card 4 months ago and it didn't fix anything. I later got a new circuit breaker which did fix all the most serious problems, but not the buggy firmware. If I were you I'd take the new SD card, because I'm sure that some of the old cards fail in ways that create additional problems. But don't get your hopes too high that it will be the end of your problems.
 
walterbays said:
Now in turn I'll quash your hopes that a new SD card will fix everything: it won't. I got a new SD card 4 months ago and it didn't fix anything. I later got a new circuit breaker which did fix all the most serious problems, but not the buggy firmware. If I were you I'd take the new SD card, because I'm sure that some of the old cards fail in ways that create additional problems. But don't get your hopes too high that it will be the end of your problems.

Mine is exactly the same. I'm currently waiting for service (about a month now).
 
walterbays said:
Now in turn I'll quash your hopes that a new SD card will fix everything: it won't. I got a new SD card 4 months ago and it didn't fix anything.

I concur, the SD card (may have changed twice) did not fix my Blink. The Power Line Adapter provided stability so I don't have charging problems. However last night while charging to 80%, the last recording on the Blink display indicated 22 min charging. The Blink website showed 10. 6 kWh and the graphics on the home page didn't show any indication of the 22 min charge. In the past, the website showed the last charging event so what I saw is different from my previous experience. At least, I didn't have to continually hassle with rebooting the Blink, and I was able to charge. Maybe that's as good as it gets.
 
I can report that after latest f/w update from several weeks ago (was it 1.8?) the unit is much more stable, I only saw it reboot once whereas previously it would crash and reboot every other day. Keeping my fingers crossed.
 
linkim said:
The Power Line Adapter provided stability so I don't have charging problems. However last night while charging to 80%, the last recording on the Blink display indicated 22 min charging. The Blink website showed 10. 6 kWh and the graphics on the home page didn't show any indication of the 22 min charge. In the past, the website showed the last charging event so what I saw is different from my previous experience. At least, I didn't have to continually hassle with rebooting the Blink, and I was able to charge. Maybe that's as good as it gets.
Since they replaced the flaky (new) circuit breaker in the submeter panel I haven't had any real trouble with charging. Occasionally/rarely Blink will fail and I have to unplug it and plug it back in. But since I'm now using only the Leaf's timer such failures only occur when I plug the car in, so I'm never taken by surprise. The Blink may work normally or it may show all kinds of crazy stuff on its screen, or the screen may stay black, but I just ignore whatever it says. Once I get the clunk clunk of the power relay and the blue charging timer lights flashing on the Leaf I know I'm good to go.

As for charging stats on the Blink web site, those disappeared for me months ago when they redesigned their web site, so I'm not missing anything. I'd like to be able to see how much it's costing if they ever fix their firmware and also fix their web site. But really, charging the car is so cheap compared to the gas station that I don't need to track it.
 
walterbays said:
Since they replaced the flaky (new) circuit breaker in the submeter panel I haven't had any real trouble with charging.
What led you to try replacing the breaker? Was it obvious (no power to the Blink)? Because I would never suspect something like that otherwise.

It looks like our mileage will vary...my Blink was fairly well behaved in the early days. Was yours like that, Tony? I'm hoping for it to improve somewhat. As I've said, it's still able to charge the car anyway. Maybe if the service guys don't call right away (apparently, in the past, they used to), I'll try changing out the card myself (snicker). It would be nice if I could get all that saved data up to the site...I know it will all go away when they swap the card. Maybe I'll plug in the wired connection the day before they come out. I would think that even if it went to 1.8 and died, they could fix that by swapping the card. Ah, artificially created mysteries (they know the answers but we don't).
 
gbarry42 said:
What led you to try replacing the breaker? Was it obvious (no power to the Blink)? Because I would never suspect something like that otherwise.
I had a lot of power fault type events (where "a lot" is maybe 5% probability of a problem). Several times the circuit breaker tripped leaving the Blink not powered. It was the new breaker on the submeter, redundant to and downstream of the breaker in the main service panel, never the breaker in the main panel. Sometimes the Blink would call power fault and hang. Sometimes the Leaf would call power fault and refuse to charge until restarted. The electrician who came out to look after one failure said, why not change the breaker just in case? It's cheap and easy to do while he was here. And his hunch turned out to be right.

Oh, and just hours after I wrote that all my charging problems were solved, the Blink failed to charge my car, although everything looked normal when I plugged in with Leaf timer active. Same old chirping cricket Blink that used to be accompanied by the orange power fault screen, but now it says I should check the car :) Same fix for the frozen Blink: unplug car, unplug A/C, plug A/C, wait, plug car.

PS, I like your signature, but you know Tony has driven between SD and LA, as have a few others. I doubt if he has driven between SD and Japan, but he may have flown it :)
 
Ecotality came to visit today. (Tony, take note--they may have lost your request. Most everyone else seems to be getting fast responses.) He did a few tests (the dummy load box, checking the 5.0v supply) and then we got around to the matter at hand, the dead Wireless. He was on the phone with tech support the whole time, and I "helped" on this end. Not too far into it, he changed out the SD card. Sure enough, no change! Actually, to my surprise, the WiFi wouldn't work at all. Well, that didn't hurt my case. I did the "router two feet away from the Blink" trick; this took awhile to sink in over at tech support, but eventually convinced them that boosters and extenders and "how far away is your router" just wasn't relevant. So, we ended up with choices of (1) The dreaded PLC (power-line Ethernet extender), or (2) Change out the Blink. He claimed that current Blink models are $4K ["citation needed" :)] so they might not want to do that. Anyway, tech support would decide and get back to me.

A few kind words about the PLC. First of all, as a (ham) radio enthusiast, pumping RF into your power lines is insanity. Everyone else in their right mind has filters to keep the RF in the box and out of the wires. The more practical problem is that I don't want another device and power supply taking another outlet in the living room, and I've got the same problem on the garage end. There are no convenient outlets anywhere near the Blink. The tech, by the way, was also an electrician and said that maybe they could run a 110 circuit out there for a lot less trouble and expense than replacing the Blink. It would actually be a nice windfall to have a 110 outlet on that wall, but anyway...

They called back later in the day, and a new Blink will be installed on Monday. Let's hope I happen to get one of the working ones :roll:

Footnote: When I got home after dinner the Blink was back to showing me the neighbors' WiFi's again. I did the network setup and actually got an "unplugged" message on my phone from BlinkNetwork, but then it went offline again. And so it goes.
 
I just had to deal with an unrelated WiFi issue at home, my aging Linksys router started crashing after an Android phone connected to it received a s/w update. Installing latest f/w on the router fixed the issue. Just saying WiFi issues may not necessarily be on the Blink side.
 
gbarry42 said:
... A few kind words about the PLC. First of all, as a (ham) radio enthusiast, pumping RF into your power lines is insanity. Everyone else in their right mind has filters to keep the RF in the box and out of the wires. The more practical problem is that I don't want another device and power supply taking another outlet in the living room, and I've got the same problem on the garage end. There are no convenient outlets anywhere near the Blink. The tech, by the way, was also an electrician and said that maybe they could run a 110 circuit out there for a lot less trouble and expense than replacing the Blink. It would actually be a nice windfall to have a 110 outlet on that wall, but anyway...
I had a couple of thoughts on this. One is that at least one other person fixed their Blink connection problem with a WiFi to Ethernet adapter instead of a power line adapter. This would keep the RF off the power lines, but would still need an outlet somewhere nearby to power the adapter, however a power strip should cover that OK. The second is that if they are willing to run a 120v circuit, maybe they could run a cat5 drop from your router to the garage, instead. The latter is what I use, but the drop was already there in the garage, rather than something I added for the Blink. The installers were happy to run a length of cat5 from where the Blink was along the wall to where my drop was located.
 
My Blink failed to charge tonight for the first time in several months. I power-cycled it, and it charges, but it hasn't checked in with Blink for about 24 hours. I called Blink support. We tried a few network tests. It recognized the wifi and connected but failed to find the LAN or the Blink Network, whatever that means. The customer service guy said they can't hardwire my Blink because it's outside under a carport. They are going to set up a field service call. I don't really care whether it communications with Blink so long as it charges, but he said that if it doesn't connect, it will keep trying over and over on its own, which can interrupt or prevent charging. Also, I'll miss any updates.
 
- Ecotality releases working version of Blink ? -

I had wished I could use that for the title, but after using it for a week, I'd say it's merely better. Continuing the story I began above, they returned with a new unit. Easy to remove and replace, and once in place, did all the right things. What I really wanted to show you was the "minor modification" to the unit:

blink1.jpg
-
blink2.jpg


[Updated content: I had thought the "new board" was a WiFi card. It's not.] The big board mounted under the display is an RFID reader. Maybe Blink decided to make all the units the same rather than having two models. But, the WiFi now works the way most of us would expect from WiFi. No silly extenders needed! It fired right up, and as soon as we had it configured (dhcp, even), it fetched the 1.8 firmware, all on its own, and was ready to rock and roll.

Now, it still resets itself now and then, does that "chirping" thing (I think that's the UI restarting, but I don't have to go out and look anymore), and I've had one instance of "stuck charging" while it claimed the car wasn't even connected, requiring me to cycle power. But, all in all, it is a LOT better behaved. I believe them when they say it gets hung up over a misbehaving WiFi card. I bet some of the rewriting for the 2.0 firmware is going to take care of this sort of thing.

And, once again, I can talk to it over the network and get my morning charge stats without having to go out to the garage to see the numbers! I had forgotten how nice that is!

About the "chirp" sound: I believe it comes from that button-looking thing at front left. 2013-Jan-01, it is going to get a volume control!
 
Doh! It says "RFID" right at the top of the board :roll: I guess I'm still stuck with the original recipe WiFi. At least it is somehow holding together. I was just out there trying to configure it for my other router. It's still kinda cranky. Not that these routers help. The Netgear means well, but crashes about once a day, and the MediaLink, it won't even talk to for some reason. Blink HQ has nothing on record about MediaLink, so I may have to see if anyone in MNL land has tangled with one of those.
 
gbarry42 said:
Doh! It says "RFID" right at the top of the board :roll: I guess I'm still stuck with the original recipe WiFi. At least it is somehow holding together. I was just out there trying to configure it for my other router. It's still kinda cranky. Not that these routers help. The Netgear means well, but crashes about once a day, and the MediaLink, it won't even talk to for some reason. Blink HQ has nothing on record about MediaLink, so I may have to see if anyone in MNL land has tangled with one of those.
Blink was reporting previously that their units have trouble talking to some routers unless they are in 802.11b mode only (no A, G, or N), however last I was told this was supposed to be resolved via software. Maybe the new "2.0" version fixes the problem?
 
About the "chirp" sound: I believe it comes from that button-looking thing at front left. 2013-Jan-01, it is going to get a volume control!
The first thing I did when I took mine apart was unplug the piezo speaker. It's such an annoying sound!
 
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