Blink charger problems

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ttweed said:
arnolddeleon said:
I plugged in the Blink expecting to be back at the black screen again but to my great surprise it was in the setup screen. I went through the setup and appears to be working (for now).
Leaving it unplugged for an extended period, as some have suggested above, does seem to matter in a "cold boot" of the unit. However, although my screen did come up after waiting an hour, the display content was still corrupted--some screens in the setup process were offset, and the formatting of the text was wrong, with some lists of choices in very small text with no clear place to touch to choose that option. In trying to use the direct intranet connection to manage it, I continually got "http error 502" when accessing the network setup also. After the SD card was replaced with a new Sandisk unit yesterday (which still had ver. 1.8 of the firmware, BTW), the screen responded correctly to all setup commands and direct communication over the intranet is flawless now. The tech said it would be able to update to 2.0 when that is pushed out now as well. He did mention a bad batch of micro sd cards in the early units, and identified mine as one from the serial number.

TT

I had previously tried unplugging for over an hour. The "miracle" didn't occur until after several days of no power. My unit was also identified as having a bad SD card by serial number. It's interesting that you got a new SD card w/ 1.8 since they don't told they waiting for the 2.0 units.

FWIW my unit is plugged in directly for internet.

arnold
 
arnolddeleon said:
I had previously tried unplugging for over an hour. The "miracle" didn't occur until after several days of no power. My unit was also identified as having a bad SD card by serial number. It's interesting that you got a new SD card w/ 1.8 since they don't told they waiting for the 2.0 units.

FWIW my unit is plugged in directly for internet.
Arnold,
After your "miracle" reboot, is everything working perfectly now? Can you enter the network setup on the touchscreen? Can you access and configure the Blink over your intranet from another computer using a browser addressed to its IP address of 192.168.0.52? If not, there may be corrupted code on the micro SD card still. They are blowing smoke about waiting for the SD cards with 2.0 on them--lots of folks have gotten new cards installed already without 2.0, especially those who were having wireless communications issues or failure to charge problems with the early units. If yours is still working well and charging your car, they are just prioritizing the repair lower and giving you a BS excuse for having to wait.

TT
 
ttweed said:
The one hooker in my service call was that we found the insulation melted back about 2" on the 8-gauge wire on the line side of contactor #1 in the unit. This may have been due to a connector lug not tightened enough during initial assembly, or from vibration of the contactor in use slowly loosening the lug, according to the tech. He had not seen this before, and took pictures to send back to the office with his report. He is coming back out with a new length of black 8AWG wire this morning to repair this fault. It was a little disturbing to me to think that it got hot enough to melt the insulation on the wire. Can you say "fire danger?"
Yeah, that's not good. Loose terminal would definitely cause this. When a wire starts arcing it creates a significant amount of heat in the local area. Arc fault detecting circuit breaker would detect this and trip - one reason current code requires arc fault detecting circuit breakers in new buildings in bedrooms. Not sure if they make 2-pole 40A arc fault detecting circuit breakers, though!
 
drees said:
Yeah, that's not good.
The tech came out to replace the wire this morning and told me they may swap my unit out for a new one and take mine back to study it. He said there has been only one other case of such a failure in a Blink unit. Obviously, they're taking this seriously.

TT
 
ttweed said:
Hopefully they are getting to Loondoggie today too, since he can't even charge and should be a higher priority.
TT
Loondoggie eh? I had a co-worker once who's spell-checker always changed my name from Lonnie to Loonie. Looks like you've got the same deal.

However, it sounds like yours was the higher-priority issue! Glad to hear they caught it before it became a 911 call.

They came to our house on Friday morning, and solved it with a new SD card. Another mystery, why they don't move the OS from the SD card into non-volatile memory inside the box. That said, it must be one hostile environment for SD cards. I don't think I've ever had one fail anywhere else.
 
lonndoggie said:
Loondoggie eh? I had a co-worker once who's spell-checker always changed my name from Lonnie to Loonie. Looks like you've got the same deal.
OOPS! My bad. Sorry! It wasn't a spell check issue, just a straight-up brain-fart from years of participating in the alt.surfing Usenet group (from way back in the pre-WWW days). There's a guy named Warren who uses the handle "Foondoggie" on that newsgroup, and I just absentmindedly put an L on the front of it for your name. :oops:

Glad they got your issue fixed. I definitely think it is the software that is the biggest problem with these units. Having them all networked together is a bigger challenge than getting them to simply charge the car.

TT
 
Well, as my Blink changed to April 1st, it decided to ignore the charging schedule and stop charging. It stated that it would begin charging at 12:01 AM tomorrow (Monday).

Restarted the Blink and it figured everything out and started charging again...

I wonder when I'll get that 2.0 update?
 
ttweed said:
lonndoggie said:
After about eight months of trouble-free Blinkness, last night it failed to charge.

This morning, its screen was on, but black (or dark grey). Couldn't revive it by tapping.

Unplugged, let it set, re-plugged. The splash screen came up, but then back to black.

Plugged in to the Leaf, neither the Blink nor the Leaf acted like anything had happened.

Damn!

Trouble call placed, waiting to get scheduled for a visit.
My screen went blank yesterday also, but the unit still charges. I wonder if they pushed the update out to it, since I was running on 1.8 still as of a few days ago. When I reboot, the screen comes up, so it is not totally broken--a "Blink" splash screen flashes on with "please wait", then it goes thru the screen calibration procedure, then turns to blank again, and no touching retrieves anything or turns on the menu screen, etc. I called in and they opened a trouble ticket, but since I can still charge, they told me it is low priority and could take weeks to get someone out. :shock:

This is my first problem with it in 11 months of trouble-free use, but at least I can still charge the car!

TT

looks like mine is now doing this. must have started in the last couple of days. timebomb??
 
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