Mods for the Blink EVSE ! (was Fix)

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ENIAC said:
braebyrn said:
I removed all crimped connections, soldered the connections, removed and replaced the J1772 cable with a known good working one and still have the red screen. I also again tried to use as a dumb charger, with no luck.

Here's a data point for you. After I performed the lobotomy operation on my Blink, as per the OP instructions, I have a blank screen. Also mine works great now. Having a red screen is curious.

Ok, well, maybe to explain myself better, my blink unit probably would work as a dumb blink unit with or without the screen if the Mean Well switching power supply was working. Now that it is determined that the power supply is bad, I should be able to replace it and the unit would work as a dumb unit also......
 
Anyone know how to fix these boards? I swapped this board with my known working unit and it fired right up as a dumb unit and as normal functioning unit.
pic
 
braebyrn said:
Anyone know how to fix these boards? I swapped this board with my known working unit and it fired right up as a dumb unit and as normal functioning unit.

So it wasn't the power supply?
 
braebyrn said:
Anyone know how to fix these boards? I swapped this board with my known working unit and it fired right up as a dumb unit and as normal functioning unit.
Only in a generic fashion. Carefully inspect the board looking for burnt components, caps that have "mushroomed", or loose connections. Past that, you would probably need schematics to debug. I do know that Chris Howell of OpenEVSE fame was working on placing the OpenEVSE guts into the Blink case, using as much of the Blink parts as he could. Of course you would lose much of the existing functionality, but you'd have a working EVSE.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=13334&p=303769&hilit=openevse+blink#p303769" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The project at the above link was more ambitious, but I'm pretty sure he could tell you how to do a simple conversion now.
 
Maybe someone can help me. I was out of town for a few days and when I came home, the display on my Blink unit was blank and the unit was not working at all. I searched this forum, found this thread, and unplugged the two blue wires to create the dumb mode. I plugged the connector into the car, but the blue lights on the dash did not go into their usual sequence which I think means the car is plugged in and ready to charge. I pushed the manual charge button on the dash and nothing happened. What can I conclude from this? Any help is much appreciated.
 
twingo said:
Maybe someone can help me. I was out of town for a few days and when I came home, the display on my Blink unit was blank and the unit was not working at all. I searched this forum, found this thread, and unplugged the two blue wires to create the dumb mode. I plugged the connector into the car, but the blue lights on the dash did not go into their usual sequence which I think means the car is plugged in and ready to charge. I pushed the manual charge button on the dash and nothing happened. What can I conclude from this? Any help is much appreciated.
Yep, same as mine. I spoke to a rep at blink who said 43% of that model are defective, and he said it's a matter of when and not if it will stop working.
They do offer to buy it back if you buy one of their new units. Plus they give you a $100. charging credit.
 
braebyrn said:
... I spoke to a rep at blink who said 43% of that model are defective, and he said it's a matter of when and not if it will stop working.
They do offer to buy it back if you buy one of their new units. Plus they give you a $100. charging credit.
Why would anyone buy a new unit from from the new owner of a company that produced a product with a 43% failure rate, that will do nothing about those defects, and is selling the new unit at a net price that can be beaten substantially by several other alternatives :?: :? :? :?:
 
I've stumbled on a simpler solution to the dreaded self-test fault. If I simply touch the screen to wake up the unit before plugging it in, the self-test fault doesn't happen. It happened every time just plugging in for months, never since waking it up first.
 
TimLee said:
braebyrn said:
... I spoke to a rep at blink who said 43% of that model are defective, and he said it's a matter of when and not if it will stop working.
They do offer to buy it back if you buy one of their new units. Plus they give you a $100. charging credit.
Why would anyone buy a new unit from from the new owner of a company that produced a product with a 43% failure rate, that will do nothing about those defects, and is selling the new unit at a net price that can be beaten substantially by several other alternatives :?: :? :? :?:

I had a service call in-place for over 6 weeks now and I finally received a call from someone who said he will call back again to recommend a local technician. Gee thanks! He also mentioned their new model HQ is on-sale for $499 and it includes a $100 "gift card" that can be used against charging fees for 6 months. But I rarely charge on the road so that is pretty worthless. But the main issue is as you said, why would I buy another unit from the same company that provided such horrendous service when there are alternatives?
 
We've been having unusually hot and dry weather here in Vancouver, WA for over a month. I've been getting a self-test fault for the last few week that had become continuous the last two days and no longer resolvable by rebooting.

Reading the Blink installation pamphlets, it appears the self test fault is an alert for a grounding problem.

I have two electric panel grounding rods and both are a few inches apart in soil partially sheltered by the roof overhang. Checking, I found them to be in very dry soil. I dug shallow pits around them, poured in some water, and gave them a few sledge hits. An hour or so later, I did another reboot and at least for now I am up and charging again.
 
http://ecmweb.com/content/achieving-acceptable-ground-poor-soil

My grounding rod soil is not only dry but sandy and rocky. The above is a good article on dealing with grounding issues.
 
That is what that means but the issue is not likely with your home's grounding. The common solution to this problem is to redo the crimps on the CT used in the GFCI circuit and move/secure th CT. You'll find details of how to do this on this forum.

If your homes wiring is correct disconnecting the ground rods wouldn't be detectable so while dry soil under your eves isn't optimal it's very unlikely that this has anything to do with this very common Blink error.
 
Thanks for all the people who have done research on this problem. My self-test faults finally could not be reset by a power cycle. I tried checking the crimps, moving the CT, and finally had to lobotomize it.

I tried checking all the crimps. I found a few stray wires on the right side of the junction block and theorized they could be bleeding a tiny bit of current to the grounding plate behind it so I redid that. I don't understand how you can solder those because there's not enough room to get a soldered wire into the block without cutting some of the wires. Both are bad ideas because solder doesn't conduct as well as copper and you more wires is better. I researched and found that the industry standard for high wattage applications (like your house main supply or a wind turbine) is to simply crimp the wires into a block.

I moved the CT all the way to the right and zip tied it.

It seemed to work fine, but a few hours later coming back to an idle charger it immediately threw the self-test fault. I then lobotomized it by removing the blue cable from the top & bottom and it seems to work fine now as a dumb charger.

I put all this into a Youtube Video so you can see exactly what is being talked about: https://youtu.be/e8yELGmywaY
 
gonefishin said:
I put all this into a Youtube Video so you can see exactly what is being talked about: https://youtu.be/e8yELGmywaY
Nice video.
Its an EVSE, not a charger.
The charger is in the LEAF.

Bit surprising that what must have been corrupted software was causing the red screen test fault. In mine and many other peoples' corruption of the software the Blink just refused to boot up.

I do appreciate the video on that truly dreadful power connection block.
No wonder someone had a fire from that :shock:
Now that I see how bad it is wi
 
gonefishin said:
I put all this into a Youtube Video so you can see exactly what is being talked about: https://youtu.be/e8yELGmywaY
Nice video.
Its an EVSE, not a charger.
The charger is in the LEAF.

Bit surprising that what must have been corrupted software was causing the red screen test fault. In mine and many other peoples' corruption of the software the Blink just refused to boot up.

I do appreciate the video on that truly dreadful power connection block.
No wonder someone had a fire from that :shock:
Now that I see how bad it is with low quality block and using stranded wire, means I and everyone else should inspect.

Would be better redone with a quality connection block of the quality used in electrical panels and replacement of the stranded cable with solid conductor.

Amazing that more of the Blink units didn't have fires.
 
From the newest member on the forum, thank you to everyone who researched the problem, and posted the solutions to this Blink failure.

I performed the lobotomy this evening, and the unit appears to be charging our Leaf just fine.
Couple of quick questions about this fix/ faulty Blink.

So, after unplugging the upper, and lower blue connectors and making it a dumber Blink:
This thing is "safe." Right?
We can plug into the car, and let it charge- it will not over charge. Right?

2011 Leaf, with 24,000 miles. Seems to be in good shape. We are missing 2 bars on the battery.
We purchased from the original owner.

We started off charging with the 110 cord that comes with the car, while I searched for a EVSE. I found this Blink unit for $250. Brought it home and had it installed. It worked, once.
Then we started getting the dreaded pink screen of death error. My calls to Blink were exasperating. They first said I received the error because it wasn't "registered." And, Blink wouldn't transfer the registration from the original owner to us. This went on for a month, with me, and the previous owner both calling them multiple times.

Then, the day they finally transferred the unit into my name, the thing died. Totally. Black screen. No Response.
Even though they followed up with the offer to sell me a new unit, I was ready to throw the thing in the trash and start over with a different company, when I stumbled across this thread. I've been a little hesitant to play around inside a 220 unit, but happy to say, all is well- thanks to this forum.
 
I made the modification you've described here to my Blink EVSE to turn it into a "dumb" unit about 2 years ago. It now works like a charm. I always use the Leaf timers anyway; so there's no need for the Blink to do anything other than charge my battery. An added benefit: there is no longer a waste of electricity by the Blink due to "vampire draw", since it is no longer "live" when not in use. If I remember correctly, the Blink vampire draw is around 14 watts just by being online.
 
Blackie said:
... We can plug into the car, and let it charge- it will not over charge. Right? ...
Right. Can't happen. The car is 100% in control of how long the battery charges. The EVSE only turns the power on and off when the car says to. Even if the EVSE were completely broken and didn't turn the power off when it was supposed to, that would only cause the car to show an error message. It would not keep charging the battery.
 
There is only one issue with disconnecting the Blink computer. Without the screen you can't see the error message if a GFCI fault occurs do the only symptom will be that charging stops. All safety features are still in place so no risk of doing this.
 
My Blink EVSE came with these particulars:

Model No: WE-30Ckre
Revision: 0000
Serial No: 206554
Mfg. Date: Aug-05-2011

It was a 'swap out' or reinstall done on 01/30/12. Our original Blink was installed in November of 2011 as part of the BAAQMD EVProject.

It quit around 9 October 2015. I was told by a phone support tech that the unit was 'not longer reporting data to us.' It had worked for a few months using the included cell phone modem. Perhaps they stopped paying their cell phone bills?

I continued to make sporadic calls to Blink Network and received promises that someone would call me and schedule a repair. On 11/2/15 a phone support tech finally said, "if we provided you with one service call on your Blink during 2015, we have fulfilled our commitment to you. Today I 'broke the seal' and opened the unit. I disconnected the connector at the top of the board (see first post in this long thread) and the unit once again charged the car, although, as predicted the display no longer tracked the charging process.

Thank you all for your efforts. It is 'nice' to stop using the 110 V EVSE provided by Nissan with the Leaf.

I would like to restore the EVSE to 'full functionality.'

1) This thread and some others talk about replacing the micro SD card that contains the operating system software. None of the threads I've found say what exactly which size of card is needed and what storage capacity it needs.

2) Back in 2011 'whoami' described the first steps of creating superior firmware to that supplied by Ecotality. He called his version 'Wink' and expressed his hope that Ecotality would accept it as open-source software and push it out to everyone. Was this 'Wink' project completed? Can someone provide a link to an image file I can download and install on the SD card?

thanks,

baumgrenze
 
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