I have asked my Blink EVSE to be removed

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smkettner said:
As long as you have an alternative I would not go out of my way to figure out their problems.
One phone call and I would just use the alternate charging until they came out and said it was fixed.
Repete as needed.

Good advice and I've sort of adopted that stance. I've been charging worry free with the upgraded EVSE. Blink contractors can't make it out until Friday, 11/4. That's fine, but I'm still not happy that I have to the time to be home for the contractor to troubleshoot the thing. Again.
 
DoxyLover said:
Has anyone tried setting a static IP address instead of using DHCP? I've done that. However, I've only had the Blink for a few days; I haven't had any problems but it's too early to tell.
I had a PM asking for a novice computer user's guide to setting a static IP address. I've simplified a lot, assuming a pretty normal network setup which should cover almost anyone who needs this.

First, an "IP address" looks like "192.168.1.55", four numbers, separated by dots/periods. Each number can be from 0 to 255, though in general, you should only go up to 254.

First, you need to determine the IP address of your router (WiFi access point). If you don’t know it, Go to your Blink, touch "Settings" and then "Device Info". Find the IP address, for example "192.168.1.72". We will assume that the router's address is the same except for the last number being one, so in this example, the router address would be "192.168.1.1"; write this down.

Go to a computer on your network, start your favorite web browser (Firefox, IE, etc.) and, in the address bar (not in the search bar), enter the router address and click GO or press ENTER. This should give you the login page for your router. (If this doesn't work, then the assumption above about the router address is probably wrong and you'll need to determine the router address from your computer. The method depends on the OS and OS version on your computer and I'm not going to go into that here.)

Log into your router. (If you never changed the password, check the manual for your router for the default, or try username "admin" and password "password" or blank.)

Look for a page for setting up your LAN (sorry, the exact directions depends on the make and model of your router). You are looking for DHCP starting and ending addresses. This indicates the range of addresses that the router will give out to something using DHCP. You need to come up with an address that has the first three numbers the same, but the forth number outside this range, but not the same as the router address, not zero and not 255.

For example, if the router address is 192.168.1.1 and the DHCP address range is 192.168.1.51 through 192.168.1.200, then pick an address with the last number either 2 - 50 or 251 - 254. (If you have any other devices with static address, you need to avoid those address too. To be safe, pick a larger number.) We will pick 192.168.1.222 for this example.

Go back to the Blink, touch "Settings" then "Network Settings". Go through the setup until you get to a choice of "Static" or "DHCP"; select "Static". On the next few screens, you will be asked for the following:

* IP Address: enter the address you selected, 192.168.1.222 in the example above.

* Netmask: Enter "255.255.255.0".

*Gateway: Enter the router's address, 192.168.1.1 in the example.

* DNS: Enter the router's address again.

Finish the network setup and verify that everything passes on the network test.

That's it. The Blink will no longer ask the router to assign it an IP address and have to periodically "renew the lease" on that address. Instead, the Blink will just use the address and other info entered to access the Internet through the router.

I hope this helps someone. If anyone notices any errors in this write up, please post corrections.
 
Secon, the electrical contractor that installed my Blink, showed up this morning at 6:30 and replaced my malfunctioning Blink. It had previously failed to charge on three occasions. The SD card had been replaced and powerline devices installed to help with the internet connection after two of the failures, then it failed again.

The new unit is off to a flying start. It showed that it wasn't connected to the internet so I called the Blink helpline and they said, "Don't worry, it IS connected."

Shrink: The Secon guy had a second Blink to replace at 11:00. Was that one yours, by any chance?
 
leafkabob said:
The new unit is off to a flying start. It showed that it wasn't connected to the internet so I called the Blink helpline and they said, "Don't worry, it IS connected."

Shrink: The Secon guy had a second Blink to replace at 11:00. Was that one yours, by any chance?

No. I'm in midtown and Kortman Electric did the installation. I'm waiting for them to come this Friday, 11/4. I don't get a new unit or SD card until they can blame the car first :p

Glad yours is sort of taken care of.
 
Seems pointless to ask Ecotality to replace your Blink when you know you'll be getting a defective Blink in return.

Unless it's totally dead, seems better to just live with the reboots and hangs until they release a new firmware which may (or may not) fix things.
 
drees said:
Seems pointless to ask Ecotality to replace your Blink when you know you'll be getting a defective Blink in return.

Unless it's totally dead, seems better to just live with the reboots and hangs until they release a new firmware which may (or may not) fix things.

FWIW I simply told Blink I was having a problem. When their one "solution" (adding a ground rod) didn't pan out (because I already had two), they volunteered to replace my Blink without my asking.

But your point is well taken. If this unit fails to charge my car I will have to ask them to take it back. Or perhaps ask them to buy me Ingineer's upgraded EVSE. ;)
 
Well, a quick update. The Electricians were back out on 11/4 and things seem to be working. Finally.

They checked the ground, tightened all the terminal connections, and tested a new unit. After failing to reproduce the error on the new unit, they ended up swapping the cable from the new unit to the existing unit and it seems that was the culprit.

Things are now working in a typical Blink-like fashion. It is indeed charging, but I also got two errors over the weekend. One was a charging delayed message. The other was that the screen was stuck with a "Processing" message. Unplugging it seemed to clear that message.

This was extremely annoying, but I'm glad it seems to be working, albeit typically buggy. I'd estimate that with the time on the phone with Blink customer support, my own trouble shooting of the unit, driving around the test public EVSE's, and having to be home for the electrician service calls, I spent about 8-10 hours on this personally, while the whole ordeal took 3-4 weeks total to fix. I suppose that's part of being a beta tester and getting a free $2000 (or whatever it costs) home EVSE, but it was very frustrating. I still can't believe they tried blaming the car.

I am very happy to have the EVSE upgrade as a back-up.
 
shrink said:
Spies said:
Just curious but how is your Blink connected to the network? Are you using the built in WiFi? I personally had nothing but problems with my Blink unit using the built in wireless but I have since been using an external WiFi to ethernet bridge without issue and will eventually run wired ethernet. I know it sounds odd that the built in WiFi would cause charging problems but it did for me.

It's Wi-Fi but only about 20 feet away. The connection has always been solid. One of the troubleshooting steps the electricians did was to hook it up via Ethernet and we still had the same issue. I remember staring at the car plugged into the Blink with the timer bypass button on and it still was not charging. The Blink was hooked up via Ethernet to my router at the time.

Wouldn't internet connectivity affect data transmission only? I don't see why that would affect charging, but who knows with this thing.

I've not yet received my leaf, but the blink charger has been installed for about 2 weeks (firmware L2R.1.7A, 040A, 1.2, 1.10). The charger is about 25ft from my router.

I've sometimes wondered if the charger is interfering with normal WiFi network operation. Try unplugging your WiFi router (or just disable the router radio) and try charging again.

As a last resort, the charger has the ability to communication via the cellular data network. Have Blink disable wifi and retry.
 
I've had at least one incident of a fail to charge event on a previous firmware revision and various other issues with lots of random resets and another instance where it was counting down to the wrong charging time. They had suggested I try using the cars charging timer, a terrible idea but ok. The problems remained I complained more and I have someone coming out on Friday to change the SD card. I hope this solves the problem, but I'm not counting on it.

At least I didn't pay $2,000 for this thing!
 
I've had 3 refusal to charge incidents now and only a power cycle of the unit would fix it (not even the daily 10am soft reboot fixes it). The support guy is blaming intermittent wifi. If that really is the cause, that means their soft reboots aren't a functioning workaround to the wifi issue and we all need daily power cycling. I actually believe the only answer is to babysit the POS at the start of every charge cycle (so you can power cycle it right there if it gets into that state) and forget about off-peak charging. The portable EVSE upgrade isn't a good solution since I'd have to unplug the Blink and they'd want to kick me out of the EV project (and charge me $700 for this QC port that I'll probably never use).
 
kballs said:
The portable EVSE upgrade isn't a good solution since I'd have to unplug the Blink and they'd want to kick me out of the EV project (and charge me $700 for this QC port that I'll probably never use).
FYI, many people are unplugging their units and using our upgrade. So far, I haven't heard of anyone report that ecotality has "kicked" them out when their buggy units don't report in.

Besides, you could make/buy a "Y" adapter and plug them both in, add an extra L6-20 outlet next to the 6-50, etc. One of our customers even made an adapter which consists of a standard 120v cord/plug connected to a 6-50 receptacle. He uses that to plug the Blink into a standard 120v outlet (it powers up fine on 120v apparently), and then uses the 240v 6-50 outlet with an L6-20 adapter to plug in his upgraded EVSE to 240v for daily charging.

-Phil
 
Has anyone considered the possibility that the cable between the Blink and the Leaf might be the source of the problem? I find that most times when I plug in I have to 'jiggle' the J1772 plug until I see the lights on the dash start to flash and the Blink emit a 'clunk' that tells me that charging has started. Could some units lose connectivity as the cord sags?

I've been blessed with consistent charging. The unit 'passed' the wireless test when installed (with much effort) but never even did a firmware upgrade. A few days ago the installing tech was out for the building inspection and I mentioned an open trouble ticket. He installed a PLC/Valet combo and I can now see the Blink from my desktop. I've charged twice. The unit shows 2 days, 8 hours and change of connectivity but the Stats page is still all zeros. Has anyone else seen this behavior?

thanks

baumgrenze
 
Ingineer said:
So far, I haven't heard of anyone report that ecotality has "kicked" them out when their buggy units don't report in.

-Phil
I'm kind of curious about whether/when the DOE is going to ask Ecotality for all that logging information the EV project paid for, but which the Blinks (so far, in most cases) have failed to collect/report.
 
Levenkay said:
I'm kind of curious about whether/when the DOE is going to ask Ecotality for all that logging information the EV project paid for, but which the Blinks (so far, in most cases) have failed to collect/report.
I don't think that's true. Most of the Blinks are chugging along adequately, it's just that failures get much more attention here.
 
I was days away from giving mine the boot as well.

They called the electrician in and he replaced an SD card in the unit and set up a hard wire for it to communicate. Upgraded the firmware and it has settled down. I had so many weird issues though, I still don't trust it... But it is working now.

If I had one, I'd probably have used an upgraded EVSE instead of toughing it out to this point.
 
my blink seems to be "dead" in the past 3 days or so, no amount of rebooting / unplugging / turning off circuit breaker seem to help.

when first plug in on the wall, the blink would show a white screen that says "ev project", then the screen goes dark with nothing on it.
no touch control, no calibrate screen, just nothing but a blank screen.
i left it like that overnight, and its still like that in the morning, i've turned the unit off over night as well, then upon reboot, samething happens.

tried to charge the car regardless, no luck...

called blink, and they say someone will come out and take a look.

any ideas?

i think i might need to go buy an evseupgrade plug.

thx
 
dyyuan said:
my blink seems to be "dead" in the past 3 days or so, no amount of rebooting / unplugging / turning off circuit breaker seem to help.
Sounds like it probably has a corrupt SD card. Maybe got hosed during a firmware upgrade... The person they send out will probably try just swapping the card first, then the whole unit if that doesn't work.
 
Levenkay said:
I'm kind of curious about whether/when the DOE is going to ask Ecotality for all that logging information the EV project paid for, but which the Blinks (so far, in most cases) have failed to collect/report.

There are publically available quarterly reports available at the link below. Scroll down on the page to see the list of EV Project reports...

http://avt.inel.gov/evproject.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
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