Blink Charging Station for Nissan Leaf

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I had a fairly long telephone conversation with a Blink rep last weekend. Apparently he is a regular reader of this forum and seemed very knowledgeable and friendly. He did acknowledge the problems that some folks have mentioned here, but those are all apparently on the Wifi and programming the timer areas rather than on the charging infrastructure. He say most of the problems have been fixed and Blink's units are as good as any.

I also brought up the issue of non-functioning Blink units out on the public domain (as discussed in this forum), and he said the number 1 problem is their inability to know if an unit is down. Sometimes they get an alert, but sometimes they don't. If you find an unit non-functioning he wanted us give them a call, and someone will fix it in a timely manner.
 
I've had Blink for over a year now. I got my Leaf a year ago, last Saturday. Love the car. The Blink worked OK for quite some time. On occasion, it would loose it's WiFi connection. I'd reboot it, and all would be good for maybe a month or so. Then in Nov, 2011, it went down, and had major problems with the WiFi continuously after that. I called Blink, and they verified that I was on old firmware, and that the new version would be out soon and to be patient. We disabled the WiFi at that point in time. Being close to the end of the year, they said they were overwhelmed with new installations, as customers wanted to get them in before the end of the year. Sounded good to me. After the first of the year,I called to check on the firmware upgrade, they said it was close to being launched and I would be contacted. I got an email, stating it would be launched "soon" about in Feb. I started calling after I was notified that it was ready. Since about March, I've been calling frequently to get my firmware upgraded. They respond by saying "Oh, you haven't gotten that yet? Let me contact the Field Services, and they will call you to set that up." It's now June 20, and still getting the same run around. The charger is working fine using Leaf's charging timer. So the charger is working, I just can't use any of the WiFi features, which would have been nice during the winter (I'm in the Pacific NW). Maybe not so much during the summer now, but sure would be nice to get that fixed.
Just called again.... same story...
 
Dewey said:
I've had Blink for over a year now. I got my Leaf a year ago, last Saturday. Love the car. The Blink worked OK for quite some time. On occasion, it would loose it's WiFi connection. I'd reboot it, and all would be good for maybe a month or so. Then in Nov, 2011, it went down, and had major problems with the WiFi continuously after that. I called Blink, and they verified that I was on old firmware, and that the new version would be out soon and to be patient. We disabled the WiFi at that point in time. Being close to the end of the year, they said they were overwhelmed with new installations, as customers wanted to get them in before the end of the year. Sounded good to me. After the first of the year,I called to check on the firmware upgrade, they said it was close to being launched and I would be contacted. I got an email, stating it would be launched "soon" about in Feb. I started calling after I was notified that it was ready. Since about March, I've been calling frequently to get my firmware upgraded. They respond by saying "Oh, you haven't gotten that yet? Let me contact the Field Services, and they will call you to set that up." It's now June 20, and still getting the same run around. The charger is working fine using Leaf's charging timer. So the charger is working, I just can't use any of the WiFi features, which would have been nice during the winter (I'm in the Pacific NW). Maybe not so much during the summer now, but sure would be nice to get that fixed.
Just called again.... same story...
Click to expand...

Your unit will typically upgrade the firmware over your data connection. Since you don't have a data connection, I assume they will need to send someone out with a new SD card. Is it unreasonable to get an Ethernet over Power adapter so you can hook up an Ethernet cord to your Blink unit? I had my installer put that in on day 1 because I didn't want to deal with wifi issues and I have not had a single issue yet. Perhaps give Ecotality a call and they can send you one of the Ethernet over Power adapters. Another option would be to get a very long Ethernet cable to temporarily connect to your blink unit, force a firmware upgrade and then unplug.
 
Dewey said:
On occasion, it would loose it's WiFi connection. I'd reboot it, and all would be good for maybe a month or so. Then in Nov, 2011, it went down, and had major problems with the WiFi continuously after that. I called Blink, and they verified that I was on old firmware, and that the new version would be out soon and to be patient. We disabled the WiFi at that point in time..
Click to expand...
There is no fix for the WiFi going bad short of replacing the unit, but Blink techs have been very clear that they will instead install ethernet over powerline adapters instead of replacing the unit. So I suggest either figuring out how to run ethernet to your Blink or picking up your own powerline adapters, or a pocket-sized wifi bridge (Asus makes a couple nice pocket sized wifi bridges which are very small, wall mountable and use very little power).
 

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