Connection loss after power failure

[ben]

Well, I thought I was out of the woods with a "one-off", but it looks like this is a new and permanent behaviour. We've been having a helluva windstorm here in Burlington, and we lost power again last night. Sure enough, the ethernet board didn't come back after power was restored. Same symptoms - I could ping it, but that was all. Had to repeat the SW1 reset process all over again. I'm not clear on where the settings are actually stored on the device (had assumed on-board on the Wiznet). I see the GEM has a battery (looks like a CR2032) on board, but I'm not sure what *that* is backing up...

Any ideas why this thing becomes partially reset during a power failure (it's interesting that it still holds and responds to its IP address via PING, but nothing else)?

Thanks

Did you get your firmware updated to the latest?

[philf]

I spent some time last night trying to get to the latest firmware, but before I can get that far, the Wiznet board keeps going offline. I can go through the reset process and get control of things again, but it falls down in different places as I proceed. For example, I can get connected - but then the "Connected" status on the Network Utility goes from green to red. I can still ping the address I set, but nothing else.

So, I'll reset it again. This time I may be able to stay connected long enough to execute the "Get GEM Info" function, which works - but then suddenly I'm no longer able to do anything else. So, reset everything AGAIN, and perhaps this time I'll be able to Get GEM Info, move to the Firmware tab and change the baud rate from 115,000 to 19,200 (successfully) in preparation to send up the new COM firmware - but when I select the file and click "Start", it immediately drops out and tells me that it can't communicate with the GEM. And then I can't do anything else with it. At this stage, I might not even be able to ping it anymore - but if I reset everything AGAIN (plugging back in all of the usual settings), I can be back in business and the device starts sending packets to SEG...

Confused as to where the real issue is?

[ben]

I spent some time last night trying to get to the latest firmware, but before I can get that far, the Wiznet board keeps going offline. I can go through the reset process and get control of things again, but it falls down in different places as I proceed. For example, I can get connected - but then the "Connected" status on the Network Utility goes from green to red. I can still ping the address I set, but nothing else.

What's your "Idle Time" set to? If you're in Mixed Mode and Idle Time is enabled, Idle Time tells the module to disconnect after X seconds to allow for a Client (or another Server) connection.

[philf]

Interestingly, it's set to whatever value it populates with when you click the radio button for "Normal" in the "Comm Settings" box in the GEM Network Utility - that value comes up as 8 seconds... I've never changed it (Looking back at a screenshot I posted when I was looking for help getting connected to SEG last year, it's always been 8 seconds)...

[philf]

OK... Double post, here...

A lot of puzzling over this, but after making a couple of observations, I think I have gotten control of this thing. I wish I could definitively say that I knew *exactly* what is the root cause of my woes, but eventually you try enough things to lose track.

Although my original problem still seems to exist (communication doesn't recover on power-up after a several minute power failure), the behaviour has improved - perhaps as a result of finally being able to successfully update the firmware (both COM and ENG) to the latest - after taking a number of baby steps.

Firstly, apart for the erratica behaviour of the WizNet board, my sense is that the Wiznet and the GEM were out of sync on baud rate. I had attempted to change the speed 19,200 on the firmware tab of the GEM Network Utility (prior to an attempted update), and was told that the operation failed. I've been assuming that everything was still running at 115K. But for giggles, I chose to try to connect to the GEM setup screen through a browser tonight and, after a pregnant pause, was prompted to save a downloaded file - rather than be presented with a web page. I saved the file, and had a look at it - it was all garbage characters... Hmmm... So I reset everything, plugged in my WizNet configuration again, but this time saved a port speed of 19,200 via the Ethernet tab. After everything saved, I was able to connect and - this time - when I asked for "GEM Info", I got it...

I thought I'd go for the firmware update, at this point, but things weren't working as I expected. A second problem had been introduced because, as part of all of this, I downloaded and installed the latest version of the GEM Network Utility (6.0 - I had been running 4.xx). In the process of doing this, I had neglected to set the newly installed version to always "Run as Administrator" (the boxes I'm using are Windows 7). This has a big impact on how the utility behaves - certain things break - even if you navigate to find a new firmware file to upload, the choice won't come back to the utility through the Windows Common Dialogue, for example. I've had Windows Firewall turned off since the beginning (originally expecting that it was solely responsible for my inability to see the WizNet board on the network)...

So - after fixing *that*, I went in again... This time, I was able to connect, select a firmware file(I started with COM), and upload it. After the upload, it was necessary to cycle power on the whole unit - but it came back. I repeated this for ENG. Again, a re-power was necessary to "see" the device again.

My final thing was to connect (again) using the GEM Network Utility, go the the firmware tab, and ask the box to reset the baud rate to 115K. I lost the device again but, after cycling power again, I was able to reconnect and set the WizNet speed to 115K also.

Things have been working fine since - BUT, I got the notion to kill power to the whole affair (I left it off for about 10 minutes) and restart it. Sure enough, there was no communication again - but simply pulling the 5V supply to the GEM for a few seconds and re-plugging it... Things come back. I've repeated this cycle (lengthy "power outage", followed by no comm, followed by quick cycle of GEM)... and it always comes back. Not sure what's causing the second "boot" to be needed.

Perhaps long-winded, and a bit stream-of-consciousness, but this is where I've been thus far...

[Teken]

Some pointers from someone who has seen a few of these issues before minus the network card not being seen after a power failure event.

I have found when using the GEM Network Tool that the following steps have help me get a solid connection.




Encrypted By: Phoenix Security Solutions

[philf]

Say, Teken, was there intended to be a link in that reply?

[Teken]

Say, Teken, was there intended to be a link in that reply?

Oh jeeze, Tapatalk obviously didn't post up my entire reply!

Let me try that again in a few moments.


Encrypted By: Phoenix Security Solutions

[ben]

Have we tried a different 5V supply yet? If cycling power twice makes it come back to life, might be an issue there.

[rhombixt]

My GEM is doing the same thing it seems as well. I can ping it but nothing else. The system is remote and I cannot power cycle it. This product has not performed to my expectations, I would like to at least get this one working again.