Home automation solutions for rebooting GEM

[turbo]

Hi all,

I've noticed my GEM has lost is connection a few times in the past few weeks. It's a new installation so I'm still getting things figured out. I use a Powerline box in my GEM wall outlet to give ethernet access to another Powerline near my router.

I'm not clear whether it's the Powerline losing the connection or the Gem. Earlier today I had to shut off power to a circuit which included our router in order to repair a poorly done electrical junction. When I turned up the power, the GEM started sending to SEG again, then lost its connection until I turned off the power and rebooted it.

It's going to be difficult to do this when I complete my GEM installation as the GEM is in a rental unit attached to my house. I'm thinking I could use something like an X-10 to trigger power on that outlet.

The really optimal solution would be to have a script running that ping tests DNS, then tests the gateway. If both are up, and the GEM is down, then cycle the power on the X-10. Wait 10 minutes, test again. Do this 3x running, then quit for an hour. Something like that.

I'm curious if anyone on the board has something like this in place? You would usually find this type of installation in server systems needing remote rebooting after crashes.

I guess I'm going to need a way to graph up time on the GEM as a start.

[mwall]

what kind of interface do you have on the gem? wiznet? serial?

is the gem completely dead, or does it respond to pings?

we had this problem a lot with the wiznet as the wired ethernet interface to the gem. the gem responded to pings, but there was no http response. the solution was to set the COM1 reset timer to 200 on the gem. we had no issues for almost 2 years. then 4 times in a 9 month period the gem became unresponsive. now it is 5 months since setting the reset timer, all good so far.

this happened on 3 different gem.

as i understand it, the reset timer works around flaky wiznet behavior.

on a different gem the unresponsiveness was due to a defective wiznet.

having to reboot the gem is unacceptable, imho.

m

[ben]

having to reboot the gem is unacceptable, imho.

Agreed.

Try COM1 Auto Reset like mwall stated.

Next time it goes down, check out the Sys LED on the GEM to see if it's flashing red periodically, if it is then it's likely just the Ethernet module having issues (which COM1 Auto Reset should solve). The red flash indicates a packet being sent.

I'm also kind of curious what would happen if auto reset was turned off, and the GEM was powered by a USB power supply (or new power supply, but the Mini-USB, 5VDC USB adapter seem to be more common).

Some of the power supplies we've used over the last 2 years have given us issues as the company we sourced them from used poor quality caps (we now pay extra to have them built with Rubycon caps).

[Teken]

I've been using a remote web enabled power switch for more than 15 years in various installations and at home. The system has the ability to ping any network device based on thresholds the user desires.

If the device fails to respond to a ping the device is automatically rebooted. As mwall indicated the use of pinging is not a 100% method to determine if a system is fully operational. This is seen on many computers / servers.

Because many devices these days operate on both the transport / network layer via software emulation. Meaning, a system will ack a ping but the system is still in a hung state in the application layer.

Thus, you must actually try to login to the GEM via its internal web set up page. Which at times can still be a bear to access for what ever reason. I've come to expect to select portal access three times in Chrome watching it download some random file.

Pretty much on the 3rd attempt I am presented with the login screen.

[turbo]

I'll have to do some tests to see why it goes down. I suspect it's when I am in the setup interface changing the network mode from server to client. After rebooting the module, it doesn't automatically get back online. I'm seeing it's down now so about to reboot it and see if it should come up again.....which it has. Perhaps I'm failing to exit cleanly somehow. If I power it down, the GEM comes back up again shortly thereafter.
I don't think I need to automate rebooting the system. If anyone has a favored way to remotely power cycle an outlet for the GEM, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Todd

[Teken]

I'll have to do some tests to see why it goes down. I suspect it's when I am in the setup interface changing the network mode from server to client. After rebooting the module, it doesn't automatically get back online. I'm seeing it's down now so about to reboot it and see if it should come up again.....which it has. Perhaps I'm failing to exit cleanly somehow. If I power it down, the GEM comes back up again shortly thereafter.
I don't think I need to automate rebooting the system. If anyone has a favored way to remotely power cycle an outlet for the GEM, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Todd

Hello Todd,

It really depends upon your use case and current environment. If you have any Home Automation (HA) like Z-Wave, Zigbee, Insteon, X-10, you can us the HA to power cycle the GEM. If you don't have any HA in your home you can use iBoot: http://dataprobe.com/iboot.html

Or one of the Digital Loggers Web Power Switch: http://www.digital-loggers.com/lpc.html

I use both types at home and we had them at quite a few places where I worked. Keep in mind you must always exit the set up page using the exit tab. Failing to do so will leave the system in a hung state for 15 minutes which is expected and normal behavior.

Out of good practice I always close the web page upon exiting the set up page. There was a strange bug in Chrome that would hold on to a session and don't recall if that was fixed. Regardless I always close out the web page / tab to insure I exit cleanly.

[ben]

I'll have to do some tests to see why it goes down. I suspect it's when I am in the setup interface changing the network mode from server to client. After rebooting the module, it doesn't automatically get back online. I'm seeing it's down now so about to reboot it and see if it should come up again.....which it has. Perhaps I'm failing to exit cleanly somehow. If I power it down, the GEM comes back up again shortly thereafter.
I don't think I need to automate rebooting the system. If anyone has a favored way to remotely power cycle an outlet for the GEM, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Todd

Is this an Ethernet-only or WiFi-Ethernet unit?

If it's WiFi/Ethernet V2, the WiFi/Ethernet V2 model has an option for a TCP2 setting now within the GEM Setup Webpage. What this will allow you to do is setup a Client connection that works regardless of the state the other connection is in.

So you can have it always in Server mode while having it send to SEG via the TCP2 setting ("Network" under the GEM Setup Webpage).

I can help you get that up and going if it's desired.

Ben

[turbo]

I have the Wifi/Ethernet.

Sure, that would be useful. I would just as soon have the GEM be able to send data to SEG at all times regardless of whether I am looking at live data, for example.

I am noticing the GEM went down today at 9 AM. No one was at home, nothing happened that I know of to cause the connection to fail. Last time this happened I tried rebooting the Powerline, leaving the GEM up and running to see if the connection fault could be isolated to that system. That didn't seem to make any difference. Rebooting the GEM got it up again.

I guess I'll try connecting the GEM to my local wifi network. The signal is a little weak in that part of the house, which is why I've been using the Powerline.

Todd

[ben]

Paul is out of the office right now, but when he is back I'll get him to take another look at the SEG code to see if there's anything there.

We had another customer with a similar issue email us recently, same setup I think. I'm guessing you're also using Packet Format 14. He can access the GEM, but it stops sending until he reboots.

[paulb]

Please update the COM firmware to version 4.0 which has been posted today (Jul 26, 2015).