Power cycle vera when it stops responding?

[mikefletcher85]

Occasionally my vera 3 (ui7) goes non-responsive and I have to reboot it. Basically I can’t get to its Web interface inside or outside of my home network. A quick power cycle fixes this. I was wondering if I had the vera plugged into a zwave outlet if there was a way to cycle the outlet to cycle power to the vera when it goes unresponsive? I doubt there is, but I thought it would be worth asking.

[twka90]

If Vera itself is dead, you’d need something outside of it to run the healthcheck and do the powercycle. It could be another Vera, in which case I would suggest the two Veras monitoring each other, and using an appliance switch for each one so that the other can do the reboot of the dead one. Or you could probably use something like RaspberryPi with a simple cron script for monitoring and some sort of wifi-based appliance switch that the Pi could control to reboot Vera.

[rlmalisz]

@twka90

If Vera itself is dead, you’d need something outside of it to run the healthcheck and do the powercycle. It could be another Vera, in which case I would suggest the two Veras monitoring each other, and using an appliance switch for each one so that the other can do the reboot of the dead one. Or you could probably use something like RaspberryPi with a simple cron script for monitoring and some sort of wifi-based appliance switch that the Pi could control to reboot Vera.

We originally had an 8-socket IP-controlled relay for the server enclosure that died. We were already using UBNT’s Unifi access points for wireless in the house, and I decided to roll the dice and try UBNT’s mFi for a replacement 8-socket controlled power. That has worked great. The stuff is slowly creeping into our system.

But we have a one-socket mFi that the Vera is plugged into. Completely orthogonal, so we can power-cycle from afar if it hangs. The mFi run a stripped down Linux, so you can SSH into them, they have some local scripting ability–and in particular, they have an auto-ping script you can enable for exactly the problem you’re looking at.

Both mFi and Unifi work best if you have a dedicated controller app running somewhere. For us, that’s not a problem.

I am working on a virtual switch to represent and control those devices. Mostly for convenience.

–Richard

[wilme2]

@twka90

If Vera itself is dead, you’d need something outside of it to run the healthcheck and do the powercycle. It could be another Vera, in which case I would suggest the two Veras monitoring each other, and using an appliance switch for each one so that the other can do the reboot of the dead one. Or you could probably use something like RaspberryPi with a simple cron script for monitoring and some sort of wifi-based appliance switch that the Pi could control to reboot Vera.

What healthcheck would you recommend? PING or something better? I had this same situation this week when on of my Veras went down at a very inconvenient time. I am considering have them monitor and potentially reboot each other…

[clippermiami]

I have two Vera 3 running. Vera 1 has all the ZWave lights, sensors, etc., and Vera w has the DSC interface, Blue Iris Plug-In, etc. Each Vera talks to the other using a HTTP command every 90 seconds to set a MultiSwitch on the other. Each Vera has a 5 minute timer running that is restarted by the 90 second command from the other Vera. . If the timer expires the Vera cycles a ZWave outlet that powers THE OTHER VERA.