Does this device use a hardware watchdog ? I had vera lock up on me . I would expect a system like this to have a hardware watchdog. If the OS becomes non responsive and does not tickle the watchdog this would yank the reset switch . This doesn;t happen. So i assume there is no watchdog.
Vera can apparently talk to USB-> RS232 dongles. Any dongles that are known to work (FTDI based ?/ Prolific based ?)? How do you send a command to such a dongle from a LUA script.
I will make a lua script that fires every 2 minutes and send a command to a device hanging off the RS232 port. ( this could be an arduino for all i care, or even something simple like a 555 ) . If this device hears nothing from Vera for more than 5 minutes : Powercycle …
Does Vera support USB Hubs ? I want to connect a few of these dongles do i can interface with some other stuff i have.
As far as I know Vera support USB Hubs, but not all devices are tend to work through them. My USB stick I have have installed for logging had to be installed directly into Vera2.
I’m using a non-powered 4-Port iHome USB Hub (IH-U550FB) and have a bunch of stuff hanging off it (USB Memory, Alarm System, Sparkfun GSM Board).
If you hand too much stuff off it, using a non-powered Hub, with non-self-powered USB Devices, then Vera’s internal cutout circuits kick in. I’ve had this when I tried to use a few USB-Serial adapters at the same time.
Excellent … Excellent.
Since that dongle is FTDI based it should be easy to hang an arduino (ftdi based) or any other cpu off the Vera. I have plenty of boards layong around. That will make it easy to make a watchdog circuit.
The board will self power of course. ( hence my question before 'does it support hubs ?). i will use a powered hub so i don’t draw current from the vera and this powered hub will come from a UPS powered adapter. ( Same as the Vera supply and my whole home network. The entire system has a large battery including all the switches, router, camera and dsl modem.)
a little script on vera that activates every 2 minutes and sends a simple string to the UART ‘ok’.
If vera ever goes belly up the external cpu will not get the ‘ok’ string. 3 strikes and i yank the power off of vera , wait 10 seconds and click it back on.
Hang a relay off of an output pin.
It’s 10 lines of code… something along …
timer=360 ’ 6 minutes… vera should report every 2. if nothing in 6 minutes : time to kick it…
p1.0 =1 ’ turn on vera
while(1) ’ endless loop
timer = timer -1 ’ decrement timer
sleep(1000) ’ sleep 1 second
if uart.receive = “ok” then timer =360 ’ check if anything came in
if timer <=1 then ’ if timed out :
P1.0 =0 ’ power off vera
sleep(5000) ’ wait a 5 seconds
P1.0 = 1 ’ power on vera
timer=360 ’ reset timer
end if
end
you can spiff it up with blinky led’s if you want. throw something like
p1.1 = not p1.1 in the main loop and you have a blinking light that tells you the watchdog is running.
a status indicator could be
if timer <240 the p1.2 =1 else p1.2 = 0 ’ first strike
if timer <120 the p1.3 =1 else p1.3 = 0 ’ second strike
very easy to make.
A little board. and ftdi232 chip and any cpu , any programming language will do fine. it’s not rocket science.
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