VeraPlus - solid hangup of the controller itself - is reboot a typcial

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Yesterday evening the outdoor lights never came on as they should each day when at sunset the VeraPlus tells the zwave switch to turn them on. Been working the whole time I’ve had the VeraPlus - all month and a half or so. Its not a complex setup, the VeraPlus has TWO (2) whole things to track - the one zwave GE switch, and it knows about the NEST thermostat (with which it does nothing).

So I noticed, “Huh, the lights didn’t come one… whats up with that” and went to my Vera iOS app. Lo and behold the app cannot contact the Vera Controller. Go to the closet, see the LEDs are illuminated (unit has power, didn’t check which ones were on/off), try the app again, no joy. App still says, check network connection on the hub. OK, go see the LED on the back of the hub by the ethernet jack… its on. I powercycle the cable modem and the wifi/router to be sure… let them come back up. No joy. App still cannot connect to the hub. Ugh.

Still nothing this morning - same “Cannot connect check the network connection at the hub” sort of error dialog in the Vera iOS app. I go and look more carefully at the LED indicators on the VeraPlus, and see that while almost all of them are on and just a solid (no blinking) including the solid on ethernet light on the back side of it, the Service light is on solid, the Internet light is on solid, and the Wifi light is off. This is what I’d expect as the unit is connected to my network by ethernet; its internal wifi access point is turned off.

So the ethernet port light is on solid - meaning no activity. Other indicator lights are on solid. So what does the ‘service’ LED mean exactly?

I’m thinking the internal CPU has just locked up - as this would explain why a standard recipe its been executing, that doesn’t require any network activity, stopped yesterday. The unit is just dead to the world outside, and not moving inside of its own head as far as I can tell.

Even ethernet direct access from computer to the IP address is unresponsive - its NOT the network, its the VeraPlus.

So I’m wondering - reboot the VeraPlus? If so, how often does this sort of thing happen with this or older Vera controllers - where the appliance just locks up. Its not a very stable thing if I may have to reboot it on a monthly or bi-monthly basis for unknown reasons.

2

No this is not normal. I have not had my VP lock up yet. It did happen a couple of times with my oversubscribed Vera Light. If scenes unrelated to network access did not fire off, then it does seem like something internally locked up and the watchdog did not trigger a reboot.

You mention that you are using Wifi to connect to the LAN? Are you sure about that, I was not aware that was supported. If you are connecting via Ethernet, just shut off the Wifi radio for now. Also, instead of DHCP (if you are using that) , use a static IP address outside of the normal DHCP scope of your router.

Are you running PLEX or a lot of UPNP devices on your LAN? I noticed that once I isolated my Vera on its own subnet, it has been much more stable. Never had it crash or reboot before, but LUUP reloads are much less frequent.

Is the Vera in an air-conditioned area with enough ventilation for it to passively cool? Sometimes heat causes these type of systems to lock up. Use a USB flash and see if you can capture anything in the logs. It may be worth doing a backup, reset, and restore in case there was some corruption.

If this problem continues, you may just have a bad unit and need a replacement from Vera.

3

In addition to niharmehta’s suggestions,

Be sure that the VP is not located next to or close to other EMF (Electro-Magnetic) or RF (Radio Frequency) devices such as blower motors (Central HVAC), fan motors(hood fans, etc), Fluorescent lamps, your wireless router or any other wireless device that emits RF signals.

Try isolating your VP to a more reticent location.

4

Hi,

I had the same on my VeraEdge. After I trimmed the plugins to just what is needed it seems to have stabilized. When I checked the log files all I could see in there is a single line reporting a hard system failure message. In all of them, not just the LuaPNP.log!

As I have two Vera’s I now have them on power plugs that I can toggle via the other box. I now even wrote a plugin that can automatically do that toggle when the other unit is unresponsive for more than five minutes. As you can guess, since then I no longer had a lockup ::slight_smile:

So it may be Plugin related, but with empty log files, it is hard to say what did happen.

Cheers Rene

5

So sorry, I did catch a typo in my initial post - the problem of entering a post from a smartphone, between the softkeyboards and autocorrect, … well anyway…

The VP is NOT on WiFi - its wifi is indeed turned off. It connects via ethernet. It sits with the other networking tech, in my networking closet that has a ventilation fan that kicks on. However, up here in the pacific northwest its presently still in the 50’s during the days.

The VP itself is powered off of the rack-mounted APC Smart UPS, and it sits on a rack shelf along with the cable modem, VoiP box, main broadband router/access point, DECT phone base station, and an external hard drive that is the backup destination for the NAS that is in the rack below it.

So the only other RF intentional broadcasting is from the WiFi of the router (2.4-2.5 GHz, and 5GHz), and the DECT (1.9 GHz), plus the VP in its zwave (0.900, 0.908 GHz) and zigbee space (0.915 GHz), and the Bluetooth (2.4GHz) frequency bands. The microwave in the kitchen is around the corner and 30 ft away, so I’m not suspecting RF.

I doubt its a heat or frequency issue, unless the VP is badly designed with regard to RF, which I’d hope not as this is not a generation 1 product form the company. But who knows.

I did get the current log and send it out to support, will see what if anything they recommend. I saw that one can sent he logs to an attached USB device, and I may go that route, since the log on the system is mainly the log after the reboot, and not what might show what was going on when it seized up.

I’d hope to not have to get a second just so they can keep an eye on each other… building a watchdog circuit that will reboot the system on a CPU lockup would seem to be a straight forward thing. Is the watchdog there now a process that runs on the system, or is it a basic logic & analog circuit listening to a system heartbeat?

6

[quote=“Minok, post:1, topic:191852”] I powercycle the cable modem and the wifi/router to be sure… let them come back up. No joy. App still cannot connect to the hub. Ugh.

Still nothing this morning - same “Cannot connect check the network connection at the hub” sort of error dialog in the Vera iOS app.[/quote]

why didn’t you power cycle your veraplus at the same time you did the router & modem?
if the situation didn’t resolve itself you should then power cycle the vera unit. waiting wont change anything.

7

[quote=“mvader, post:6, topic:191852”][quote=“Minok, post:1, topic:191852”] I powercycle the cable modem and the wifi/router to be sure… let them come back up. No joy. App still cannot connect to the hub. Ugh.

Still nothing this morning - same “Cannot connect check the network connection at the hub” sort of error dialog in the Vera iOS app.[/quote]

why didn’t you power cycle your veraplus at the same time you did the router & modem?
if the situation didn’t resolve itself you should then power cycle the vera unit. waiting wont change anything.[/quote]

I cycled the power on the router/modem to see if it was some odd quirk only affecting Vera app talking to the VP. Highly unlikely and as demonstrated, not the issue.

I didn’t cycle the power to the VP because that is the last step in trying to fix the problem. If its in some state that may be detectable/diagnosable, that would be lost if I cycled the power on it. That ends any option for diagnosing what odd state it is in via examining the lights or trying other things. Cycling power whenever it locks up isn’t a go forward plan… the device needs to find a way to self restart when it gets confused, otherwise its not very useful, especially if I have to restart it once every few months. Ive only got ONE thing its controlling. so this seemed very odd.

The goal isnt/wasnt to get the situation resolved, but to learn what the situation was, why it occurred and how to avoid it going forward.

8

Just something to consider, I wasn’t suggesting necessarily “frequency” being a culprit as much as Magnetic Induction from RF would be. All the lands and traces on any circuit card are essentially antennas. The semi-conductor circuits operate at very low voltages because it helps reduce power consumption which is heat as well as it improves switching speeds.

It takes for example less time to switch between 0v and 0.5v than it does to switch between 0v and 5v. But the downside is, RFI (Radio Frequency Interference/Induction), EMI, capacitance, and crossover becomes a greater issue because the actual switching voltages can be measured in Milli Volts depending on the components and circuits used. All of which become more prevalent the higher the frequency.

The reason I mentioned RF is because it is a Radio Frequency wave that induces a voltage difference in a device such as an antenna and therefore it can cause variations in voltages, both AC and DC. The amplitude of the RF signal is determined by the RF transmitter proximity to the receiving device and the strength of the transmitted RF wave.

Just think about it.

9

[quote=“Minok, post:7, topic:191852”][quote=“mvader, post:6, topic:191852”][quote=“Minok, post:1, topic:191852”] I powercycle the cable modem and the wifi/router to be sure… let them come back up. No joy. App still cannot connect to the hub. Ugh.

Still nothing this morning - same “Cannot connect check the network connection at the hub” sort of error dialog in the Vera iOS app.[/quote]

why didn’t you power cycle your veraplus at the same time you did the router & modem?
if the situation didn’t resolve itself you should then power cycle the vera unit. waiting wont change anything.[/quote]

I cycled the power on the router/modem to see if it was some odd quirk only affecting Vera app talking to the VP. Highly unlikely and as demonstrated, not the issue.

I didn’t cycle the power to the VP because that is the last step in trying to fix the problem. If its in some state that may be detectable/diagnosable, that would be lost if I cycled the power on it. That ends any option for diagnosing what odd state it is in via examining the lights or trying other things. Cycling power whenever it locks up isn’t a go forward plan… the device needs to find a way to self restart when it gets confused, otherwise its not very useful, especially if I have to restart it once every few months. Ive only got ONE thing its controlling. so this seemed very odd.

The goal isnt/wasnt to get the situation resolved, but to learn what the situation was, why it occurred and how to avoid it going forward.[/quote]

sure that is best practice. if you are trying to resolve a chronic issue. I didn’t get the sense that was what was going on vs. being a 1 time thing.

I agree having to manually power cycle all the time isn’t a path forward.

a few questions.

  1. how many plugins do you have
  2. how many devices do you have
  3. did you upgrade/migrate or start fresh?
10

[quote=“mvader, post:9, topic:191852”][quote=“Minok, post:7, topic:191852”][quote=“mvader, post:6, topic:191852”][quote=“Minok, post:1, topic:191852”] I powercycle the cable modem and the wifi/router to be sure… let them come back up. No joy. App still cannot connect to the hub. Ugh.

Still nothing this morning - same “Cannot connect check the network connection at the hub” sort of error dialog in the Vera iOS app.[/quote]

why didn’t you power cycle your veraplus at the same time you did the router & modem?
if the situation didn’t resolve itself you should then power cycle the vera unit. waiting wont change anything.[/quote]

I cycled the power on the router/modem to see if it was some odd quirk only affecting Vera app talking to the VP. Highly unlikely and as demonstrated, not the issue.

I didn’t cycle the power to the VP because that is the last step in trying to fix the problem. If its in some state that may be detectable/diagnosable, that would be lost if I cycled the power on it. That ends any option for diagnosing what odd state it is in via examining the lights or trying other things. Cycling power whenever it locks up isn’t a go forward plan… the device needs to find a way to self restart when it gets confused, otherwise its not very useful, especially if I have to restart it once every few months. Ive only got ONE thing its controlling. so this seemed very odd.

The goal isnt/wasnt to get the situation resolved, but to learn what the situation was, why it occurred and how to avoid it going forward.[/quote]

sure that is best practice. if you are trying to resolve a chronic issue. I didn’t get the sense that was what was going on vs. being a 1 time thing.

I agree having to manually power cycle all the time isn’t a path forward.

a few questions.

  1. how many plugins do you have

  2. how many devices do you have

  3. did you upgrade/migrate or start fresh?[/quote]

  4. Plugins? I think only one… for the NEST thermostat.

  5. Devices:1 - a single switch. 2 if you count the NEST but I’m not doing anything with/to it at this stage,and its communicated with via wired Ethernet out of the VP via the NEST cloud service (as we don’t get to talk to the NEST directly on the LAN)

  6. Fresh and new - I had nothing. I purchased a single switch (GE12722 Z-Wave Wireless Lighting Control On/Off Switch) and the VP. So the entirety of the system is the VeraPlus, a single GE switch about 20 ft away that turns on the outside lights at dusk, which I then turn off again when I go to bed via the Vera iOS app. And the NEST plugin that gives me some NEST info/control in the Vera app.

Its a simple as simple can be. I think getting more logs captured locally is key, since I’ve yet to hear back from Vera on the support email. My understanding is out of the box the logs were written to a Vera server (possibly) as it cycled to new log files periodically, so the log files of ‘just before the restart’ would, if they exist, be on the Vera site.

11

True enough. The traces on the boards in the VP do pick up signal from the mass of RF that is in the space around it. Trace length to frequency of signal determines the signal strength. I’d think the design of the VP or any such system, knowing its going to be in an RF noisy environment, would be to be tolerant to such things. PC and laptop circuit boards, routers and cable modems, they all seem to handle things well, so I’d expect the VP to also be designed such that it doesn’t pick up a 900MHz or 2GHz signal that causes its data to be corrupted. But a good idea. If I have to move the VP away from the closet, where the big UPS is, that would be a show stopper - sure I could do it, and use a dedicated UPS for it somewhere in some other closet, and running an Ethernet 100BaseT / Cat5E line there isn’t a bit issue however if the VP isn’t RF tolerant, its not really useful for my purposes.