Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Related to the development libraries, released by Curt Binder
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rossbryant1956
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 pm
Location: Montgomery Village, MD

Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rossbryant1956 »

I came home from work today and noticed all was dark at my tank. No lights, no pumps, etc. I immediately straight-wired my pump back into the wall outlet while troubleshooting so as was well.

As I started troubleshooting I noticed the green status light on the RA was on, but nothing on the display. Pushing the toggle button did nothing either.

As I started un-plugging cords from the outlet box (thinking something had shorted and was pulling down the box) I happened to unplug the relay expansion module and !bang! everything came back to life.

I next re-plugged all my cords and brought everything back up, and then plugged my relay expansion up, and all is well.

Any ideas what happened?
Roscoe's Reefs - Starting Over Again:

Building new 29g Nano after landlord went berserk over my 4 75 gallon tanks, Multiple RA's, Water mixing stations, etc. Your help welcomed in remembering all I've forgotten.
fatman
Posts: 121
Joined: Wed May 30, 2012 10:44 pm

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by fatman »

That is strange. Are you using a custom code?
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rimai
Posts: 12881
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:47 pm

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rimai »

Weird.
Did it ever happened to you before?
Let me know if it happens again.
Roberto.
rossbryant1956
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 pm
Location: Montgomery Village, MD

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rossbryant1956 »

never before, all is well today. Will advise if happens again. Thx
Roscoe's Reefs - Starting Over Again:

Building new 29g Nano after landlord went berserk over my 4 75 gallon tanks, Multiple RA's, Water mixing stations, etc. Your help welcomed in remembering all I've forgotten.
mudcat1
Posts: 133
Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2012 7:23 pm

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by mudcat1 »

I had the same thing happen to me tonight. None of the device plugged into the Relay box were operational. The Reef Angel display was black and the joystick did not respond. After I unplugged the relay box from power and plugged it back in everything operated as normal. I noticed the problem because the portal graphs were not updating. Did this problem ever get fixed?
rossbryant1956
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 pm
Location: Montgomery Village, MD

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rossbryant1956 »

no, doesn't happen often, but periodically I'll get up in the morning, check my tank and it will just be down. Happened recently to a colleague of mine as well. Any clues or logging that could be done for troubleshooting would be helpful. Thx
Roscoe's Reefs - Starting Over Again:

Building new 29g Nano after landlord went berserk over my 4 75 gallon tanks, Multiple RA's, Water mixing stations, etc. Your help welcomed in remembering all I've forgotten.
rimai
Posts: 12881
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:47 pm

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rimai »

Todd Krein, who is the guy behind the I2C protocol on the Arduino branch gave us some suggestions that I added to the libraries.
https://github.com/reefangel/Libraries/issues/52
The next update will have that patch.
The most likely cause is electrical interference that got to the main processor.
Usually this comes either from wavemaker turning on/off or electrical noise being introduced in the expansion bus cables.
Try moving the expansion bus cables and/or the svga cable away from ballasts or any strong source of energy. You may also try putting WM into constant on while you are troubleshooting the issue.
If you don't have any expansion modules, you may even remove the jumpers in the head unit.
Roberto.
rossbryant1956
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 pm
Location: Montgomery Village, MD

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rossbryant1956 »

Hey Roberto??

Could we write an alert on the portal that would notify us if all of a sudden the portal could no longer communicate with the RA? Thx
Roscoe's Reefs - Starting Over Again:

Building new 29g Nano after landlord went berserk over my 4 75 gallon tanks, Multiple RA's, Water mixing stations, etc. Your help welcomed in remembering all I've forgotten.
rimai
Posts: 12881
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:47 pm

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rimai »

The Portal server doesn't pull data unless you are logged in.
You can do that with the Android app.
Roberto.
dbmet
Posts: 235
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 11:49 am

Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by dbmet »

I use reeftronics.net to monitor my apex and also my Reefangel. I will get an email if there is no communication after an 1hr then after 6 hrs it emails again. Russ is super helpful as well. My name is dbmet on the site if you want to look at the graphs.
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rossbryant1956
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 pm
Location: Montgomery Village, MD

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rossbryant1956 »

rimai wrote:The Portal server doesn't pull data unless you are logged in.
You can do that with the Android app.
How would you do it with the Android app? Thx
Roscoe's Reefs - Starting Over Again:

Building new 29g Nano after landlord went berserk over my 4 75 gallon tanks, Multiple RA's, Water mixing stations, etc. Your help welcomed in remembering all I've forgotten.
rimai
Posts: 12881
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:47 pm

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rimai »

You set it to refresh data every x minutes.... It will tell you when it can't connect.
Roberto.
rossbryant1956
Posts: 471
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:08 pm
Location: Montgomery Village, MD

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by rossbryant1956 »

I want something that will message me when it can't connect. Can we do this?
Roscoe's Reefs - Starting Over Again:

Building new 29g Nano after landlord went berserk over my 4 75 gallon tanks, Multiple RA's, Water mixing stations, etc. Your help welcomed in remembering all I've forgotten.
modulok
Posts: 166
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:37 am

Re: Strange occurence: my RA was down today

Post by modulok »

I use AreMySitesUp.com for my home. For free it will check your website (ddns setup at home is ok too) every 15 minutes and let you know if it is working or not. I haven't checked, but maybe for a fee they might allow you to specify the port number and you can get a notification if the RA is down.
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