Guys, need some help. I'm about 250 miles away from my system, and it looks like my Classic Lite (with MNGP) has gone offline for some reason? I cannot see any solar activity through MyMidnite as well. I have a security camera off to the side, so I can see all my controllers remotely, but not clear enough to see if the breaker for the Classic has tripped, for some reason. There is hardly any power coming in from the other controllers because of "no sun", but I can't connect at all to the Classic. It all works fine from home, never had a issue with it "going offline", or tripping breakers. Is there some way of of sending a remote reboot to see if it's even still "alive". Local app says "Device Not Available".
Again, I can't connect through the local app, even though I have full remote access to my system/network at home through Chrome remote desktop, and MyMidnite is not showing any activity as well. I'm able to do "everything" to my Morningstar controllers, so I do have full remote network access. I have a computer up and running at home for my camera security system, and I should be able to "access" my local app through that same computer, but it just says Device Not Available, and there's no solar output showing in MyMidnite as well.
What can I do, other than driving for 4 plus hours to see what's wrong?
Glen
The only way to reset the Classic is to power off and on the breaker.
Having had a similar remote access problem and 5 hour round drive, and not being able to recruit anyone closer to the Classic's location to do the necessary breaker cycling, we ended up installing a Carling C series remote activated breaker.
From memory I think it was a 100Amp 80volt DC type and the control part was for 24v DC input. This was wired to a cellphone activator via a small DC relay on the GSM board.
Works great.
Typical tho that after spending a fortune on it and associated hardware the Classic never needed remotely reset and has run reliably since last service visit 6 months ago :o
dgd
Odds are on the fact that you would have needed it if did NOT install it... :o :'(
thanks Mr Murphy.... ;)
Last week my Classic went off MyMidnite for some reason after being reliable for a very long time. When I got back to the system the only thing that seemed strange was when I connected via the Local Status App there was a time sync disparity between the MNGP and the Classic. A power reset put the Classic talking to the MyMidnite again and after that I got the time reset and the sync error displayed on Local Status App went away. Not sure if that was what caused it but when you do get back to it would be interesting to know if you had the same issue.
I thought I had everything set up to sync time with Local Status App but something messed up - finally had to set the time with MNGP since I could not get Local Status App to do it even though I tried the Tweak setting Time sync on and off both ways.
No problems since then.
Larry
This is why the Auto-Restart is a choice in the tweaks menu. This makes the Classic reset at midnight every night in case
anything should get stuck. That won't help if the breaker is tripped though. You "shouldn't" need to have
an auto-restart but it is in there.
Yeah, I really hate this kind of problem. Not knowing what is going on ! At least the Morningstar can
show you the battery voltage and that it is OK ?
Back in the late 1990s, I had a terminal to connect to my work computer about 15 miles away and when I
did something wrong, I had to drive down to work and reset the PC. What a pain. 240 miles is worse though !
Dang computers !
boB
Thanks guys, I'll just have to wait until I head back home. Yes, I can see the system voltage on the Morningstar, and don't like what I see, so I'll stop looking. :)
Glen
Just got back home. Breaker was fine. Could not connect through Local app still. I had to do a system reset to get it to talk, power off, power on. It then connected immediately. So, for some reason the Classic lost communication. Nothing wrong with the network as the Morningstar controller and my cameras were still working fine. Guess I need to use the reset feature.
Glen
Glen, do you know what your Classic's firmware version and/or date is ? This might be helpful to
tell us if you are using the latest and greatest or not.
Thanks,
boB
Quote from: boB on December 27, 2014, 03:42:30 AM
Glen, do you know what your Classic's firmware version and/or date is ? This might be helpful to
tell us if you are using the latest and greatest or not.
Thanks,
boB
Here's a picture of the MNGP,
(http://i822.photobucket.com/albums/zz145/Glen_Stroud/classic_zpsc68a9494.jpg)
I had tested this extensively prior to going away, and it worked fine every time. I'd have my "remote" computer set up here at home, go to town, use my Android phone to connect back to home through Chrome remote desktop, and was able to use the Local App. It was always within a few hours though, never the "next" day, so it must be a timing issue somewhere. The Classic is disappearing from the network for some reason, after a certain amount of time.
Well, you do appear to have the latest and greatest.
We're working on it to make it better.
For now, just set the Auto-Restart in the TWEAKS menu and that will take care of it
at least daily... Or, nightly it is.
boB
Is there any downside to having it restart/reboot nightly?
Quote from: mjp24coho on January 01, 2015, 06:31:06 PM
Is there any downside to having it restart/reboot nightly?
I don't think so.
Others may have input though.
Just a follow up to the issue I was having back at Christmas. I've been away now for 4 days and haven't had any issues accessing my Lite 150 with MNGP remotely. Every morning I run the Local App on my home system remotely through "Chrome Remote Desktop" and it runs just fine.
Changes since Christmas, newest firmwares installed on the Lite and MNGP, and selecting the option to auto reset every night.
Glen
I am at the same rev level on my classic 150 and I am having the same issue.
Dave
I don't know what fixed it for me, the new firmware, or the auto reset at night, but so far this time while away from home it's been fine.
Glen
The Ethernet network code is definitely working better than it did say, a year ago.
Even more improvement will be coming not too long from now as the unusual
disconnects are finally understood. This appears to be only with certain systems.
For now, using the auto-reset is a great way to thwart any long term disconnect
problems.
boB
boB, is that whole system specific or is it related to the vintage of the Classic?
Can we telnet into the 502 port to query the values?
You can telnet, but the Classic will only respond to MODBUS commands (assuming it isn't locked up) so you will have to properly format your telnet queries to match the MODBUS command you are attempting.
I'm working on some final network fixes and should have some Beta firmware for those willing to give it another try.
I am wondering if the issue isn't a over heating thing with the ethernet chip. Mine seems to stop responding when I am in absorb mode and the 150 is pretty hot....Just thinking....
We did do some analysis of the hardware to check if there was a drooping supply or temperature problem but I don't believe we found any smoking guns. I am just doing some final checks on the latest network release with some more robust state checks and will hopefully release an Alpha version for willing testers this week.
Thanks for your hard work!
You are very welcome. Thanks for buying our gear!
Quote from: Westbranch on February 13, 2015, 02:22:58 PM
boB, is that whole system specific or is it related to the vintage of the Classic?
Just the Classic but that should help the entire system.
boB
The easiest remote reboot I have seen, not involving power cycling the Classic and associated grunty breakers, is to use a small momentary relay to simple short to ground the 9v supply in the middle serial port (rj12 connector market MNGP/SLAVE)
That definitely does a complete reset and you have lost the energy KWhr count.
This appears to work even if the Classic is non responsive.
Very remote is possible if you have cell coverage using an old cellphone and one of those commonly available code activated cell relays.
dgd
Quote from: microage97 on February 17, 2015, 11:31:26 AM
I am wondering if the issue isn't a over heating thing with the ethernet chip. Mine seems to stop responding when I am in absorb mode and the 150 is pretty hot....Just thinking....
I didn't think there was an ethernet chip unless its something real basic. Does the CPU via firmware not do all the ethernet processing?
Maybe if there was ever an update of the processor board on the Classic then using a more modern dedicated ethernet controller (I like the Wiznet series)would eliminate all this ethernet unreliability nonsense and also provide some proper stack management for several TCP connections
Just IMHO :P
dgd
No, the CPU does not do all the Ethernet processing. There is an Ethernet PHY chip on the board which handles the actual signal translations and requirements for the OSI Physical Layer (in this case Ethernet). The processor has an Ethernet MAC module which does the packet handling and filtering. The software TCP/IP stack lives above this in the Flash of the processor itself. This is what handles the actual IP processing such as ICMP/TCP/ARP/BOOTP/DNS/DHCP.
Overheating, clock jitter, or power supply issues are definitely a possibility whenever dealing with high-speed signalling as is present in something like 10/100 Ethernet.
There is proper stack management for multiple connections as demonstrated by the unit's ability to simultaneously handle ICMP, ARP, DHCP, DNS, remote MyMidNite connections and the MODBUS port. We have just made a design decision to allow one listen TCP MODBUS connection for security reasons. You may agree with this or not but it is how the unit was designed and will remain for the lifetime of the product. We selected the Ethernet PHY and the Ethernet enabled processor based on performance and price point. External chip solutions were considered but found to be too costly to use on this product t remain competitive.
I agree that there is no excuse for the MODBUS connection to be so unreliable and now that I've finally had time to work on it I have released an early beta test of firmware involving a new state machine and connection monitoring for dealing with these issues. This is available for download now if anyone wishes to test with it. If it proves to fix the stack issues then it will be released.
Thanks for explaining this.
It's good to know you are hopefully resolving the ethernet reliability issues, I never thought it would be easy so thanks for applying your time and resources to this
I also understand your reasons for just one user tcp session, I just wish I could get the design team to reconsider this if not for the current Classic then for its next revision or replacement.
Dgd
I completely understand your frustration with the one connection and especially with the unreliability of said connection. We are definitely going to try to do it right with our future products. No crappy local app with poor support from Adobe, embedded web server for easy config, SNMP for enterprise deployments, multiple connection support, option to route an unencrypted mymidnite datastream to your own servers.
All lessons learned which we will hopefully be able to apply moving forward.