More robust ethernet communication

[thooker]

My Classic is at a very remote mountain top, where it powers a communication site.  It takes 2 1/2 hours to get to the site with a 4 wheel drive.  The site has internet in the form of a wireless link, which is on the ISP's backbone so it is very reliable.  The charge controller often communicates fine for months at a time to both the local panel and the MyMidnite site.  However, when any glitch occurs in the communication, the communication is broken, sometimes for days stretching to a week.   

One such occurrence happened a couple days ago.  We had a large winter storm, which caused the batteries to drain a little too much, and the ISP backbone link went down.  The, without the load, the voltage went up, and the backbone went up.  It did this on/off every couple of minutes for several hours, until we could get to the site.  We turned on the generator, which charged the batteries and all is fine.  However, when I got home, there was no communication with the Classic.  I went back up there the next day, during a snow storm, and rebooted the Classic.  That was about 18 hours ago, and still NO communication.

In this instance, not having a robust ethernet port on the classic is killing me.  All of the other equipment brings their working ethernet port up within seconds of powerup.  I dont understand why the Classic cant do that.  It is very frustrating, not knowing what the system is doing. 

By the way, I can ping the Classic (between 7 and 21mS), but it will not communicate with either the local panel or the MyMidnite.

Please, make some upgrades to the ethernet port.  I have been struggling with this issue since the beginning.  It is bad enough that I had to buy an independent telemetry system to monitor the system. 

It is VERY important to me, and probably to a lot of other users!

Tracy

[boB]

In your case, I would go to the tweaks menu and enable A-Rst so that the Classic resets at midnight.
That will at least keep you from having to reboot the Classic.  However, if the network messed up during the
day, you would have to wait until midnight when the Classic resets in this way and you would have access
again.

Sorry about this.  We are making it better and better but at the moment, for mountain top sites, the A-Rst
is a good thing to have enabled.  Even if the Ethernet were more robust, it is a good idea.
Computers and software/firmware aren't 100%.  I wish it were and we are working towards making it perfect.
That is the goal.

boB

[thooker]

Hi Bob, Thanks for the reply.  I believe the A-rst is set to on.  The last time I upgraded the firmware (maybe Sept or Oct) I had to go back and turn it back on.  It has been working fine since then, but now the system doesn't want to talk to me!

[boB]

Hi Bob, Thanks for the reply.  I believe the A-rst is set to on.  The last time I upgraded the firmware (maybe Sept or Oct) I had to go back and turn it back on.  It has been working fine since then, but now the system doesn't want to talk to me!

If the Classic was running, other than the Ethernet had stopped talking (not just the ping which worked), then the A-Rst should have fixed it in a day...
Maybe it did its auto reset during times of other bad network happenings and it needed another day to reset ?

The other parts of the network can also affect how the Classic talks if it tries to open lots of connections after network drops, etc.

Hopefully A-rst is on.  It should come back up by itself if that is the case.  Might give it another day or two ?  I don't suppose you can view other things having to do with battery voltage to make sure all is OK ?

boB

[thooker]

boB
My secondary TM system is a Bogart Engineering unit using PMComm software.  It was showing 28.5V during charging today, at a charge current of around 38 amps.  The battery is 24v at 1200 A-hrs.  The sun is down here now, and its at 24.5V with a draw of 12.8 amps.

[thooker]

Rereading your reply, you may be correct.  The issue was happening last night during midnight.  I arrived at the site around 10PM, and I left at 3AM, and I think I reset the Classic sometime between 1 and 2 AM (kind of blurry events, it was also snowing heavily).

Hopefully it will come back tonight.  Any way you can get the system to respond quicker, like within an hour?  Also, why does it rely so heavily upon the midnight reset?

Cheers,
Tracy

[2twisty]

I hate to make a disparaging remark, but it's because the Ethernet code is junk. I've never seen a device so prone to crash the Ethernet!

Is there some jumper on the board that when closed will initiate a reboot?  This way, you could use a remotely closed relay to reset the CLassic, without the expense of a SSR on both the panel input and the battery output..

I know you can reset from teh MNGP, but is there a HARDWARE pin header that will cause a reboot?

[Halfcrazy]

boB will be better to answer this but I know simply grounding the positive lead in the serial jack (MNGP or Follow me Jack) will reboot the controller as will grounding the Aux out if it is active. Basically anything that would over load the Aux supply will reboot the classic but I don't know if that's the proper way to go or not.

Ryan

[thooker]

Well, the midnight (midnite?) reset brought the unit back to life.  I am now able to see and control the unit with the local app and see the data at Mymidnite.

One irritating issue is that I dont have any data during the outage:  it does not download the logged data, only the current data.  Therefore, I dont know how the system responded yesterday, or the day before.

Another very odd issue is the on board clock.  The Local App is yellow, and the alert says the Classic clock is more than 10 minutes different from the PC clock.  Indeed, it is 1 hour off.  When I correct it, it goes back to green for a couple minutes, then goes back to yellow.  My clock drifts, and I have corrected it many times before.  But now, I cant.  Another little issue that changed without me changing it!

Tracy

[Westbranch]

Do a search for 'clock battery' and you will get about 30 hits.  Sometimes it has been some residual glue on the battery that was the culprit or maybe the battery is weak..

hth

[boB]

I hate to make a disparaging remark, but it's because the Ethernet code is junk. I've never seen a device so prone to crash the Ethernet!

Is there some jumper on the board that when closed will initiate a reboot?  This way, you could use a remotely closed relay to reset the CLassic, without the expense of a SSR on both the panel input and the battery output..

I know you can reset from teh MNGP, but is there a HARDWARE pin header that will cause a reboot?

Yes, there actually is a way to reboot the classic via Aux 1 connection to ground....   If you simply set Aux 1 to "Manual On",
and had a relay that grounded that Aux 1 output for a second or two, the Classic should reset.  This is not a "function" but
is like Ryan/Halfcrazy was mentioning.....    The PTC resettable fuse opens up but before it does, the Aux supply is momentarily
overloaded and the processor resets.  Since the processor itself resets and the PTC is open because the supply is satisfied
because it is not not overloaded, the Classic will reboot.  Simply  remove the Aux 1 short to ground and it will run.

As for data logging, you should have plenty of data from the minutely logs for things like battery voltage, input voltage, power,
charging stage, kW-hours produced that day, etc.  This data logs every 5 or 10 minutes every day.

boB

[2twisty]

Well, grounding AUX1 is not an option for me since I use AUX1 to start my generator.  The idea of grounding the positive line from one of the serial ports is intriguing, but since it's a hack, I would be concerned about the possibility of damage to the Classic.

Is using that method a "supported" action? Would Midnite Solar refuse a warranty repair if they found out that someone was using this method to reset their classic remotely?

It would be easy enough to set that up, since phone cords are pretty common (or, rather, they *used* to be!).

[boB]

Well, grounding AUX1 is not an option for me since I use AUX1 to start my generator.  The idea of grounding the positive line from one of the serial ports is intriguing, but since it's a hack, I would be concerned about the possibility of damage to the Classic.

Is using that method a "supported" action? Would Midnite Solar refuse a warranty repair if they found out that someone was using this method to reset their classic remotely?

It would be easy enough to set that up, since phone cords are pretty common (or, rather, they *used* to be!).

The serial port power output is actually another option.  All of the 9 volt power outputs are protected by a PTC.
It'll be fine as long as you just short the +9V to negative for a second or so every time you need to reset.

But what do you have connected that can remotely trigger a relay or something to do this ?  Will the Bogart do that ?

boB

[2twisty]

I would use a relay triggered from a RasPi.  Remotely connect to the Pi, reboot the Classic, and wait for it to come back online.

If the Ethernet code on the Classic was fixed, none of this would be necessary, lol

[zoneblue]

I would use a relay triggered from a RasPi.  Remotely connect to the Pi, reboot the Classic, and wait for it to come back online.

If the Ethernet code on the Classic was fixed, none of this would be necessary, lol

If youre going that far, then you will be better off looking at blackbox or similar. Blackbox seems to connect in a more robust way than the local app, at least for me i no longer get any classic coms lockups at all.  The difference is in keeping the modbus link open permanently.