M1XEP ETHERNET TROUBLE/ETHERNET RESTORE

[Superjer2000]

I have had my M1 with various attachments including an XEP up and running for around six weeks. We just got back from a few days away over Christmas and it was great to be able to turn lights on and off, keep the temperature down etc. while away. On the way home we tried to turn the temperature back up with eKeypad but we couldn't make the system do anything from remote (lights/disarm/temperatures etc.) When I got home I turned on ElkRP and was unable to connect to the panel over Ethernet.

I unplugged the XEP for 10 seconds and then plugged it back in and I was then able to connect to the panel over the network. Looking at the logs, starting on Christmas day (and not prior to that going back as far as December 6) I started to get ETHERNET TROUBLE/ETHERNET RESTORES. Since Christmas day I see six of these trouble/restore messages. The one that was causing us to not be able to connect on our drive home today showed as TROUBLE at around 7:00am this morning with no restore until I unplugged the XEP.

It has now happened twice more since we got home this afternoon. It seems like it starts to fail again after a short period and then I need to unplug and plug the XEP back in.

Anyone had any issues like this?

 

[tmbrown97]

I've seen this crop up a couple times - it seems like some people have the problem and it's a regular annoyance, and for others it never comes up. One person speculated (from his own relevant experience) that the type of ethernet module used in the XEP is rather susceptible to crashing when it encounters fragmented packets or something along those lines (going totally from memory here).

At one point, Spanky - one of the main engineers at Elk offered a suggestion - to use either Output 3 or another output/relay hooked inline with the power to the XEP and writing rules for "Whenever Ethernet Trouble Turn on Output 3 for 10 seconds" - that way if there's a problem it will hopefully detect it and pull the power from the XEP momentarily resulting in it restarting for you automatically.

I haven't implemented it personally but it seems like a good method. What I really need to do is see if there's a way to detect when the XEP's communication is blocked because I left ElkRP connected - since that seems to happen to me fairly often; I'd like it to time out and kick me off after an hour or two.

 

[Del91574]

I commonly do as what was suggested, run the power for the XEP through the onboard relay and then provide via rules. Have also run modems and routers through relays as well to facilitate rebooting, even via phone access if needed.