Wiser constantly losing connection

After installing a wiser to control our c-bus network around 4 months ago (mainly for the Windows MCE and extender client, we have had nothing but pain from it. It appears to me that the product is highly unreliable and prone to lose connectivity at any time.

I am qualified in networking and programming, and the electrical side also, and deliberately left the wiser in it's default setting (192.168.2.1-2) for simplicity, with the existing router (ADSL Modem) as gateway on 192.168.2.10, etc. The Wiser sees this fine and all works perfectly for a time.

We are seeing:
- The Wiser unit works fine for a day or so, including schedules working as expected;
- Then it just stops. Can get a response from 192.168.2.2 on a browser, but the GUI doesn't come up and the schedules no longer run. The only solution is rebooting the wiser and then all is well;
- Except that when it comes up, it randomly starts up some schedules (it seems) and most annoyingly, these are often the watering systems!!
- One of the times it died, after rebooting, it had COMPLETELY lost the program - it was empty! We had to reload the program into the Wiser.
- It has twice died AFTER starting the watering schedule and left our system watering for hours - only that we noticed it and reset the stupid thing.
- Connectivity to MCE is unreliable also. The main server unit can typically connect, but only now and then can any of our 4 XBox 260 Extenders connect to the Wiser GUI. Usually they cannot, so the Wiser has proven to be fairly useless for the purpose we obtained it.

Has anybody found this device to be reliable at all? Perhaps I have a dodgey one?

I thought I would see how people are going with these before contacting Clipsal.

 

Before contacting Clipsal, I would suggest posting....

Firmware version in the Wiser
Version of PICED used to program

Any info you can provide will assist in solving your problem(s)

 

Problem was occuring with previous firmware, but updated to latest (Kona_1.12.0) and made no difference. Wiser locked up again twice today - the 192.168.2.2 web page indicates all is working fine, and "ready to connect", but not the case!

Piced is 4.7.0.

Has anybody else seen this instability with Wiser locking up?

 

Hi,

PICED 4.7.2 is the currently released version that is compatible with Wiser firmware 1.12.0. I would recommend upgrading to that version and reuploading your project to the Wiser. If the problem still occurs, please PM your PICED project and we'll try to figure out what is going on. If possible, your Wiser router settings export file, (Administration->Backup Configurations) could also help.

Also, just to confirm, you are using your Wiser as a LAN device right? That is, not as a router, and you have an existing ADSL modem+router on 192.168.2.10 that serves as your Wiser gateway.

 

Wiser

Our one at home had to be re-started every few days (at least twice a week) initially until the latest update, since then it hasn't missed a beat. The only other issue we have had is with the VMC plugin. On/off, fan control, camera and scene control all work well but we constantly have trouble with the dimming function. For example, if a light is off and we try to ramp it on media centre will show 5% and stop responding. The light will ramp to 100% and media centre displays an error message saying Home Control has stopped responding and will now close etc.
Vista Media Centre version: 6.0.6002.18103

Regards,

Mark

 

VMC plugin

hi Mr Mark...

it will be helpful if you can provide us with your project.xml and socket-data.log files, which normally located on C:\Program Files\Wiser\.
we hope, with those files, we will be able to replicate your problem here.

cheers...

 

I'm having a similar problem which appears to be related to schedules. I have all the latest PICED and the new firmware update.

Trying to track down the issue

 

Above is a good point to raise. A quick one for all of us to be aware of. When a Wiser is used as a router, it has to use memory to track all of the outgoing connections from behind it. This memory is needed for network address translation between the external IP address and the internal IP address(es). "swarming" protocols like BitTorrent will create as many outgoing connections as possible in order to maximize download speed and each of those connections takes up memory on the Wiser. There could possibly be a scenario where the amount of memory and cpu used on the Wiser for routing tasks starts to impede Wiser's C-Bus services. If you're using your Wiser as a router and you are seeing stability issues, please consider constraining your Bittorrent client's maximum connections to see if that helps.

 

I use Transmission, a Linux bittorrent client and I have my total maximum peers set to 200. This is on a Linux desktop behind a Wiser setup to be a router using PPPOE with an ADSL modem. I have firmware 1.12.0 and PICED 4.7.2 and its been up since the upgrade to 1.12.0. Before that, with 1.11.0, I would estimate I had typical uptimes of a couple of weeks between reboots, typically because I would be changing my project or a setting on the Wiser.

 

VMC plugin - ramp problem

after studying your socket log, i just realized that the problem lies on the Wiser. It has been found that on Wiser firmware version 1.12.0, there is an issue with unsolicited ramping announcement. this had been rectified in internal firmware releases and should be available to everyone very soon.

 

Pleased to see so many people willing to help with my original problem.

The Wiser unit was left with the default IP Settings and I changed the main router/modem to 192.168.2.10, which is the DHCP Server also (disabled on Wiser).

Since the Wiser originally didn't seem to know the Gateway and DNS according to the Wiser Tab in the settings (the bottom set was blank), I set the Wiser Internet connection to static and added these items, which were then picked up on the Wiser Tab. This seemed a little strange, but made no difference to the unit locking up regularly.

The really painful thing is that the Wiser seems to prefer to lock up in the middle of running schedules - perhaps this is the real problem. I love having the watering system left running indefinitely!!

I will update Piced to the latest version, but not really sure how this would make any difference. Let me know if I should still PM my program.

Strangely, when setting schedules initially, I created a test schedule, which even though being deleted, still appears to run (it isn't there any more, but it turns a light on every night at 11pm anyway).

 

Thanks Colin

I believe that is what is happening ..... it stops after running a specific schedule. In the process of nailing it down and will respond with the other info once I've done some more testing.

The schedule runs every 3 days.

 

PICED creates the infrastructure that the Wiser uses. There is a specific association between different versions of Wiser firmware and the version of PICED appropriate for it. A non-matching version of PICED would create infrastructure that might be incompatible with specific versions of Wiser. In some cases this is a many-to-one relationship but I don't want to overcomplicate the story. Basically, if you're using Wiser firmware 1.12.0 then the corresponding PICED is 4.7.2.0. Older Wiser firmware will correlate to older versions of PICED. Hope this makes sense. PICED already verifies when uploading a project that the firmware on the Wiser is at least as up to date as the version within its packages, but it requires the user to re-update the project after that Wiser firmware upgrade performed by PICED. I believe Clipsal is putting into place a framework that in future will make sure these compatibilities are verified automatically by the software.

It'd be great to get your project, it'll let us run it and see what could be causing the observations you're seeing.

 

There are two threads, but I actually believe they are completely related. Thanks for the network settings details. If the unit is happy with these items being blank then I will revert the WAN Connection as noted.

I did have those settings initially and still had the lockups, then nothing changed after I specified static IP.

However, I believe I am seeing the same behaviour as 7iron - the unit locks up when it hits a schedule, since it typically stops communicating in the middle of watering the garden!

I don't believe it is a networking issue, since it works generally fine and then stops responding on the network because it is locked up.

I will update Piced first and let you know if the problem continues.

 

By the way, when will v1.14 of the firmware be released? I noticed you have this version running.