Controller randomly resetting/rebooting itself?

[domiflichi]

Hi it's me again. You probably remember me from this thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/rayshobby/t/2ed2a13aa18006ff


Well after your help, I got my controller working and installed in
place of my old system, and it seemed to have been working great.
However, I've noticed a new problem. :(

Once in a while (every few days) - I open up the web page to check on
my controller, and a couple of times now I've noticed that it seems
that the controller has rebooted itself or something. I say this
because it looks like the date gets reset back to default like when
you first turn it on. For example, I just checked in on it a few
minutes ago and noticed that the 'Device Time' shows: 00:24 Sun 01-02.

What could be causing this? Does it matter that I have installed the
controller on an 'outside wall'? (When I say outside wall, I mean that
it is installed inside my garage, but the other side of the wall is
the 'outside world', as opposed to in my house) My old commercial
system was installed there, but never had this problem.

Thanks,
Jamie

[Ray]

The only reason I could think of is when the controller rebooted due
to power outage, and then it was unable to get NTP sync, say, because
your Internet connection is not up yet or because NTP sync is disabled
in setup. But as long as the NTP sync is enabled, it should re-sync
every 1 hour and get the correct time if the Internet connection is
up. I suggest that the first thing you should check is whether there
have been power outages and whether the Internet connection was down.
If this is indeed the cause, there are two potential solutions:

1) Install a backup battery as described here:
http://rayshobby.net/blog/?p=1032
As long as the microcontroller is running, it will not lose its
current time.

2) Or if you can re-program the controller, you can add a long delay
time at start up. This is to make sure that the Internet connection is
up when the controller tries to do NTP sync.

Installing it on the outside wall shouldn't matter, unless if you
think the temperature is extremely low or water might have got into
the controller.

[domiflichi]

When I got home this evening I checked into the menu system to make
sure that the IP configuration was still correct and that NTP Sync was
still on, and NTP Sync was off! I can't believe it...I was sure I had
checked and rechecked that when I was having the previous problem, but
I must have turned it off for some reason and forgot about it I guess.
So this should solve my problem it sounds like then? I'm hoping it
will...I'll be checking on it regularly for a while and will report
back if I have any problems.

Thanks,
Jamie