WiFi IoT Temperature and Humidity Sensor Goes Offline

[Greg Horine]

I've got a wireless IoT Temp and Humidity sensor running at a remote location over wifi at the site.  Several times a day, the sensor will show offline on the PrivateEyePi.com dashboard page.  When I remote in to a server I have running at the site, I am unable to connect to the IoT device locally, at least initially.  When I ping the IoT device, it responds, and if I refresh the page several times, it will finally come up on the remote server's browser.  After that, it will connect and upload the data to the PrivateEyePi site in the next cycle (5 minutes), and will be good for a few hours, maybe half a day.

The network is up and running fine at the site, as my primary equipment remains online and reporting.

Any ideas?

[Keith]

I would make sure the device has a good WiFi connection.

From my experience the WiFi device gets about half the strength that my cell phone does (so I go by that for signal strength).

When I've placed the WiFi IOT device to far away from the router, it sometimes comes and goes, but if I move it closer I have no problems with it randomly disconnecting.  

[Greg Horine]

Keith,

The device is sitting about 36 inches from the router.  I can ping the device from my other server at the remote location, generally with no lost packets.  I just cannot get the local webpage to come up, and it stops reporting to the PrivateEyePi dashboard.  It has been down for most of the day, came up for a few minutes, and went back down.  It responds to my pings, but not to web page requests.

[Gadjet Nut]

Make sure that the power supply you are using is strong enough.

If you connect to the device in AP mode do you still get intermittent connectivity? 

[Greg Horine]

I'll try a different power supply today when I head up to the site.  I can't check the AP mode remotely, as I only have one remote server I can log into, and it only has one wireless interface.  If I disconnect that to connect to the device AP, I lose my remote connection to the server (don't ask me how I know).

I can tell you that every time I log in remotely to my server, I can ping the IoT device and get 100% ping replies.  I cannot get a web page from the device until I do several (4-5) retries with a browser.  Once the local login/config page comes up, the device will start reporting to the privateeyepi dashboard (for a while, anyway).

[Greg Horine]

OK, I put another power supply on the IoT device yesterday, and the intermittent offline behavior continues.  Sometimes the device starts sending updates on its own, sometimes I have to ping and repeatedly attempt to load the local setup page to get the device to respond.

Do I have a defective device?

[Gadjet Nut]

Did you try connecting to the device while in AP mode? That would rule out a network issue. 

[Greg Horine]

The site is remote, so the one server I have there has only one NIC, so I can't disconnect from our access point and reconnect to the device AP without losing my VNC connection (don't ask me how I know).  I am able to successfully ping the device every time, even while it is not responding to web requests.  I send ping requests with a count of 10 or more, and have 100% reply, so the device is on, and online, just not sending data, or the local web pages.  It eventually starts working again, but takes several refreshes on the browser (local to the device).

[Gadjet Nut]

That's the reason it looks like a network issue with HTML. If you can ping the device then it is up and runnng and communicating. Can you do the AP test next time you  are at the site? 

[Greg Horine]

Yes, I'll try to make it back up there this afternoon, so I'll try connecting to the AP side.

[Greg Horine]

I finally made it up to the site and was able to connect to the device AP without issue.  The device served up the web pages locally without issue.  I did try the regular (non AP) interface prior, and I was unable to access the webpage.  I didn't try refreshing before I connected the AP, so I'm not sure if I "woke" the device up by connecting to the AP, or what.

[Gadjet Nut]

Did you click the option "sleep in between transmits"? If you could post a screen dump of the setting that will help us.

Thanks. 

[Greg Horine]

No, I do not have the "sleep" option selected.  Here is a screen dump.

[Gadjet Nut]

At the top of the screen it says you are not connected to your WIFI router. On the login details screen you need to enter the ssid and password of your router and your token. And also make sure it says PEP:Connected and at the top of the screen. 

Also can you email me (don't post to the forum) your external facing IP address and I'll check if you are on our ban list? 

[Greg Horine]

I too noticed that, but it currently is sending reports to PrivateEyePi.com, so...