Wifi switch as last-ditch Homeseer reset? Anyone tried this?

[Madcodger]

We have a remote vacation property in Maine, with two buildings. I have a HS Zee with latest HS version running in one, and an ISY994 in the other, each with its own zwave network (can’t get zwave to reach between buildings, and wanted to see which device worked best in current versions as I’ve used ISY for many years and was formerly a HS user. Plus, thought HS might be better at zwave). Anyway...

My HS Zee (which has only the HS Zwave module installed) becomes inaccessible after a week or so of running, as has been reported by others. I currently have no events running and wanted HS primarily to be able to check in on temps and for leak detection, so I am not sure whether the Zee is “down”, or just inaccessible, but will be trying an auto restart event (perhaps each day) to help remedy this, starting today. But as a last ditch effort, I’m thinking of putting the zee on a wifi plugin module that is controllable via its own app, so that I can restart the zee remotely if the auto-restart strategy fails.

Has anyone tried something similar? And whether you have or not, does anyone have experience with wifi plugin modules and using them via an app, remotely? I frankly hate to think I have to resort to this, but other than a periodic restart, I have yet to see HS post a fix for the access issue others have reported, and need to figure out something.

[RJS]

On my Hometroller S6, HS3 (or one of the plugins) would periodically crash. I installed Chrome Remote Desktop on it and all my PCs. That works well. However, I wanted to automatically have the Hometroller fix itself. Using Autoit, I experimented with different methods of detecting problems. The way Windows works is that if HS3 (or a plugin crashes), an error window pops up. Unless this error window is answered, the program still exists in Task Manager so triggering on the program not being active doesn't work. What I eventually did which worked quite well was to detect CPU usage. If HS3's CPU usage was below a certain amount for a certain amount of time then the Hometroller would be rebooted. I had Windows launch my program at startup after a delay (to allow HS3 time to run). From time to time HS3 would crash and the Hometroller would automatically reboot.

I ran this for about a year and it worked great. Then I bought an Asus VivoMini PC (VC66-B007Z) to replace my Hometroller. I have not had a HS3 or any of its plugins crash since so I don't run my crash monitor program anymore.

I am guessing that the HS Zee is Linux? Perhaps you could do something similar.

- Robert

[Wade]

We have a remote vacation property in Maine, with two buildings. I have a HS Zee with latest HS version running in one, and an ISY994 in the other, each with its own zwave network (can’t get zwave to reach between buildings, and wanted to see which device worked best in current versions as I’ve used ISY for many years and was formerly a HS user. Plus, thought HS might be better at zwave). Anyway...

My HS Zee (which has only the HS Zwave module installed) becomes inaccessible after a week or so of running, as has been reported by others. I currently have no events running and wanted HS primarily to be able to check in on temps and for leak detection, so I am not sure whether the Zee is “down”, or just inaccessible, but will be trying an auto restart event (perhaps each day) to help remedy this, starting today. But as a last ditch effort, I’m thinking of putting the zee on a wifi plugin module that is controllable via its own app, so that I can restart the zee remotely if the auto-restart strategy fails.

Has anyone tried something similar? And whether you have or not, does anyone have experience with wifi plugin modules and using them via an app, remotely? I frankly hate to think I have to resort to this, but other than a periodic restart, I have yet to see HS post a fix for the access issue others have reported, and need to figure out something.

I have a similar setup at a weekend home with a micro PC plugged into a Leviton wifi in-wall outlet. It connects via the MyLeviton app on my phone. Thankfully I've not need to use it, but in testing it did the dirty shutdown/restart deed as planned.

[Wade]

I have a similar setup at a weekend home with a micro PC plugged into a Leviton wifi in-wall outlet. It connects via the MyLeviton app on my phone. Thankfully I've not need to use it, but in testing it did the dirty shutdown/restart deed as planned.

So, after typing this I decided to check on my connection to the outlet since I hadn't opened the MyLeviton app in months. As I did so, I accidentally touched the device name in the app and--you guessed it--I cycled power to my HS3 server.

I get notifications of HS3 restart, and I can confirm the configuration still works.

[skybolt]

At one point I was using windows task manager to reboot the system every sunday night at 2am. That was an easy thing to do and took no effort to implement. Not sure if the zee is embedded or linux. but I am sure either way you could do something like that. That said, simply rebooting with out a power interruption doesn't flush all of the buffers etc, but usully fixes the memory issues and PI locking up.

[Pete]

In Linux you can create a Cron job to restart Homeseer application and or the RPi.

I would still have a look see at the system logs which located /var/logs directory.

Via a terminal window / SSH you can run HTOP to see utilization stats or the HS3 GUI Linux tools section.

Way back in the HS2 days (last days) HS2 would utilize much memory until it broke. My preference at the time was to run a garbage collection plugin which really did not fix the issue but would let HS3 continously run. Others would do a scheduled reboot (in Windows).

That said this would be a bandaid fix and I would look at the logs and see what is causing the disconnect. It may not be the RPi.

Killing the power to the Zee can eventually cause issues with the SD card (scrambling it). You really want to do a clean shutdown and reboot,

[logbuilder]

Here, HS3 runs on Win10. Internet via satellite. Three routers - Trusted, Guest, IOT all sitting behind a pfSense firewall. The failsafe you describe was built into the design and has only been needed once (worked perfectly).

The hardware I used is a TP-Link wifi powerstrip. The Win10 HS3 machine is plugged into this strip as well as the IOT router that HS3 sits behind. The powerstrip runs on the Trusted wifi network (this is key to allow for reboot of the IOT router). There is an app (Kasa) on my phone. This setup allows me to remotely reboot the IOT router as well as Win10. Works like a charm.

Subsequent to this design and install, a plugin was released that allows for local HS3 control of the powerstrip (many thanks jasv ). The plugin is currently free which is a screaming deal on a great plugin. Here is the TP-Link sub-forum. A nice feature of this powerstrip and plugin is that they provide power usage/status for each of the plugs on the strip. I have other TP-Link wifi devices which work well with the plugin and are generally lower cost than other devices.

Three Dumb Routers strategy explained.

Also, a shoutout to Pete for his great help in setting up the pfSense firewall. Now that I have gotten familiar with pfSense, I'm a convert.

[Madcodger]

Hi everyone,

Thanks much for the replies and ideas. I still can't believe I'm ordering wifi modules to control my Z-wave controllers, but two are on order and due to arrive later this week, before we head south for a few weeks. I went with Leviton plug-in modules, partly to get a quick solution cobbled together in just a few days, and partly because of cc4005's real-world test. I may go with some of the other ideas either over Thanksgiving when we'll be back, or next year when we're here for months at a time. I also created an event to email me twice each day with a heartbeat text, and an event to reboot HS each day. So, hopefully the hard restart won't be needed, or at least only rarely. I'll keep you posted.