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Bert Hennephof avatar image
Bert Hennephof asked

No data alarm - Communication monitoring

My EasySolar II GX suddenly came with the alarm "Communication monitoring" a few days ago. It also triggered an email with message "You are receiving this alarm notification because the VRM database has not received new data from this site since 2024-01-03 16:15:55 Europe/Paris." Looking further in remote console it shows "No data alarm - Communication monitoring".

I have not been able to find a solution (as most questions on this community board with related problem are not answered). After powering down the complete system and reboot it was working for a couple of hours and then the fault returned.

On one post I saw a discussion on wifi reliability vs cable, but as the other user I tried both. Besides it has been working for a year without a problem an suddenly the problem appears.

Looks like it appears when VRM was updated with funny Christmas an snow images.

How to debug this problem to solve permanently? (without having to remove the VRM install, clear all settings and reboot).

Thanks in advance.

EasySolar All-in-One
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hwirth avatar image
hwirth answered ·

This may not be realy helpful, but I'm running an Easysolar on wifi and the communication is stable, as stable as wifi usually can be.

When it loses communication , will it reconnect by itself after some time? Mine is reconnecting after a few seconds, sometimes 2 minutes.


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Bert Hennephof avatar image
Bert Hennephof answered ·

My Easysolar still has wifi connection as I can communicate with it (like going through menu's in remote console). But it seems that it doesn't update data to the portal anymore.

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hwirth avatar image hwirth commented ·
So it's still connected to your LAN but not to the internet. Check the internet connection of your other devices like computer or smartphone when the Easysolar reports that "no data alarm", just to exclude a bad internet connection.
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JohnC avatar image
JohnC answered ·

@Bert Hennephof

Usually a reboot of the GX will restore the VRM connection if it gets 'knotted'. This can be done automagically by settings. This is mine set for an hour's delay..1704335231899.png

If that doesn't work even when you know your www is up, then it's likely a local IP addressing issue. There may be some complexity involved with solving this, so familiarise yourself with what's described re that in the GX manual. If you still can't solve it, come back with more detail. There's occasional odd quirks I'm aware of, but reluctant to publish because I can't nail them down sufficiently.


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Bert Hennephof avatar image Bert Hennephof commented ·
Hi John, thanks for your advice.

I did toggle "reboot when no contact" to on now.

But I am still puzzled why it worked without this problem for a year and now it happened 2 times in a week.

Anyway, does it still record these issues in the error log with this setting "on"? Would be useful to see how often it occurs.

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Bert Hennephof avatar image Bert Hennephof Bert Hennephof commented ·
I can answer my last question myself: yes, it still records the error messages...

But it also means that the problem occurs frequently since a week.

So what is the cause of this failure (again: while it never happened the first year....)

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JohnC avatar image JohnC ♦ Bert Hennephof commented ·
@Bert Hennephof

The underlying cause could be any number of things. My prime suspect would be your router/hotspot. Some cheap consumer grade units tend to die slowly, causing grief before you're finally forced to give up and replace.

The GX reboot is really just to get you past this stage without the grief. Just keep your eyes open, you still need to find the cause..

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Bert Hennephof avatar image Bert Hennephof JohnC ♦ commented ·

The wifi connection with internet seems to be perfectly fine.

img-4122.jpg


Besides I still had contact with the device from VRM Portal, but it stopped logging all the time.

Now I have connected an ethernet cable to test.

First thing I am surprised is that in the wifi settings my manual entries are now lost. Is that normal?

screen-shot-2024-01-05-at-134049.png

How does it work anyway when both ethernet and wifi are connected?

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screen-shot-2024-01-05-at-134049.png (53.7 KiB)
JohnC avatar image JohnC ♦ Bert Hennephof commented ·
@Bert Hennephof

The ethernet has priority. If you pull the cable the wifi should return. Might take a coupla minutes, but shouldn't require a reboot. The GX can in itself maintain Connected status on both links at the same time, but your router mightn't be allowing that. You could try a different subnet for each.

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Bert Hennephof avatar image
Bert Hennephof answered ·

Now that my EasySolar II GX is working fine with an ethernet cable, I suspect that the wifi unit in the EasySolar is slowly dying. All other wifi in my network work fine. So I leave it cabled now.

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hwirth avatar image hwirth commented ·

One way to stay wireless would be a repeater with an Ethernet connection.


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