5 hours ago, raymondjiii said:

I'm trying to understand this remote Wifi device. If it's in your house and you have no Internet "network" then how is this device connecting to? I don't care if the device connects back to "its cloud" somewhere (like Feit brand cameras do and you access the cameras at the cloud address) - if it's like that - how does "the cloud" signal make it back into your house where there is no network at all. If it's not running on a cell network I fail to see how this device is going to connect back to its app. Or rather, how "the app" is going to connect it "it". The Feit camera might be connected to "the cloud" and you access it via it's cloud IP address - but the network stream is still going from your house network to said cloud. No home network - nothing is phoning home back to the clould

With ISY/polisy/eISY and Insteon, no WiFi, cloud, router or modem is required.

ISY does some sensing of the router or LAN or Internet being down and power cycles the router/modem by the Insteon network.

1 hour ago, dbwarner5 said:

I imagine a z-wave plug (which I have) would work as well for the modem as no internet is needed for that either? I have kasa plugs that I could use for the EISY... thanks!

I looked at your Home Automation Roadmap. If you ever get your Yamaha receiver integrated that would be awesome. I tried that device that has the IR emitters - not sure if that was Smarthome or Insteon or what. But I could not get that working with my old ISY. I have successfully used the ChannelPlus units that plug into an electrical box and send the IR signals all over (to the receivers in the house). That was nice when I had cable TV. But I do wish I could get this "other device" (can't remember the name) - to work to change volume, radio station (yes I still listen to FM, about a year ago setup a nice HD FM antenna) and a Sony XDR-FM1 - I mean that device stands by itself. How the hell that thing can pull in signals from "way out" and separate the signal from the noise. I have 3 other units that I want to try to do the mods on. The guy who used to do them "xdrguy" is semi-retired now but I'm on his "wait" list. There's a lot of messing around on that little tuner board and the solder joints like to come off the board which makes it real fun. There's a good chance I'll mess something up on at least one of these units but learn by doing.

If I had this issue I don't think I would do a scheduled reboot. What if my router hung up and the reboot wasn't for another couple days?

I would use some node servers that rely on a cloud connection. Something that regularly changes. For example, use a weather app. If the temp and humidity stay exactly the same for like an hour, reboot the router using Insteon. Maybe just to be sure it isn't the weather app that went down, use two different apps both of which have values that get updated every few minutes. If neither changes for an hour, reboot. The only caveat here is if PG3x is somehow down. But I would add to the mix an email notification telling you it has rebooted. At this point you can manually check it out. Obviously, if it is pg3x that is down, you will still be able to access your ISY remotely and ISY will still be able to send you an email remotely. Perhaps two notifications, one that sends before the reboot and one after. If you get the first one, you know it was an unnecessary reboot and to figure out what is up with PG3x.

So, I am going to think outside of the possible eISY solutions (gasp!). I have a spare Verizon HotSpot laying around. I am going to try that with my router plugged into a wi-fi plug connected to the HotSpot. In theory, as long as I have cell service to the location, I can connect in remotely and tell it to reboot. Plugs will be here shortly and I'll give it a try.

1 minute ago, jkmcfadden said:

So, I am going to think outside of the possible eISY solutions (gasp!). I have a spare Verizon HotSpot laying around. I am going to try that with my router plugged into a wi-fi plug connected to the HotSpot. In theory, as long as I have cell service to the location, I can connect in remotely and tell it to reboot. Plugs will be here shortly and I'll give it a try.

Unless this devices has an automatic "return to on" routine, once turned off you will be locked out of any further WiFi actions once your power is off, and not be able to turn your router back on from anywhere.

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by larryllix

1 hour ago, larryllix said:

Unless this devices has an automatic "return to on" routine, once turned off you will be locked out of any further WiFi actions once your power is off, and not be able to turn your router back on from anywhere.

This device won't be dependent on the router wi-fi, but will use the wi-fi from the Verizon hotspot. So I can tell the plug via the plug app to turn off and on to reboot the router but the access to the plug won't be affected since it is on an independant wi-fi network..

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by jkmcfadden

9 minutes ago, jkmcfadden said:

This device won't be dependent on the router wi-fi, but will use the wi-fi from the Verizon hotspot. So I can tell the plug via the plug app to turn off and on to reboot the router but the access to the plug won't be affected since it is on an independant wi-fi network..

Is this the Hot-spot from your mobile device?

Can this work from 3000 miles away when your router crashes or locks up?

Just now, larryllix said:

Is this the Hot-spot from your mobile device?

Can this work from 3000 miles away when your router crashes or locks up?

My HotSpot is a separate cellular device that uses the cell towers for wi-fi access. It is not related or dependent on my router at all. I'll keep it in the same closet as my router where the wi-fi plug will be used. So I'll be able to reach the plug when I can't reach my router. And then just tell the plug to turn off and back on again. And yes, the app that works with the plug will work from anywhere.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by jkmcfadden

37 minutes ago, jkmcfadden said:

My HotSpot is a separate cellular device that uses the cell towers for wi-fi access. It is not related or dependent on my router at all. I'll keep it in the same closet as my router where the wi-fi plug will be used. So I'll be able to reach the plug when I can't reach my router. And then just tell the plug to turn off and back on again. And yes, the app that works with the plug will work from anywhere.

Oh so you have a backup Internet access system, using a mobile cell signal device. That works.

Costly for most of us though.

21 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Oh so you have a backup Internet access system, using a mobile cell signal device. That works.

Costly for most of us though.

Yes, a little costly, but given the investment we have made in automation, we consider it a good value. It's not just the eISY access, it is also cameras, garage door, smart locks and the like.

We are currently away from our second home that went off-line several days ago. Finger's crossed our weekly reboot via our digital timer brings it back on-line. With this new setup I am going to add, I could have likely had it back up without the wait.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by jkmcfadden

19 hours ago, larryllix said:

With ISY/polisy/eISY and Insteon, no WiFi, cloud, router or modem is required.

ISY does some sensing of the router or LAN or Internet being down and power cycles the router/modem by the Insteon network.

@larryllix What do you recommend for a direct (and easy) method of sensing that the internet is down? I would like to have a program that senses it and then reboots the router.

@apostolakisl I agree that checking for non-updating conditions would be a way, but I would rather not have to determine if it was a PGx problem. And FYI, I've had my router/modem on an automatic daily reboot for years now and it's never hung because of the reboot.

1 hour ago, Ross said:

@larryllix What do you recommend for a direct (and easy) method of sensing that the internet is down? I would like to have a program that senses it and then reboots the router.

I have a suggestion for that: there is a free plugin called Ping, which does exactly what you need. You define a device name, and a URL to ping (you can define several). It pings it every ShortPoll time (default every 60 seconds). The status of the device will either be "On Network" or "In Fault". I just tested it with www.cnn.com as an address that should respond, and a jibberish url to get a fault response. Works great.

1 hour ago, Ross said:

@larryllix What do you recommend for a direct (and easy) method of sensing that the internet is down? I would like to have a program that senses it and then reboots the router.

@apostolakisl I agree that checking for non-updating conditions would be a way, but I would rather not have to determine if it was a PGx problem. And FYI, I've had my router/modem on an automatic daily reboot for years now and it's never hung because of the reboot.

wow.. daily reboot..... I was thinking monthly at most.

10 minutes ago, Guy Lavoie said:

I have a suggestion for that: there is a free plugin called Ping, which does exactly what you need. You define a device name, and a URL to ping (you can define several). It pings it every ShortPoll time (default every 60 seconds). The status of the device will either be "On Network" or "In Fault". I just tested it with www.cnn.com as an address that should respond, and a jibberish url to get a fault response. Works great.

Just to add more detail, a failed ping will give a "In Fault", but 5 missed pings will then change the status to "Off Network". This can help avoid temporary hiccups.

You could ping both a common site like the cnn site I tested with, and a site you depend on, such as the portal, and determine (using an "And" condition) if it's just the portal that's down, or your actual internet access. I'd increase the poll interval to something like every 10 minutes.

Smart outlet with hardware built-in watchdog that monitors your gateway connectivity

Keep Connect | Automatic Router Rebooter

Rebooter Pro – Automatic Router and Modem Rebooter

Also possible to reboot most modems with a curl command.

For example for Aaris Surfboard cable modems

curl -u admin:password http://<modem ip>/goform/Goform_Reboot

(Replace admin:password with your credentials).

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Diesel

I have a VPN between two sites and I have some items that PG3x controls on the other end of the VPN. If that heartbeat goes down, I have it send me an email. This works very well to tell me if the remote site has gone down or the VPN has gone down.

Now if you put an Iox at both ends of the vpn, you could heartbeat between the two devices. If the heartbeat goes down, you can have both of them send you a text/email (obviously only the one still connected goes through) and it reboots the router via an appliancelinc. I would put a delay in there of like 30 minutes or more to give you time to react to the text to block it from rebooting the local machine if it is the remote one that went down.

You would need routers at both ends that do site to site vpn. I use ubiquiti stuff which is insanely easy to setup site to site. You also need a public IP address at one (or both) of the endpoints for Ubiquiti site magic to work. If you have CGNAT at both ends, you will need to do something like tailscale and rpi's at each end. In short, I wouldn't bother with this if I had CGNAT at both ends.

3 hours ago, jkmcfadden said:

Yes, a little costly, but given the investment we have made in automation, we consider it a good value. It's not just the eISY access, it is also cameras, garage door, smart locks and the like.

We are currently away from our second home that went off-line several days ago. Finger's crossed our weekly reboot via our digital timer brings it back on-line. With this new setup I am going to add, I could have likely had it back up without the wait.

ISY and an Insteon OnOff module is cheaper and you can control the logic to do it automatically.

However, complete manual control has a lot to be said also.

2 hours ago, dbwarner5 said:

wow.. daily reboot..... I was thinking monthly at most.

It really ticks me off when I have to jerk my devices to get them reconnected each time the router decides to hiccough. Power cycling the router leaves a few devices hanging and need to have various degrees of power cycling, rebooting, and complete reset of the security details.

My VR headset complains but then reconnects automatically.

3 hours ago, Ross said:

@larryllix What do you recommend for a direct (and easy) method of sensing that the internet is down? I would like to have a program that senses it and then reboots the router.

@apostolakisl I agree that checking for non-updating conditions would be a way, but I would rather not have to determine if it was a PGx problem. And FYI, I've had my router/modem on an automatic daily reboot for years now and it's never hung because of the reboot.

The Ping plug-in mentioned sounds like a great idea but in the old(er) days I set up a state variable and made ISY Portal aware of it, presenting it to the Alexa cloud app.
In the Alexa cloud app, I created a routine, triggered by the pseudo MS from ISY Portal and that triggered a turn on of another variable that ISY watched for response. I am not sure who cleared it now.

On a cyclic timer ISY then sent that semaphore by toggling the variable to True and then False (1/0) and then the program allowed half a minute to see or not see the response.

If no response was found then a series of repeated attempts to power cycle the router was done with that program watching for a successful retest each time. IN the end IIRC I increased the time delay to about once per hour to retest. It may be a possible Internet failure. We've had a few in the Eastern Seaboard (NY, Ontario, Ohio, Michigan, Manitoba) so far.

22 minutes ago, larryllix said:

The Ping plug-in mentioned sounds like a great idea but in the old(er) days I set up a state variable and made ISY Portal aware of it, presenting it to the Alexa cloud app.
In the Alexa cloud app, I created a routine, triggered by the pseudo MS from ISY Portal and that triggered a turn on of another variable that ISY watched for response. I am not sure who cleared it now.

On a cyclic timer ISY then sent that semaphore by toggling the variable to True and then False (1/0) and then the program allowed half a minute to see or not see the response.

If no response was found then a series of repeated attempts to power cycle the router was done with that program watching for a successful retest each time. IN the end IIRC I increased the time delay to about once per hour to retest. It may be a possible Internet failure. We've had a few in the Eastern Seaboard (NY, Ontario, Ohio, Michigan, Manitoba) so far.

A site to site VPN with IOX updating variables to each other plus no changes to a cloud PG3x would rule out an isolated PG3x or VPN issue. If both PG3x and VPN are down, then it is almost certainly and internet issue. You could set it to only reboot if both were down.

If

$state.variable.updated.by.remote.Iox.is 1 (set this to update via Rest command sent from remote Iox every minute or so between 1 and 0)

or

$state.variable.updated.by.remote.Iox.is 0

or

weather PG3x node is not -50 degrees

or

weather PG3x humidity is not 100%

Then

wait 30 minutes

send notification "about to reboot router" (if you get this email, presumably both your vpn and your PG3x node are down)

wait 10 minutes

set appliance link off

wait 10 seconds

set appliance link on

wait 10 minutes

send notification "router rebooted"

The program will keep re-triggering true every time any of those things changes so it will never finish the 30 minute wait unless all of them stop updating.

Alternatively, get yourself a modem/router that actually works. They do exist, I have never had to reboot mine in years, home of office. Only reboots are when I am rearranging plugs or something. They are on UPS.

I was just experimenting a bit more with the Ping plugin. You can use it to make a graduated approach, to find out where your IP chain seems to be broken and take appropriate action.

Ping the loopback address (127.0.0.1), and reboot the eisy if needed.

Ping the router, restart if needed.

If possible ping the modem's public address and restart that if needed.

Ping outside destinations, both specific needed ones and general sites, to distinguish if it's the internet of a specific destination.

Looks like there are many possibilities.

A little late to this party but there is a PG3 plugin called Ping that will monitor IP addresses of your choosing. I have it monitor Lan and Wan and our cell phones.

Ping - Universal Devices Forum

1 hour ago, TJF1960 said:

A little late to this party but there is a PG3 plugin called Ping that will monitor IP addresses of your choosing. I have it monitor Lan and Wan and our cell phones.

Ping - Universal Devices Forum

That would be perfect to use my basic idea. If you have a few failed pings in a row, reboot. You could just ping 8.8.8.8