[HH] Internet connectivity watchdog timer

[Brough Turner]

Tom,

If your budget extends to $109 or so, there are commercial solutions that
would likely meet your need.  We use a Web Power Switch from Digital Loggers
Inc. at several sites.  They have an auto-ping feature which can power cycle
specific outlets (up to 8 separately addressible outlets) under various
conditions.  See:
   http://www.digital-loggers.com/autoping.html

If you connected the Web Power Switch on the downstream side of your router
and had it pinging an address on the upstream side of your radio, then loss
of connectivity could easily be programmed to power cycle both the router
and the radio.

Thanks,
Brough Turner

Mobile: +1 617 285-0433   Skype: brough
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On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Tom Metro <tmetro+hhacking at gmail.com>wrote:

> Tom Metro wrote:
> > Here's the challenge: I have available an ASUS RT-N16 router running
> > Tomato USB firmware attached to a fixed wireless receiver, and I'd like
> > to have a watchdog timer that resets both when there is a loss of
> > Internet connectivity.
>
> A few years ago I searched for a commercial solution for this and didn't
> turn up much useful. (A few PCI cards designed for servers. Nothing that
> would work with a router.)
>
> I just ran another search and uncovered that Tripp Lite has a bunch of
> models that include a "Watchdog system service to restore operation to
> locked equipment through soft reboot of application/OS or hard power
> off/on reboot of connected equipment - ideal for unattended kiosk
> applications."
>
> Information about it is sparse, but they have some packaged software to
> support it (for Windows):
> http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtModelID=2590
>
> I called them and confirmed the hardware does implement a watchdog
> timer. It's just a matter of getting the necessary technical info to
> create some software to talk to it from the router. By this point I was
> over the heads of the 1st and 2nd level support people, so they asked
> that I email a description of the info I wanted and they'd research it
> and get back to me. Hopefully it isn't information they keep proprietary.
>
> Some of their inexpensive models (like the INTERNET350U <$50) support
> this. According to the marketing info it uses an "HID-compliant USB
> interface." I see both NUT (http://www.networkupstools.org/) and libhid
> (http://libhid.alioth.debian.org/) have been ported to similar router
> platforms.
>
> I expect the general UPS driver won't help with the watchdog feature,
> but the source could be illustrative.
>
>  -Tom
>
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