No Internet No Light

[Wander]

Thought I would start here to see if anyone in the nano-reef community has experience with this.

 

I have a Nanobox Duo with Bluefish Mini. Love it. One draw back. (and only one, I love the light).

 

When the internet goes out, the light goes out. Once I reset the router and get the internet back up for the house, the bluefish mini will automatically reconnect and turn the light back on.

 

My understanding is that the light should remain on if only the internet connection is lost. No power loss, only the wifi is lost and the light goes dark.

 

I have read here that the light should be staying on as long as power remains to the unit.

 

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thank you,

 

 

[jedimasterben]

The Bluefish uses Electric Imp as the units 'brain' and WiFi chip. It has no real onboard storage, so with any loss in power, it basically loses its settings and has to reconnect to the EI servers to grab the information for your user account. As long as you don't lose power, the Bluefish will keep on chugging along like normal until it regains connection, at which point it will download the settings again, the lights will turn off and back on again a split second later, and all will be back to normal.

 

If this is not how yours is working, then you may have a buggy unit.

[JR!]

Yeah I'm going to need to know what's up. All I have is the hotspot from my phone. When I leave so does the webs.

[Wander]

When the internet goes out, the light turns off and the mini flashes red.

 

No loss of power. Just internet.

 

The light will stay off as long as the internet is out, and the mini unit blinks red.

[jedimasterben]

When the internet goes out, the light turns off and the mini flashes red.

 

No loss of power. Just internet.

 

The light will stay off as long as the internet is out, and the mini unit blinks red.

Definitely not normal. Shoot an email with the details of this bug to sales at blueworldaquariums dot com, and also I would CC Dave at david at nanoboxreef dot com.

[Wander]

Thank you for the input. I will get an email out.

[DaveFason]

When the internet goes out, the light turns off and the mini flashes red.

 

No loss of power. Just internet.

 

The light will stay off as long as the internet is out, and the mini unit blinks red.

Please send an email to Bluefish and CC me. We will get you rolling.

-D

[Wander]

Quick service from both Dave and Bluefish. I am not exactly sure what solved it. Bluefish viewed the unit/settings remotely. I tested with the internet connection off and the light stayed on. Thanks for the quick responses and service.

[DaveFason]

Quick service from both Dave and Bluefish. I am not exactly sure what solved it. Bluefish viewed the unit/settings remotely. I tested with the internet connection off and the light stayed on. Thanks for the quick responses and service.

Glad it all worked out!

-Dave

[kimberbee]

I may be without internet for 5 months. Should I use my cell as a hotspot once a week or so for the light/bluefish to update?

[JR!]

so what did they do? im having the same issue

​

[SpencerShepard]

Actually we didn't do anything. Can you please test by unplugging your router? Please email me the details of your setup, your username, and the results of the test.

[SpencerShepard]

I may be without internet for 5 months. Should I use my cell as a hotspot once a week or so for the light/bluefish to update?

It's hard to say for sure as we haven't tested long periods of non-connectivity, but I don't think intermittent connection will help much. I would just monitor the tank and connect if needed. I know there are people that run the controller without a regular connection, but I haven't received any feedback on how well it works long term.

[JR!]

seems to be working just fine now. weird.

[SpencerShepard]

Please email me the details of your setup and username. I am wondering if you are having a power supply issue.

[ecam315]

I may be without internet for 5 months. Should I use my cell as a hotspot once a week or so for the light/bluefish to update?

@kimberbee

Check out a company called freedompop, they have a 500mb a month free service, you just buy the hotspot outright.

[kimberbee]

@kimberbee

Check out a company called freedompop, they have a 500mb a month free service, you just buy the hotspot outright.

 

Yeah the hotspot is only $180.00... My phone can be a hotspot. I understand you were trying to help but that's an expensive alternative.

[smeagol108]

So my power went out last night. Came back on one minute later. Internet didn't come back for like 25 minutes. The light would not turn on even though power was restored without Internet connection. It was connected to my local network but had no Comcast connectivity as the cable connection had not yet restored. I tried a few times unplugging and re plugging in the bluefish but the lights still didn't come on. When my internet came back on the lights came back on. Any troubleshooting we can do?

[jedimasterben]

So my power went out last night. Came back on one minute later. Internet didn't come back for like 25 minutes. The light would not turn on even though power was restored without Internet connection. It was connected to my local network but had no Comcast connectivity as the cable connection had not yet restored. I tried a few times unplugging and re plugging in the bluefish but the lights still didn't come on. When my internet came back on the lights came back on. Any troubleshooting we can do?

The Bluefish unit lost power. It does not have any non-volatile storage, so whenever it regains power, it MUST connect to the internet to redownload its settings.

[smeagol108]

The Bluefish unit lost power. It does not have any non-volatile storage, so whenever it regains power, it MUST connect to the internet to redownload its settings.

But once it gets those settings again, it should be able to function without the internet for a period of time?

Are there any plans to include micro-sd or some other type of Storage so that the unit could function in a power loss scenario where power comes back and Internet doesn't? so it would cache the settings locally on the device itself?

[jedimasterben]

But once it gets those settings again, it should be able to function without the internet for a period of time?

Are there any plans to include micro-sd or some other type of Storage so that the unit could function in a power loss scenario where power comes back and Internet doesn't? so it would cache the settings locally on the device itself?

Once it gets the settings, it does not need to connect again except for things like weather, but if it doesn't have a connection it just ignores that and doesn't modify the weather. In your scenario, it lost power and had no internet connection, but as soon as it got one it reconnected.

 

Any kind of external storage introduces problems of its own, as well as increasing cost and complexity (which further increases cost). The Electric Imp environment wasn't really designed with that in mind.

[smeagol108]

Once it gets the settings, it does not need to connect again except for things like weather, but if it doesn't have a connection it just ignores that and doesn't modify the weather. In your scenario, it lost power and had no internet connection, but as soon as it got one it reconnected.

 

Any kind of external storage introduces problems of its own, as well as increasing cost and complexity (which further increases cost). The Electric Imp environment wasn't really designed with that in mind.

 

Thanks for the info. I have now been reading up on electric imp technology for the last hour. I am an IT engineer by trade so I find it pretty interesting. Is it not possible for the settings to be integrated as part of the system firmware? Obviously this would require major programming changes on the device itself (pushed from cloud, lol) but I would think it would be possible. you know if spencer has any technical documentation/white papers on the bluefish and electric imp he is willing to share? Even if it's just for me to gain more knowledge of how it works, I would find this information very interesting.

[SpencerShepard]

It might be possible to have it revert to defaults in a scenario when there is no internet after a power loss. However I think this situation is somewhat rare, and wouldn't be harmful in most scenarios either. I think rather than trying to find ways to make the device function offline, we'd be better off taking advantage of the fact that it is an online, cloud-connected device. For example, we could send a text to alert you that the controller hasn't been online for a while, and there may have been a power failure.

[Christopher Marks]

It sounds like a simple computer sized UPS battery backup would help avoid interruption for these brief outages. If the controller unit stays powered, it won't need the internet connection to be online. If you get a unit with a larger battery you can even keep your circulation pumps running on the battery.

[smeagol108]

It sounds like a simple computer sized UPS battery backup would help avoid interruption for these brief outages. If the controller unit stays powered, it won't need the internet connection to be online. If you get a unit with a larger battery you can even keep your circulation pumps running on the battery.

Yea I got my mp10s hooked directly up to a 12volt marine battery for backup and works very well. Something to think about I guess.

 

I do think the being able to program default settings as part of the system firmware could be beneficial, as well as text messaging alerts. The Internet is great don't get me wrong and the bluefish being connected to it is amazing and for the price can't be beat, I was just surprised last night when I had no light cause it lost power and I had no Internet when it power came back. It's a rare scenario, yes, but solving this would allow long term use without Internet to no longer be a question. It also raises questions about the cloud environment you are relying on the Internet for the service to function properly. Are there Disaster recovery tests performed on these environments our bluefish connect to? Is there a disaster recovery plan and high availability plan? Could there someday be an event that causes all bluefish users to not be able to control their lights due to a service on the Internet being unavailable. This is what concerns me as an IT engineer who deals with system outages with in house managed applications and asp applications in a critical hospital environment on a daily basis. Light connecting to the Internet is an amazing feature, but light requing an online service to be running properly for it to work introduces risk that I hope has been addressed/mitigated via processes and technologies mentioned above.