Wifi Disconecting after 2 or 3 days?

[quattrodave]

Morning all,

I have a bit of a strange issue... After 2 or 3 days of my Afterburner being powered on it disconnects from the Wifi for no aparent reason...
The wifi still works from other devices (phone, laptop, tablet etc).  
If I power cycle the router all devices re-connect apart from the Afterburner.  
If I power cycle the Afterburner it re connects to the wifi immediatly and will stay connected for another 2 or 3 days, afterwhich it will disconnect....?!

Has anyone else had this problem, any idea how it may be rectified...??

Thanks

[Mr.Bill]

Morning all,

I have a bit of a strange issue... After 2 or 3 days of my Afterburner being powered on it disconnects from the Wifi for no aparent reason...
The wifi still works from other devices (phone, laptop, tablet etc).  
If I power cycle the router all devices re-connect apart from the Afterburner.  
If I power cycle the Afterburner it re connects to the wifi immediatly and will stay connected for another 2 or 3 days, afterwhich it will disconnect....?!

Has anyone else had this problem, any idea how it may be rectified...??

Thanks

Mine acted like that two different times.  Once when it was getting a bunch of electrical interference from the cheap power supply I was using at the time on my heater, and a different time that I think was just randomly lower voltage than it needed making it unstable.  Both times I had to power cycle the afterburner every couple of days to get it to connect again until I fixed the issue.  Besides those two periods mine has been rock solid and never disconnects.  Going on probably six months now without a reset.  Could it be getting shielded from the wifi somehow?  Like something metal in between it and your router?  Or something making electrical interference by it?  Are the other devices also on the 2.4ghz band or do you have other things on that band that are working normally?  Just trying to think of anything for you to check.

[quattrodave]

Mine acted like that two different times.  Once when it was getting a bunch of electrical interference from the cheap power supply I was using at the time on my heater, and a different time that I think was just randomly lower voltage than it needed making it unstable.  Both times I had to power cycle the afterburner every couple of days to get it to connect again until I fixed the issue.  Besides those two periods mine has been rock solid and never disconnects.  Going on probably six months now without a reset.  Could it be getting shielded from the wifi somehow?  Like something metal in between it and your router?  Or something making electrical interference by it?  Are the other devices also on the 2.4ghz band or do you have other things on that band that are working normally?  Just trying to think of anything for you to check.

Thanks for your reply.  Interesting, so both your issues were power related.  I'm running my heater & afterburner from a reasonly large battery bank with a decent Victron charger attached, I'd be very suprised if mine was a low voltage issue, I've gone back through my Cerbo GX logs and can't find any low voltages lower than 13.4.  
It is possable there is an interference problem...  Any ideas if I can add some capacitors to the heater's supply to help filter out any spurious interference...??

[quattrodave]

OK the afterburner has just disconnected again.... Physically checked the Afterburner and it is connected to wifi with an IP address but MQTT is disconnected. I opened the laptop, I can browse the local network and open the afterburner web page.
   

Opened MQTTX to verify the MQTT server is available:
   

So the MQTT server is up and running, afterburner is connected to the network, afterburner is transfering data to the MQTT server.... 
but what does 'Unexpected token o in JSON position 0' mean...??

OK so disabled and enabled MQTT from the menu and it reconnects and works fine again......???
   

Could this still be some sort of interferience issue??

[afterburner]

The unexpected 'o' easy to answer.

The topicprefix/status topic is NOT a JSON value, but I'm suspecting it is trying to decode as such...?
All that lives in that topic is "online" or "offline", the latter being inserted by the broker if the LWT gets enacted (ie apparently dead connection to the AB)

The only thing I can think of for stopping after days is free memory exhaustion. This sort of issue is incredibly difficult to diagnose, and may simply be due to fragmentation of free space as memory is randomly allocated and freed.

About the only solution is a scheduled reboot to start afresh.
GPIO output#1 looped back to the EN input could be used, along with a repeat every day timer set to activate that GPIO signal.
GPIO2 has the unfortunate behaviour during the startup code to momentarily activate, and thus you'd never boot up.

[quattrodave]

Thanks for your reply.  Sure, that makes sense.  OK, I think I follow your logic, your suggesting using GPIO out 1 to pull EN to ground to cause a reboot... so couple of questions here...

1. GPIO Output#1 (Orange) looped back to 'EN' the physical push button on the board ?
2. Create a repeating timer say 3am every day to activate GPIO Output#1 ?
3. I've just been going through the manual, what setting would I use for the GPIO Output#1 ?
4. Would it be OK to 'reboot' Afterburner this way whilst the heater is running ?

[afterburner]

You will find the EN signal at the top edge, adjacent to the debug serial header, on a 2 pin header (along with the BOOT signal).

Yes, a repeating timer. And set to activate GPIO #1. Just make it a "on" so it truly becomes a one-shot. A normal period may well re-enable after boot if still within the time window of the timer.
The unit will reboot faster than the ability to actually send an ECU on command :-)

I have known some to update the firmware when the heater is running, then reboot to no ill effect.
I personally feel this is a bit too risky.
But yes, rebooting the AB alone will not affect the running heater.

[afterburner]

ACTUALLY, scratch using "START", use Set Demand instead.

In terms of setup.

The GPIO output #1 must be set to "User mode", double checking that the drive mode is set as "Digital" (Hold down when on the mode selection to open the sub menu).

In the timer, enter the edit mode, then set at the very bottom for GPIO: "Output #1"

eg:
Mode: Set Demand
Start time: as desired
Stop time: +1 minute over start time.
Repeat: Yes
Days: Everyday ( depends on how Repeat is set - may be "Next" if repeat is No)
Target: "Usual C" - hold down to reach 0 to set this if a specific value is defined.
GPIO: Output #1

This will simply set the thermostat to the usual setting (ala do nothing), but most importantly does not set the ON status which may well incorrectly change standby to suspended

But using set demand, and "Usual C" as the target means do nothing, but do activate the GPIO signal.

This of course was tested here. That's how I figured out the incorrect "ON" being memorised after reboot, when using START.

[quattrodave]

Manually pulling EN to ground does reboot Afterburner.
I've set GPIO to 'user' and 'digital'.
Set the timers, they do activate at the set time but cannot get the timers to activate the GPIO out 1...
The GPIO outputs definatly work, I tested with a multimeter & heater run status settings.
Checked the firmware and its running 3.5.2 2nd July 24...

Am I being a numpty, is there anything i've missed....?

Thanks

EDIT:
I've updated the firmware to the latest BETA V3.5.2.11... GPIO is working perfectly & the auto reboot is working perfectly :-D Thank you!

I'll test the MQTT & WIFI for a few days and report back.....