@William You right I could be overthinking! I’m juggling a lot of factors, and looking for both a quick, low-hanging-fruit, short term solution (ala off-the-shelf Ether-auto-ping, minimal hardware patch, or commercial product), as well as over the longer term a rock-solid well engineered long term solution (likely supercap-based). I’m hoping what I contribute here might be as useful to others as all of the conversations on this topic (yours included!) that preceded me have been to me.
It is admittedly hard to know when I’ve done “Enough,” esp. since I lack my own direct domain knowledge. Part of the problem is being able to discern which design proposals in this and other threads are actually relevant to my own use case, and constraints. You’ve had some great suggestions, and I like the way you approached your own design, but parts of it don’t work for me (LiPo-batteries, reasons stated prior). Also, present in most everyone’s proposal is something small/cheap MCU-based. Esp for the near term quick fix, the time investment required by learning a new MCU (or something like GreenPak), and its dev kit, (even though I’m quite interested), makes me feel admittedly a little desperate for alternatives. In other news, you’re right, Graham’s dead-Ethernet scenario was something I hadn’t even considered! Fortunately for my own case, most of the time my systems will be isolated from the greater network, with a 6 inch Ethernet run to a dedicated private access point. So I won’t have as much potential exposure to lighting strikes on the Ethernet lines, etc, but also can’t ping control/watchdog from anywhere external. Your own deployment — the “Lightning magnet” :) -- sounds like its dealing with a pretty gnarly environment! My research on this is winding down so this channel will probably quiet down. Again, thanks for the help. Best, ST > On May 17, 2016, at 2:30 PM, William Hermans <[email protected]> wrote: > > Super twang, > > I honestly think you're over thinking the situation. It's good to try and > cover all possibilities, but you're asking questions of people that have not > answered specific questions that were answered by others already. There are > several smart people on this group. Of which I'd like to count myself among > them, but in my own case I know I do not think of everything. Which is why my > buddy and I have talked at length on this subject trying to work everything > out. > > . . .And you know what, we missed something that thanks to Graham I'm > thinking of now. A stale Ethernet connection is every bit as bad as a hung > system. > > @Graham, > > What I propose is that you do not need an Ethernet Micro connected to the > BBB. Instead, you have the BBB ping the outside world once every set time > frame, and it a ping comes back unreachable after say 5-10 minutes. You just > stop "kicking the dog". Which does present a potential problem that Your > internet connection may just be down. But a remote system that reboots once > every 5-10 minutes because the internet connection is down is not something > I'd personally see as a bad thing. After all you're unable to connect to the > system anyway. > > On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Graham <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > Twang: > > You could look at the PIC32MX5xx/6xx/7xx series or PIC32MZ series. > The low end starts below $5, quantity one. They will need an external > Ethernet phi chip. > 32 bit MIPS core, program in C, full Ethernet stack available. > > If you want to experiment, get a PIC32MX starter card. > > Ti may have something equivalent on an ARM core. I just happen to be more > familiar with the PICs. > > --- Graham > > == > > On Tuesday, May 17, 2016 at 10:34:10 AM UTC-5, Super Twang wrote: > @Graham > I’ll have to experiment with this. Thanks for the suggestion! It is > definitely a higher level approach that could be easier to piece together > with low-cost OTS components. > > Do you have a specific PIC in mind? If not, I can dig around for a good one. > Last time I used a PIC it was all assembly language, with no USB ICSP and a > PC-only dev environment. Has that changed? (I’m developing from a Mac) > > Initially my thought was that it wouldn’t work for me because my device is > designed to work while disconnected from a larger network (It is connected to > a router broadcasting a private access point). But, there is nothing > preventing me from connecting a switch to the router, and then the device and > an auto-ping power control to the switch. My own little auto-ping network… > Hmmm! > > ST > > >> On May 16, 2016, at 9:05 PM, Graham <[email protected] <>> wrote: >> >> Twang: >> >> Well, that is what the "Auto-Ping" is all about. >> >> If I don't get a ping from you in the last two minutes, then you get >> power-cycled/rebooted. >> >> There are IoT PICs that are ~$5 that can speak Ethernet and could be >> programmed to reset, or press the power button if 5V was present, and they >> had not heard from the BBB lately. >> >> More appropriate monitoring for a server, than watching some GPIO wiggle. >> >> --- Graham >> >> >> On Monday, May 16, 2016 at 8:08:01 PM UTC-5, Super Twang wrote: >> @Graham >> Wow! I hadn’t yet thought of Ethernet as a point of failure. Apart from >> the (“It doesn’t always soft-reset" issue — see outline I.B.1.b) I’d guess >> you could solve this with the onboard watchdog timer. Run some kind of >> daemon that periodically “Checks for good ethernet” (a bit vague, I know), >> if found, it tickles the watchdog, if not, it provokes a reboot. But yes, >> the problem remains that the reboot doesn’t always complete. >> >> Of course if your ethernet got fried, that’d turn into a reboot cycle >> without some logic to notify you of the problem, and stop after a number of >> cycles. >> >> >> >> >> -- >> For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss >> <http://beagleboard.org/discuss> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the >> Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. >> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beagleboard/RaFm9AT7-2c/unsubscribe >> <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beagleboard/RaFm9AT7-2c/unsubscribe>. >> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to >> [email protected] <>. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/20debbaf-a5a3-48e3-95a1-2984b714daf4%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/20debbaf-a5a3-48e3-95a1-2984b714daf4%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout >> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. > > > -- > For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss > <http://beagleboard.org/discuss> > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "BeagleBoard" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/73c0f3ff-43b7-433c-8a9a-783162c7fef8%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/73c0f3ff-43b7-433c-8a9a-783162c7fef8%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. > > > -- > For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss > <http://beagleboard.org/discuss> > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google > Groups "BeagleBoard" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beagleboard/RaFm9AT7-2c/unsubscribe > <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beagleboard/RaFm9AT7-2c/unsubscribe>. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/CALHSORqPvrtMLD-QTgpKRoUyb0-QHjTwVVdeFFKNLJ%3DS2TGOwA%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beagleboard/CALHSORqPvrtMLD-QTgpKRoUyb0-QHjTwVVdeFFKNLJ%3DS2TGOwA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. 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