Alert Security Systems

[BlackHawk1776]

So the power went out at my house - apparently we were very 'lucky' to be one of 58 customers to go without power for 17 hours!  wow we're so lucky, not even 60 people had the misfortune.  When the power finally did come back on i fired up my networking gear and my PC, then Logitech Commander.  No cameras.  Idid a search for the cameras in Commander, it found none.  I tried a powerline test, it found no adapters.  I was busy, so I didn't mess with it for most of the day.  the cameras never came back on their own, not even after 6-ish hours.  A couple of my cameras are easy to get to, so I power cycled them by unplugging them.  viola!  They came back online right away.  So knowing my other two cameras are not easy to get to I thought I'd try just flicking the circuit off and then back on.  Well, I don't know if I found the power circuit they were on but I did hit the circuit some of my other cameras were on and they were completely offline until I manually power cycled them.  So tonight I crawled up into the attic (yay!) and power cycled those cams and they came on right away.  So it seems that the power line devices are having trouble recovering from power outages beyond the plug itself.  I have no idea what would be different about losing power at the circuit vs. at the plug but the camers seem to react differently.  I do know that the cameras were recording during that time because I found some recordings from earlier before I had crawled up in the attic.  (The time was off by quite a bit, but the recordings were there.)

So is there something that can be done to make the powerline adapters more able to recover from power troubles at the circuit level or perhaps a remote restart ability that can be 'broadcast' perhaps in the event the adapters aren't showing up correctly in commander?

[F4U_Corsair]

Hi BlackHawk1776, I'll ask one of our folks to have a look at your post and he may ask a few questions offline about your experience. 

From what I know about homeplug it's likely that they got confused after the power came up and they all booted simultaneously.  One of the adapters probably took on the role of "bridge/hub" unit for the other adapters and they all linked to it instead of to the unit with the actual network connection.  They are supposed to form paths to the unit with the network connection; but in the absence of finding one they link to each other and one unit fulfils this role.  So they see each other in their own network; but not the unit with the network connection so other devices can see them and they can see the internet.  This is also likely why the time was off because the cameras couldn't pull current time from the internet and went to a default time until it could connect to a time server again.  You can test this scenario if it happens again by plugging in a laptop to one of the camera power supplies and it's likely you will see the other cameras.  This is rare, but it happens.  Did you by chance power cycle the bridge unit (blue coded adapter) when you were troubleshooting or just the cameras themselves? 

[BlackHawk1776]

Actually I power cycled the bridge unit first - unplugged it for 30 seconds, then plugged it back in.

The scenario you describe sounds quite plausable - it seems like there should be a way for the bridge unit to announce itself as such so that if it happens to come up after the cameras they can begin communicating with it at that point instead of (apparently) leaving it out in the cold. 

[F4U_Corsair]

Agreed on the bridge unit announcing itself. It has some protocols like that; but for some reason if wasn't fool proof in this case.

Out of curiosity were the cameras still plugged in when you power cycled the bridge unit?  If they were, this could have been the trigger for one of them to take on the role of hub unit.  It's usually best to unplug them all before putting that Bridge unit back in so, as the first unit, it manually takes on the role of bridge/hub before any other adapters are present then all the new adapters simply link to it instead of trying to figure out whos who.

[BlackHawk1776]

Yeah, the cameras were all still plugged in when I power cycled the bridge.  I have power cycled it in the past trying to figure out if it was a point of fault in other instances when the cameras disappear from Commander (just the random cameras disappearing from Commander on occasion) but I've really never come to anything conclusive as it seems to be working fine.  (I generally do a ping of the cameras to verify network connectivity in addition to the tests in Commander.)

[BlackHawk1776]

Sooo today the power company had a planned outage to 'fix' whatever was wrong that caused the previous unplanned outage.  That was all fine and dandy, but this time after the power came back online; none of the cameras are live.  I've power cycled all of the cameras AFTER power cycling the powerline ethernet bridge.  So I've got to assume it is the bridge unit that has failed.  What also has me concerned is that I didn't see any lights on any of the cameras; it's daylight so I'll wait until night when I can see if the IR LEDs turn on etc. to pass judgement on the cameras themselves; I'd really like to think it is the bridge since that is easy to replace - the cameras, not so much.  I'll probably be making a phone call to support in the morning to see if I can get a replacement sent out.

[BeastCompany]

Hey BlackHawk1776,

 In your initial post, you had mentioned " I tried a powerline test, it found no adapters". Can I get you to do the same this time around as well.

 Also, do you happen to see any led's on the bridge itself? If you do what are they?

 It very well could be the issue that is caused by the Bridge itself so calling into support and acquiring a replacement unit is indeed the correct path to take at this stage.

 In the mean time, you can also run the powerline utility software and test to see if there is a glitch in the bridge/power supplies that is causing this behavior.

 You can download the software from the link below :

 http://www.logitech.com/en-us/1119/7862?WT.z_sp=Image

 Note : I have found out via experience that when you powercycle a device, do it for a good 1 - 2  minutes. The standard 30 seconds does not always do the trick.

[BlackHawk1776]

The powerline test I tried this time found no adapters, though I've now found the bridge isn't failing.

I used the powerline tool you linked to, which proved the devices were live and able to communicate (meaning the bridge was good as well.)  I power cycled the devices again and they started to come back online.  I also found that my DHCP Service (running on Windows 2008 R2) was 'running' but not working further complicating things and when I restarted that service it helped allow the cameras to get IPs and thus start communicating.  (This issue could be solved with allowing implementation of static IPs on the cameras, which will be very popular in your SMB segment.)

The LEDs on the bridge were normal - Green Solid and Blue flickering (Which seemed odd at the time since the Commander Powerline test could not find any of the powerline devices - and that shouldn't require IPs which is what lead me to believe the bridge must be bad.)

So it seems there may have been an issue as discussed earlier with the bridge not coming online first and all of the powerline devices 'binding' to the wrong device.  What I'd REALLY REALLY like to see is a feature in Commander and or the Powerline utility that allows me to properly remotely reboot the powerline device.  Right now, that would save me a trip up into the attic and I'm sure for other people who've installed cameras with not-so-easily-accessible powerline adapters to be able to bring their cameras back online even while off site.

Oh and thanks for the link to the Powerline Network Utility - seeing the extra info and the bandwidth the devices are getting is handy / neat.  Hrrm now if we could 'name' the powerline devices in the utility to make diagnosis even easier.  I could figure it out right now by looking at the MAC addresses and then referencing the Camera's MAC addresses but if there was simply a field in the utility where I could name the adapter that would be handy.

[BeastCompany]

Hey BlackHawk1776,

 Firstly, I am glad to hear that your camera's are back up and running once again. I have heard of stories such as these on the forums where an individual is out of country and an Power Outage or Power Flicker brings down the network and literally nothing can be done until that person returns home and power cycles everything or simply, remove the network bridge, power cycle the router and reconnect the bridge which then brings everything back up.

 The utility tool is mainly used to flush out any issues with the bridge or power supply and to get past the situation when someone implements a password and then something goes wrong taking all their camera's down.

 This is a relatively new product and it has a few glitches that needs to be addressed here and there to make it a better Product. People in Logitech are working hard to refine it and this has been shown by the recent implementations and updates to the software.

 I am quite optimistic they will get things squared off in the near future.

 If you have any suggestions, plug it into the enhancement thread and also check in a survey has some of the individuals and specialist had mentioned at http://www.logitech.com/ithink

 Don't worry "this BlackHawK" will never go down unlike the movie. We will do all it takes to keep you flying.

[BlackHawk1776]

Beast,

I agree it started out with a decent platform and each iteration of updates have been solid; not talking landslide oh my god it's totally new software but certainly building on what is there fixing and adding features.  Right now I'm sure your aware it's roughly 3-4 months between updates which is slow but steady.  Hopefully the newly released SMB product will help to kick some more sales in so they can pick up an extra programmer or two and increase the release schedule.  All of the releases seem to come out pretty well rounded, and after having worked with amazingly crappy security camera products for a few of my clients I can appreciate product that is made well and updated regularly. 

One of my clients has a 16 channel system - the software seems to function OK (getting to settings, etc. is very clunky) but the worst part is that each time he opens the software on his PC he has to add each camera to the view manually, one by one.  If there is a way in that product to save the 'current view' neither he nor I have ever been able to find it; what a pain. 

When comparing Commander to products like that it really shows like a shining beacon on the hill.

Also I was thinking on the powerline products - (this would only help in the event of a power outage) what if a delay was implemented on non-bridge type adapters, say 30 seconds or something.  In the event of a power outage (probably the only scenario this would help in) that would ensure the bridge came fully online first, then the cameras would come up roughly 30 seconds later ensuring they properly connect to the bridge instead of one of the other camera powerline adapters.  It's certainly not a be-all end-all solution, but it seems it could be easy to implement without much work until a better solution was found.