Topic: disconenction/channel load problems with CP 2.8.36

I have CP 2.8.36. My Chumby is disconnecting every few days (even though the Wi-Fi strength is at 4-5 bars), and shows the default clock. When I manually reconnect, the current channel has only the first widget. When I reload, the channel has no widgets. Finally when I reload a second time, the channel is back to normal.

-LloydM

"It's Chumbological!"

Re: disconenction/channel load problems with CP 2.8.36

Hmm, that's weird - we've never seen that behavior.  I could see that a network connection might result in a channel seemingly having no widgets, but I'm not sure how it could show a single (first) widget.  The only way I *thin* it could to that is if it successfully go the channel information from our servers, but was unable to fetch the widgets but managed to run one that was already in the cache.

If that's the case, then the disconnection you're describing may not be related to your wifi, but rather something upstream.  Just last night my ISP (TimeWarner) was having very weird behavior, even though everything was fine on my LAN and Wifi.  The chumbys were each going back and forth between the offline clock and showing widgets, until my ISP finally went down entirely for about an hour.  Once it came back, all of the chumbys went back online by themselves.

If this happens again, you might try ssh'ing into the device and trying to ping some servers - if you can't ssh in, then than means the problem is wifi.  If you *can*, but you can't reach the outside world, then it's probably something on your LAN or ISP.

Re: disconenction/channel load problems with CP 2.8.36

Another weirdness...the Chumby was currently showing the current widget, but Chumby Info said "not connected."

I manually reconnected and then ssh'd in, but I can't ping outside my local LAN. Traceroute shows no returns (* * *) after about 10 hops, no matter what I use for the host. But audio streaming (Shoutcast, etc.) works fine.

-LloydM

"It's Chumbological!"

Re: disconenction/channel load problems with CP 2.8.36

This really sounds like a problem with your network.  The fact that you can ssh in says it's not the wifi or your LAN, and that the chumby is operating normally with what it has to work with.  Whatever's going on, it seems like it's outside the LAN.

"Not connected" means more than just connected through Wifi - it can also means that it simply can't reach chumby.com.

The widget you're seeing was almost certainly in the cache - often a chumby will continue to cycle through the widgets it still has even when the network is down.  Some widgets will play but might be unable to fetch data.  Eventually (usually within 10 minutes or so), it will revert to a clock, then go into a mode where it will poll the network waiting for it to return and then resume playing widgets.