Topic: Wired connection keeps dropping out

The wifi signal at my desk is too weak for my CC, so I use it with a wired connection. Recently, however, it seems to be dropping the connection quite frequently - up to several times a day!

Each time it happens I have to unplug the USB adaptor, plug it back in, go to the control panel, navigate through to the network screen and step through each page of that. It then invariably picks up a DHCP lease, with the same IP address every time, so I step back out and eventually get back to my working Chumby screen.

I've tried a couple of different ethernet adaptors - one no-name cheap one off eBay, and one kosher Apple MacBook Air adaptor, purchased from an Apple Store. Both exhibit the same behaviour.

Does anyone else get this? Any suggestions or workarounds?



Note that unplugging and then plugging the adaptor back in seems to be essential, which suggests to me that there's an issue with the low-level USB stack losing track of the adaptor, in case that helps anyone's diagnosis.

Re: Wired connection keeps dropping out

Well, nothing's changed in the device - no recent firmware or CP updates, so something else must have changed for this to start happening recently.

Re: Wired connection keeps dropping out

It's always occurred from time to time, but just seems to have become more frequent. We have changed ISP here, but the firewall that dishes out the DHCP leases hasn't been changed in years, so the ISP side of it shouldn't have any effect.


The real frustration is the number of steps required to retry the connection once I've disconnected then re-connected the adaptor. Perhaps something to add to the CP feature request list would be a button to retry with the last used settings (or that jumps you to the relevant page in the CP, if that's easier). The button only needs to be visible on the CP when the connection is down.

Re: Wired connection keeps dropping out

I can confirm that I have seen no problems with wired connections. I have four Chumbys of various flavors running on wired connections (along with one wireless), and all have been working just fine. I use the Linksys USB200M adapter on all of them.

5 (edited by philhu 2014-11-18 06:59:49)

Re: Wired connection keeps dropping out

I do see wired problems, usually about 2-3 times a day.  It is doing it at my work, using a CC (the one I bought a few months ago in the chumby store (latte)

The CC seems to go to the generic time screen, then reboots 15 minutes later and works fine.

Re: Wired connection keeps dropping out

philhu wrote:

The CC seems to go to the generic time screen, then reboots 15 minutes later and works fine.

I find that my CC often doesn't reconnect after outages. For example, upon reading this thread this evening, I looked at my CC only to find that it was still not connected after yesterday morning's internet outage. My C8 and C1 had both sorted themselves out in the meantime.
It is possible that this is related to the adaptor (Belkin, model number too small to read unless someone is desperately interested). I moved this adaptor from the C1 in the bedroom to the CC in the study because of this reconnect failure.
The CC will reconnect easily without having to disconnect the adaptor. It is just a matter of going through the 'Use an existing connection' setup from the Control Panel.

Re: Wired connection keeps dropping out

philhu wrote:

I do see wired problems, usually about 2-3 times a day.

The CC seems to go to the generic time screen, then reboots 15 minutes later and works fine.

That sounds similar to my experience, except that it doesn't do the reboot thing. I'll leave it longer next time it happens just to confirm that's the case. Having said that, it's *always* sitting at the generic time screen when I get into work in the morning, when it's almost certainly been sitting for hours in that state rather than minutes.


steelpaw wrote:

The CC will reconnect easily without having to disconnect the adaptor. It is just a matter of going through the 'Use an existing connection' setup from the Control Panel.

In my case going through "Use an existing connection" always fails unless I first remove then reinsert the adaptor, so it sounds like mine is failing at a lower level.