We have an issue with internet interface connection to our one year old Toshiba heat pump. Seeking advice on how to pin down the cause. Thinking of something that keeps detailed record of internal internet availability, if such a thing exists?
Our Toshiba heat pump in France is operated over the internet from anywhere via an app. When it works, its great. We can monitor the inside/outside climate daily from the UK and start/alter/stop it as we wish.
There is a Toshiba interface adjacent to the heat pump that is linked by wifi to our orange router and by shielded cable to the heat pump.
If the interface ‘fails’, the heat pump ceases to function. That’s our problem. The interface seems to fail at random times, months apart. The app then reads ‘no internet connection’ and the heat pump is uncontrollable. To cure the issue just needs one press on the reset button on the interface, which re-connects the interface to the internet via wifi and it all works again. But we cannot press that button when we are in the UK.
Our cameras are also connected by wifi to an app and these have never failed. If there is a break in the orange service, these gadgets dont seem to notice it and re-connnect themselves.
The heat pump supplier has tried to solve and cannot.
My latest thinking is that at times the orange cable service probably ceases, for a few seconds or a few minutes. When it re-starts, while our cameras etc can re-connect to the router, the interface to the heat pump cannot re-connect itself.
So I want to try to monitor our orange wifi service for outages and see if they happen at the same time as the heat pump interface fails. Does such a monitor exist?
Been a while since I logged into a Livebox, but I remember being able to see connected devices and a history of the box’s connection status with the orange fibre network.
If you have an iThing, the free version of the Net Analyser app can show connected devices over your WiFi network.
This probably sounds a bit out there but you can get remotely operated button pushers. If you can’t find the connection fault then you might be able to do a remote reset.
Possibly overkill but you could install Zabbix on a small device like a Raspberry Pi and have it monitor your network status. It’s open source and completely free to use if you host it yourself.
I can check connected devices to the livebox on the Orange et Moi app, but it only gives (as far as I can tell) the current position.
I am imagining what I need is a bit of software that has a live graph showing the wifi strength at the interface/heat pump on an ongoing basis. I could set up a laptop with screen (always on) next to the interface with a remote camera viewing it?
To my suprise and a degree of amazement, they do exist! Thanks for giving me this hint as I would never have thought of it. They dont quite look like a glove though. Here is one from Robert Dyas.
Also I have discovered NetSpot. There is a free version that graphically shows the strength of the wifi signal from every router in the house and surrounding area. Seems to use up a lot of processor on laptop though.
A combination of the the electronic finger and NetSpot might be a way forward.
This would be remote monitoring, presumably ? I’m not sure that you can remotely monitor the connection to the Livebox from the public WAN address of the router, as that seems to be the prerogative of Orange (something in the contract about that, I seem to recall). I guess the other possibility would be for you to monitor the outbound connection from the inside by remotely logging into to your French home network (usually via DYNDNS) and the setting up a wireshark script to periodically monitor the outbound connection and report back (e.g. via a cron job). Obviously, the disadvantage with locally probing and then reporting is that if the WAN connection is dropped, then you will still have no way of receiving any relevant information until it comes back online.
You might try searching on some of the Orange user forums to see what others have come up with as a solution, I can imagine that you aren’t the first person to have a similar kind of problem.
EDIT: for further info - Is this link of any use ?
You’d probably want one with touch-screen capacitive activation capability, if that even exists, as many heat pump command interfaces come with a touch screen these days.
This is the reason why I bought some TPLink Mesh wifi Access Points. Even with a recent-ish Livebox, the wifi signal from the router through the house was rubbish and wouldn’t reach the wireless command interface for the heat pump.
Where we are, the weakest link is the overhead fibre installation. It was only installed last year and driving around, much of it is off the poles and in the hedges. I am so glad I bought a 5 g box and the frequent outages are now a thing of the past!
For what it is worth, we were with Orange for 3-4 years and suffered frequent dropouts in connectivity while our next door neighbour had no such problems with Free. Finally we switched and the problem almost disappeared, even though the infrastructure was the same (and owned and operated by Orange). All this was before fibre was installed, of course, and I have no idea if there is any difference in service level since, but we have had a very reliable service with Free for 5-6 years now in rural 17.
Not all of it is the same. The equipment in your local cabinet that converts the analogue signal from your modem into digital data and vice versa (DSLAM) is installed separately by each provider and each may use equipment from different manufacturers. One of the main reasons for the sort of issues you have seen is misconfigured DSLAMs in the local cabinet. Edited to add : When you switched providers, your line would have been switched to a different DSLAM which is probably what made the difference.
