Will this work? (Reboot modem)

Circa 1997, I moved to Greenville SC and after a few remaining years of dial-up I had Charter Communications internet service. I think it started off with 1mb and 3mb. Everytime it rained, we lost service. EVERY TIME.

Fast forward to 2016… Speeds have improved to a whopping 30mbs or so. They advertise 60mb and you can pay $100 EXTRA a month for 100mb service, but really I’m lucky to get 17mbs. That’s ok though, because they fixed the rain thing.

Well, they had it fixed. It came back.

I don’t know why, but every time it rains, I have to reboot my modem. (Surfboard 6141 workhorse).

TL:DR So here is what I am thinking… I want to put my cable modem on a smart outlet. Then, instead of hiking up to the third floor storage room that the modem comes in to the house from, and powering down the modem and powering it back up - I would like to just grab my phone ansd turn of power to the modem and then power it back up.

Now here’s the question… are there any outlets that work off my wi-fi and don’t require internet to activate? Because, thinking this through, it seems like if I power down my modem and lose internet momentarily, I probably won’t be able to turn that outlet back on via my smartphone if I am relying on the internet to access the smart outlet.

On the other hand, if I am accessing the outlet via Wi-Fi ONLY, then it won’t matter that my internet has momentarily gone down because I would just be accessing the outlet via the wi-fi network.

I have version two hub. I understand it is capable of dodging the cloud and using wi-fi only.

Anyone else tried, succeeded or failed at this and have any tips? Thanks!

-Tom

How do you create tags for topics? You can’t, can you?

Tom,

There certainly are wifi plugs you can use for this purpose. Although I can’t find it at the moment I believe there are some threads that discuss this very issue for rebooting the SmartThings Hub in the event it goes off-line. Wemo is one example of a wifi plug but there are certainly other options.

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I have the Digital Loggers Web Power switch and love it!

It’s expensive but I have it in my wiring closet that is a pain to get into and it allows me to cycle all of my devices including my modem, router, ST, etc. I do it by navigating to an IP address but there is a community device handler for it too that I use sometimes as well.

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First things first: the SmartThings hub v2 has no WIFi capability. None. What it does have is the ability to stay on power on batteries for a few hours and to run a few things locally using the zigbee and zwave protocols when internet is not available. But the only code that runs is the official smart lighting app and a couple of pieces of smart home monitor. So, no, it cannot talk to anything over your local WiFi network, not even things that have official integration like the harmony hub or the Phillips hue bridge. So that idea isn’t going to work.

Also, while the Internet is down, the SmartThings mobile app cannot talk to the SmartThings hub. Technically, that would be possible, but it’s not the way smart things designed their architecture. Your mobile app talks to the smart things cloud and then the ST cloud talks to the SmartThings hub.

That said, there are multiple ways you could get a similar result to what you’ve described. First, you could use a Wi-Fi switch that runs locally, just don’t run it from smart things.

Or, you could use a zigbee or Z wave pocket socket which is eligible to run locally with smart things and in advance have set up a minimote to operate that switch using the official smart lighting app. That should continue to be available to you locally even if your Wi-Fi is down, because it will be using the Z wave or zigbee protocol.

Or you could look at some of the several projects that people have done to be able to reboot the router when smartthings is down. :sunglasses: Following thread discusses several different approaches.

So…you can’t get ST to use wifi when the Internet is down–ST never uses wifi. But you can either use a local protocol that smartthings does use, and control the switch with a minimote. Or you can use a Wi-Fi switch that will run locally, but that might not integrate with smartthings while the Internet was down. Lots of choices once you change the problem definition to just focus on the end result rather than the specific protocol. :wink:

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As always JD has all the news that is news. Thanks for all you do JD.

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Actually, what I mostly have, as my former boss used to say, is “the olds.” He would say, “JD, what’s the olds on that?” Meaning what do we already know or what have we already done that covers the same use case.
I really liked that. :heart_eyes:

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You can reboot the SB6141 by opening http://192.168.100.1/reset.htm - I have a cron job running on my server that checks whether google.com can be reached that will reboot the SB using that URL if the internet seems down. See this link as an example

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Two things…

  1. that’s not the sane modem you started with way back in 1997 is it? Maybe time for an upgrade? Lol

  2. install a GE duplex outlet and buy a Minimote. Setup the out and Minimote on the stock st device handler and use the stock button controller to program the Minimote. You don’t need anything fancy here, it’s for backup purposes.

Now, program a button to toggle the outlet.

When you need to reboot your router press the button once, count to ten, press it again. You’re good.

Setting it up this way everything is running local.

Edit

I have one set up just like this, works like a champ. I use the buttons for important lighting and stuff for when the internet is out.

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I put in att 4g access point for 20 bucks a month sharing my 15 gig data… I put wifi switches specifically on this to reboot my main cable modem and my mail wifi router…

then I have a other wifi switches on the normal wifi subnet to reboot the att router , smartthings hub, etc. etc which I am running without batteries… it has worked well for me.

Thanks for all the well thought out replies. I realize my plan probably won’t work as I planned/hoped to implement it. I did not know the SB had the ability to reboot - that will be my plan now that I know that it does. Thanks Andy!

I also appreciate the other info, I learned a lot about the SmartThings platform from JD’s detailed answer as well. And I love the hardware that some of you have suggested, some of which I did not know existed.

Great forum, great people! Thank you all!

-Tom

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Nice script. You could also do the same thing a Sonoff wifi switch (if you don’t have this particular modem). The URL is similar “http://192.168.100.1/reboot”. Looks like you would only need to change the wget url in the script to the different url.

I solved this problem with an Arduino with an Ethernet Shield and a relay shield. I wired an extension cord into the relay so that the relay can turn it on and off. Then I wrote an Arduino sketch to ping Google’s name server and when it fails several times in a row, it turns off the relay for about 30 seconds and then turns the relay back on. Then it waits a while before it starts trying to ping again (to give the modem a chance to get reconnected).

The nice thing about this is, you don’t have to intervene, it automatically reboots when Internet is down.

-Todd

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I don’t know if the relay could handle the amount of reboots I would be doing with my Charter connection. :frowning:

Actually, that is pretty nifty. Thanks for sharing it.

-TS

Depending on your ISP, that may or may not work. I know Comcast pushed a firmware update some time ago that prevents that page from rebooting the modem.

They pushing FW "up"dates to customer-supplied hardware that disables features? That would not fly in my house…

That is how cable modem firmware is updated. This, along with the ‘return to factory defaults’ was considered to be a vulnerability.

Simple solution outside Smartthings.

http://resetplug.com/

I have recently created a SmartThings internet reset with a Qubino relay. The Qubino can be programmed to automatically come back on and can be integrated with any SmartThings trigger. See my Tumblr post for a little more info.

(http://themochinist.tumblr.com/post/168188129192/smartthings-hub-internet-reset-switch-at-home-i)

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