Can't see my HM on the HeaterMeter Devices page


 
K

Karl Vacek

TVWBB Member
I've had WiFi issues and am currently just running a 100-foot ethernet cable out to the smoker. In working through the issues I decided to reflash and reinstall everything the other day. ALl worked well except still no Wifi, but now today I can't see my device on the HeaterMeter Devices page.? I do get into my system OK with the local IP address but I get "No HeaterMeter found at your site" when I search for the system.

Is that site having issues, or is it my HM?
 
Thanks, Bryan. I'm an idiot I guess. I honestly don't know how I've had it running for a long time with 2 wifi dongles and wired occasionally, and now I can't get one wifi adapter to work. I did have the Edimax running briefly the other day, but it stopped and won's connect although my router shows it online.

I did the wifi preconfig, but that didn't work for me. I manually set it up and had each wifi adapter apparently connecting to the router, but no IP address in the HM. I've done numerous front-button resets too, including one this morning. So much was flaky today - perhaps as a result of wet weather when I broke the system down on Wednesday morning after an overnight cook. Everything worked fine (no wifi) when I brought it all inside, and it was all sheltered while running, but maybe just elevated moisture caused issues. One probe was flaky (replaced it, then baked the flaky one, now all OK. My pit thermocouple was erratic as well for the first few hours early this AM, but it's OK now. I even brought the HM in and opened it up to check that nothing was loose, but all was fine.

I even had remote access from town via my static IP address to the ethernet cable for a few minutes this afternoon, but that died too.

My biggest issue is that I really don't understand the terminology in the wifi configuration. I once was a programmer, but that ended 25 years ago (Unix, Pascal, and C++ were my last exposures) but now I just keep PC's running and play with my home network.

Questions/points of confusion:
- Terms like "Host" are confusing - is that relative to the RPi, the HM, the router, or what? For that matter, the OS calls the HM a router when it asks for the password to be reset after a front-panel reset. And that password is already still there and intact, or I could never log back in anyway to reset the password. I take it that the wifi dongle is the host when I'm setting up a connection?
- When I set up a wifi connection, I scan and then I enter my wifi password, and then instead of wwan I often (but not always) put in a unique name to tell me that it's that particular adapter. Is that OK? It worked before... But I've let it name it wwan and still not got a connection reliably.
- The router sees the wired ethernet as "OpenWRT". Correct?
- I use "Client" mode and my router sets the same IP address for each wifi adapter every time - I have it set to recognize the MAC number and give that adapter a static IP address. Worked before...

I need a "Dick, Jane, and Spot" version of the configuration procedures I guess. I'm just not anything of a RPi or Arduino hobbyist. If I was, I'd spend days reading about the OS's, etc., but I just want it to work. My initial goal was to simplify smoking, and this wasn't an efficient way to go about that. Works wonderfully when it works, but I've spent far too many days trying to communicate beyond the HeaterMeter itself. Am I just too stupid to do this?

Thanks!
Karl
 
PING heatermeter.com (104.223.92.144): 56 data bytes

--- heatermeter.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
 
It worked a few days ago, and PitDroid got in briefly this afternoon from a mile away from my house. That had to be out of my miserable wifi range. But I'll try to find out. A ping worked earlier too, but I didn't copy that one.

I think I need to take the sd card out again and wipe everything down to new again. When I reflashed the other day I formatted the card and flashed the latest stuff, but the HM still had my parameters, probe names, etc. How do I wipe completely? Seems like I used to be able to find a complete setup sequence online, which files to wipe out, etc., but I can't find it any more.

So sorry. If this were mechanical I'd be all over it...
 
If you're using the new snapshot image from the download an flashing it from Win32DiskImager or the Mac equivalent then it should only carry your configuration over once if upgrading from a previous version. There's no point in formatting because LinkMeter can actually recover configuration from a wiped SD card. The parameters and probe names come from the microcontroller though so they are persistent even if there is no Pi attached. That can be reset using the device "Reset Config?" menu item, which will also reset the Pi if it is connected. The probe names and PID config and all that won't affect the networking though, as they are stored separately.

There may be a bug in the latest snapshots though in the preconfigured wifi so I am hoping to gather more information to try and fix this.

As far as the 1-2-3 steps of configuring the wifi through the webui, I'll be honest, I feel like if I do that 3 times in a row I will get 3 different sets of configuration files. What might be best as a workaround is using a preconfigured image for your wifi, then going in with an Ethernet connection to the webui and just editing the wifi network from Network -> Wireless -> Edit -> Wireless Security tab on the bottom.

If any of this helps then let me know and maybe that will put us on the right track to being able to fix this. At least the heatermeter.com IP address is right but I am not sure why it wouldn't be able to get out to the internet. Your local network wouldn't happen to be 192.168.200.x or 192.168.201.x is it?
 
Finished the cook last night and will try to go back to bare metal and start over, at least as much as possible. Probably not till Tuesday - family stuff today and tomorrow, Annualing the Stearman on Monday. No electrons will be harmed in the interim ;-)

I will screenshot and make notes of each step, and report back. OK?

My local network (Default Gateway) IPv4 address is 10.0.0.1

I notice that the first address listed in IPConfig is actually the IPv6 address - is it possible that there's some preference for IPv6 and the HM's IPv4-only configuration is having trouble because of that? Used not to even be able to get to IPv6 - only addresses (I had to use a tunneling service to use several websites I needed for business) but Comcast/XFinity has finally rolled out IPv6 in the Chicago area in the past year.

Thanks much for all the help !!
 
A Stearman? Oh that is definitely cooler than fixing some wifi problems. The IPv6 thing could be an issue, we still don't have it here so it is hard for me to test how that works with the devices page. While the server itself is on an IPv6 network, there are no IPv6 DNS entries for heatermeter.com so it shouldn't be reachable that way.

I'm not sure why you're seeing the behavior you're experiencing but we can try to work it out when you've got time next week.
 
Still haven't addressed the issue - spent some time today wiping my cable router and starting all configuration from scratch there, as my wifi has been poor since Comcast made me put in their new router. AFAIK is was mainly to take the ability to set wifi power away from customers, as part of Comcast's "Good wifi neighbor" policy. Still gotta do the Annual too, now put off till Friday.

Meanwhile, how can I wipe the entire HM as if it were a new build, and start from complete scratch?

Thanks again and again!
Karl
 
Delete all paritions on your SD card.
Create a new single partition that uses the entire capacity of the card.
Format the card, making sure "quick format" or similar options aren't used.

After that, the card should truly be blank and you should be able to use re-write the heatermeter image to it.

Give this as try as well. Might be easier.

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/
 
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I did reformat, using that very utility. I first did a FAT32 format in Windows - which I then figured out was wrong, after which I found and used that utility to reformat the entire card and recover all the space.

Still, when I wrote the current image and inserted the now-wiped card with only the current image on it, the HM knew my settings.

Just one of the many pitfalls of not being a hobbyist in this stuff and familiar with the Raspberry Pi before messing with a Heatermeter. Then there's wifi...

Oh to go back to the 60's and boxes of punched cards.
 
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The HeaterMeter device itself has its own settings if that's what you're referring to, but none of those relate to the network at all. If you want to reset those independent of the Pi's settings, just disconnect the two and power up the HeaterMeter only, then go through the settings menu on it and navigate to Reset Config? and set it to Yes and exit. It will reset those internal bits. I wouldn't bother with that though if you're just trying to diagnose the network problem.
 
Home network running 10.0.0.0 ? While that is a private IP block it will work but IP addresses need to be in that network. More traditional to run 192.168 network.
 
It's adequate for my use here, and that address range is baked into my router. I do have a static IP that I pay for under my company name, and I can access the HM from OUTSIDE of my local network. I forward a port to the local HM IP address, and can check on the smoker if I'm away for a while during a cook. All that, of course, when it's actually working.
 
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