I have multiple Vera’s. One at a vacation home. I just found out the other day the vacation home is offline. I haven’t been out there yet to see whats going on.
I don’t check that Vera Daily and I have no Idea when it went offline. My question is
Whats the easiest way to check in on that Vera and send me an alert when It looses online connection to me.
Can I have one Vera ping the other and send me an alert if the other doesn’t respond? If so how would that be done?
[quote=“integlikewhoa, post:1, topic:180808”]I have multiple Vera’s. One at a vacation home. I just found out the other day the vacation home is offline. I haven’t been out there yet to see whats going on.
I don’t check that Vera Daily and I have no Idea when it went offline. My question is
Whats the easiest way to check in on that Vera and send me an alert when It looses online connection to me.
Can I have one Vera ping the other and send me an alert if the other doesn’t respond? If so how would that be done?[/quote]
I don’t have a remote Vera but I do have my local Vera setup to ping some important connections such as my Internet router, my ISP’s Gateway, the Alarm System Gateway, my SysLog server, the tablets around the house used for home control, etc. Depending on the function these are polled from every 15 seconds to every 60 seconds using the Ping Sensor Plugin. Notifications are sent depending on the criticality of the connection.
You could do the same with your remote Vera assuming it has a fixed IP or a Dynamic DNS configured. You could then send an alert to yourself using SMTP, Twilio (SMS or voice), Pushover, or some combination using Vera Alerts (which it’s what I use)
Or have it send you something (an alert or notification attached to something that happens daily) every day.
No alert that day, you may have a problem.
[quote=“clippermiami, post:2, topic:180808”]I don’t have a remote Vera but I do have my local Vera setup to ping some important connections such as my Internet router, my ISP’s Gateway, the Alarm System Gateway, my SysLog server, the tablets around the house used for home control, etc. Depending on the function these are polled from every 15 seconds to every 60 seconds using the Ping Sensor Plugin. Notifications are sent depending on the criticality of the connection.
You could do the same with your remote Vera assuming it has a fixed IP or a Dynamic DNS configured. You could then send an alert to yourself using SMTP, Twilio (SMS or voice), Pushover, or some combination using Vera Alerts (which it’s what I use)[/quote]
Didn’t know there was a Ping Sensor Plugin, I think that is exactly what I’m looking for. Going to play with it now. Thanks
Well I haven’t been known to be the brightest bulb… But for some reason I can’t get this to work right. I went back to just testing a local ip of my main computer which is 192.168.1.100. I set poll sec. To 15. And I’m not really sure what to set time out sec. It was at 0 then I set it at 15. It never seems to change for me. Always red. I do have it on armed and normal. Any thoughts? I’m sure it’s a simple mistake.
Try setting it to “Invert”, all of mine are set that way and everything is fine.
Thanks, I did figure out I like the Invert on colors seem better for me that way.
My real problem is right now is looks like I can’t ping a port.
So while I’m away my WAN IP is only one number. But with port forwarding I have access to each camera, Each wireless Access point, Blueiris and much more. The way it’s working now I can only tell if my WAN is up or not and not if a particular device is running.
If I had 2 Veras in one location and one went down this would work. But 2 devices in one location and modem or router down I would get no alert. So doesn’t help me much.
Anyone Have any Ideas? I don’t really don’t want to get an “OK” message everyday just to see if its up.
First be very careful of Port forwarding! Second, it may be easier to create a scene on each Vera to write a variable say a time stamp to the other Vera. Have a scene check that time stamp if it’s older than a certain time.
Thanks, I did figure out I like the Invert on colors seem better for me that way.
My real problem is right now is looks like I can’t ping a port.
So while I’m away my WAN IP is only one number. But with port forwarding I have access to each camera, Each wireless Access point, Blueiris and much more. The way it’s working now I can only tell if my WAN is up or not and not if a particular device is running.
If I had 2 Veras in one location and one went down this would work. But 2 devices in one location and modem or router down I would get no alert. So doesn’t help me much.
Anyone Have any Ideas? I don’t really don’t want to get an “OK” message everyday just to see if its up.[/quote]
Unfortunately that’s the way PING works 
You might be able to work out something using HTTPS requests in LUA code talking directly the device or via MiOS forwarders?
Anyone have a new or better idea on this? Had power go out at the vacation house last week sometime.
I would like to get an alert when it goes offline rather then finding out a week or more later when I happen to physically log into vera and can’t get a connection.
The problem is that when the power goes out, so most likely does your vera and router. Ergo, no power, no notification.
At one time, someone made a plugin for UI4 that allowed Vera to communicate with a UPS. Which would be just what you need.
Vera and internet router on UPS. If power fails, UPS signals Vera who sends you a notification. hopefully before the UPS dies 
If power returns and UPS is till powering Vera she could send a ‘power back’ notification. Not sure how you coudl do that if the outage is longer than your UPS battery lasts.
I’m unsure where that plugin went and if it’s even compatible with UI5 or even UI6.
I tought about this some more and came up with the below scenario:
If you have a DD-WRT router at your vacation, you can use it, the geo-fencing script for those and an IP device (eg a camera)
Have Vera, your internet router and the DD-WRT router on UPS but have the IP camera directly connected to the mains. Using the geofencing script, if the camera disconnects from the routee, you can assume power failed. The script will trigger a (multi)switch plugin on Vera which can then send you a notification. An added benefit would be that you can use the camera to look at your vacation home.
I use this solution with my cell so Vera knows when I come home and leave. It also pings my main server and my ISP’s DNS server.
I’m gonna add one of my camera’s so I can use it as a ‘power outage’ detector as described above.
Required hardware:
1 UPS
1 DD-WRT (atheros) compatible router (These can be had pretty cheaply recertified)
1 IP Camera (Vera compatible)
[quote=“BOFH, post:11, topic:180808”]The problem is that when the power goes out, so most likely does your vera and router. Ergo, no power, no notification.
At one time, someone made a plugin for UI4 that allowed Vera to communicate with a UPS. Which would be just what you need.
Vera and internet router on UPS. If power fails, UPS signals Vera who sends you a notification. hopefully before the UPS dies
If power returns and UPS is till powering Vera she could send a ‘power back’ notification. Not sure how you coudl do that if the outage is longer than your UPS battery lasts.
I’m unsure where that plugin went and if it’s even compatible with UI5 or even UI6.
I tought about this some more and came up with the below scenario:
If you have a DD-WRT router at your vacation, you can use it, the geo-fencing script for those and an IP device (eg a camera)
Have Vera, your internet router and the DD-WRT router on UPS but have the IP camera directly connected to the mains. Using the geofencing script, if the camera disconnects from the routee, you can assume power failed. The script will trigger a (multi)switch plugin on Vera which can then send you a notification. An added benefit would be that you can use the camera to look at your vacation home.
I use this solution with my cell so Vera knows when I come home and leave. It also pings my main server and my ISP’s DNS server.
I’m gonna add one of my camera’s so I can use it as a ‘power outage’ detector as described above.
Required hardware:
1 UPS
1 DD-WRT (atheros) compatible router (These can be had pretty cheaply recertified)
1 IP Camera (Vera compatible)[/quote]
I think your on the wrong track. I don’t need the vera that’s down to report to me. I have more then one vera in different locations. Would be easier to use the vera that has power and internet to check in with the other and if no response report to me.
Internet down the communication to UPS wouldn’t help me.
I have posted many times in the DDWRT post and currently use that on multiple routers in both houses for home away.
What I really need is a way to use my DDWRT from one house to ping the vera from the other house. Problem like above is a can’t ping anything but the router as you can’t ping ports. Anyone know away (script) to use the MIOS servers to try and see if the vera is online.
There are quite a few different ways you could go about this, but most involve things like playing with advanced networking concepts, VPN protocols, etc.
One idea that does come to mind (mind you this is a half-baked idea I have not played with and doesn’t require you to modify your router settings to setup port forwarding):
Go get yourself a very cheap VPS host (I’m a FreeBSD person myself, but places like vr.org will give you a basic VPS server for $10/month).
Setup some user accounts, generate some user key(s)
On your vacation home’s Vera 3, setup a cron job that fires off a script that connects to the VPS host with SSH and updates the timestamp/data of a file on the system.
On your system at home, setup another cron job to fetch this remote file and compare timestamps. If the timestamps are off than say x+y minutes (x = the update interval of the Vera in your vacation home, y = how much of a time difference you are willing to tolerate before generting an alert), raise an alert.
Mind you, this assume that:
–
Other fun ideas (don’t recommend trying unless you really know what you are doing):
Setup tunneling between your two networks (home and vacation house).
You can use a VPN protocol and put the networks on separate subnets.
Use EoIP (Ethernet over IP) to transport Ethernet frames over IP packets to basically glue your two networks together (don’t do this). - YouTube
[quote=“SOlivas, post:13, topic:180808”]There are quite a few different ways you could go about this, but most involve things like playing with advanced networking concepts, VPN protocols, etc.
One idea that does come to mind (mind you this is a half-baked idea I have not played with and doesn’t require you to modify your router settings to setup port forwarding):
Go get yourself a very cheap VPS host (I’m a FreeBSD person myself, but places like vr.org will give you a basic VPS server for $10/month).
Setup some user accounts, generate some user key(s)
On your vacation home’s Vera 3, setup a cron job that fires off a script that connects to the VPS host with SSH and updates the timestamp/data of a file on the system.
On your system at home, setup another cron job to fetch this remote file and compare timestamps. If the timestamps are off than say x+y minutes (x = the update interval of the Vera in your vacation home, y = how much of a time difference you are willing to tolerate before generting an alert), raise an alert.
Mind you, this assume that:
Never used VPS before. May or may not be over my head at this point. I’m still thinking that there has to be an easier way and or a way without a monthly hosting fee. Going by your theory of time stamps and such. I’m thinking of a new idea.
What about a having one vera flip a virtual switch on the the other vera every so often. Then using pleg to say if this switch doesn’t get flipped (ture) after more then X minutes then its down.
Other thing would also be a count down timer. I use Richards timers already. I would have the timer set to so many min. and the other vera needs to keep reseting it, if it fails to reset it then time runs out and sends me an alert.
I ofcourse would like to know as soon as possible when its down so I don’t know whats a good check in time. 24 hours seems ideal for load, but of course I would like every min.
Maybe have a scene trigger every hour to send a HTTP command threw mios to the other Vera to flip the switch?
Well I did it. I’m not sure repercussion is doing it the way I did, but it works. Maybe resource hog? Looking for opinions, other options and comments on this.
So on my vacation house VERA I setup a scene to run every 5 min. and it runs this luup code which turns on a virtual multiswitch on my other vera.
luup.inet.wget("https://fwd2.mios.com/[b]USER[/b]/[b]Password[/b]/[b]Vera Serial[/b]/data_request?id=lu_action&DeviceNum=81&serviceId=urn:dcineco-com:serviceId:MSwitch1&action=SetStatus7&newStatus7=1")On my daily home vera I used an existing multiswitch (Device #81 and button #7) and set the multiswitch to PULSE button #7 (flip it back off as soon as it turns on).
Then I used PLEG to send me an alert if Button #7 hasn’t been turned on (or been off more then) within the last 5.5min.
I’m instrested to see or know the negative effects on running a scene or HTTP every 5 min. If there is none I would like to bump it up to 1 min. Is there is strain then I could knock it down to every hour or 24 hours.
That looks like a good solution. It’s a classic watchdog timer. I would not expect much resource impact on either Vera with a five minute cycle time.
The PLEG logic at the receiving end needs some care to ensure it catches the reset cycle stopping during a restart.
I also have a vacation rental, about 7 hrs away, and I can’t afford to have the system go down, so I put in redundancies. First, I have two Vera boxes. The Primary Vera is attached to two iBoot devices that have auto-ping function. It pings both the Vera box and the internet. After a set number of failures (either one) it cycles and then tries again. If it fails a second time then it turns off the Primary Vera and DSL Modem and switches on the Backup Vera that is connected to a 4G Hotspot device (using wi-fi dongle into Vera WAN). This gives me complete redundancy of both Vera and communication pathway. Backup Vera has a scene that notifies me that it’s operational.
But that’s not all… I also have everything on UPS and a TED5000 (plus Vera plugin) that I use to determine if the power is out, which Vera then uses to launch a notification. UPS lasts about 95 minutes before it dies, so even with a sudden power outage I get a notification. I also have a Dataprobe “Power Pal” that I can use to phone in and check on the power state, as well as reset everything back to the Primary Vera. I also use a Cisco VPN to tunnel in so I can check on things, such as the two iBoots status or TED5000 webpage. Using the VPN access, I can reset the iBoot counters or manually switch power. Given amount of home automation I have, as well as volume of guests throughout much of year, I can’t afford to lose contact with the house. Lots of trial and error. As soon as I think I’ve got all the bases covered, something new happens.
Hello,
I’m looking for a similar solution, to be notified that the Internet is done, and thus any push notifications from Vera are not being sent.
I don’t want to invest in a virtual server neither a 4G Dongle.
The best/cheapest solution I could find was using an old Android phone with Tasker ((https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm).
I would then use a script to ping several servers, and if the connection fails, send me a text message.
This approach has the following advantages:
no monthly cost, except the cost of each text message sent
cheap old android device
no need for additional internet connection
text message will work even if I had disabled data services while I’m travelling to reduce roaming costs
the phone battery will be the UPS - so, if the internet fails because of power failure, the text message would be sent anyway
I can also setup an alert when the power fails (tasker can be setup to send a text message when the phone is running on battery and again when the power is back)
So far, it’s only theory, I haven’t yet implemented any of this. Any suggestions?
[quote=“ldomingues, post:18, topic:180808”]Hello,
I’m looking for a similar solution, to be notified that the Internet is done, and thus any push notifications from Vera are not being sent.
I don’t want to invest in a virtual server neither a 4G Dongle.
The best/cheapest solution I could find was using an old Android phone with Tasker ((https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm).
I would then use a script to ping several servers, and if the connection fails, send me a text message.
This approach has the following advantages:
no monthly cost, except the cost of each text message sent
cheap old android device
no need for additional internet connection
text message will work even if I had disabled data services while I’m travelling to reduce roaming costs
the phone battery will be the UPS - so, if the internet fails because of power failure, the text message would be sent anyway
I can also setup an alert when the power fails (tasker can be setup to send a text message when the phone is running on battery and again when the power is back)
So far, it’s only theory, I haven’t yet implemented any of this. Any suggestions?[/quote]
Where are you located and what text plan do you have in mind on using without a monthly cost or recharging every few months required?
In the USA it doesn’t seem to have many no monthly options without you having to add or use so much to keep your account active.
What happens when power is out at the house (modem, switch, router, vera)?
After you get a text (I would assume your away from home) what is your next step?
How often do you loose power or internet?
What’s your option to remotely restore either of these? (this is kind of a repeat maybe of questions 2)
I just know about IFTTT and already use it for my home automation. I think you can check if Vera or Luup code is offline by using IFTTT. You will have to open port from your vera and use IFTTT by:
The Maker Channel.
Phone Channel.
The Maker channel will send a request to your vera web server and will trigger an event. You can set it up to call or SMS to your phone.
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