Apex help, anyone awake that can help?

[Triggreef]

EDIT: all is not lost, you can retrieve setting through fusion! See post # 57 for the answer!

Had a little flood late night, it tripped gfci and i been cleaning the mess all night.

Got everything powered up again, and apex is confused, some lights that are normally off right now are powered on. I only control it through Internet by using my ip address but nothing happens now when i put in the ip. I also tried wifi which sometimes helps but that doesn't work either. I also have fusion but i just preferred to use the old style so i don't even remember how to connect with fusion.

Can anyone help me out ?

 

[Triggreef]

To add to it now i found the tank on the other side of my house is off as well. It's totally separate power, only connected via aquabus cable. My episode should have had no effect on that tank at all.

 

[Frop]

Idk what the controller is like but if it is anything like security camera systems then maybe it changed its IP address when it went on the blink. You can find all devices IP address by connecting to your router. Connect to your router by typing in its IP address in your browser. And usually you can reserve IP address to a device inside your router so it shouldn't switch itself. Once you find the IP address then just type that in your browser (as long as you're on the same local network). Then you can probably see a settings page. But I could be wrong I don't have any aquarium controllers and never used one.

 

[Triggreef]

I'll try but the router never disconnected until just a few minutes ago when i reset it to see if it would help.

 

[Frop]

I'll try but the router never disconnected until just a few minutes ago when i reset it to see if it would help.

I mean I wonder if the controller went offline on the network and another device came online and used that number so when the controller reconnected it became a different IP.

 

[Triggreef]

hmm so when I

I mean I wonder if the controller went offline on the network and another device came online and used that number so when the controller reconnected it became a different IP.

ask my lap top, it tells me my ip is the same it was.

 

[Triggreef]

I'm not very techy. I had to have the apex guy log in my computer and take over to get it running the first time. lol

 

[Frop]

All I know is from trying to set my cameras up. Trying to link one device to another.

Anyways sorry couldn't help a lot. And I have work in 5 hours. Need to sleep :/

 

[Triggreef]

hmm so it seems the apex is not connected. Not sure how that can be. It is hard wired.

 

[Frop]

Ya man idk. I was thinking some times when computers have the wrong time and date it could effect the internet connection.

 

[DLHDesign]

Short networking intro: Your computer, Apex and everything else connected to your router will each have their own IP addresses (usually 192.168.1.###, but this can vary). Your router will have it's own IP address (which varies greatly depending upon who your Internet provider is).
Sometimes when a device totally disconnects from your router, when it comes back online it will pick up a new IP address (this is part of something called "DHCP" - not really important here, just an extra tid-bit). So, for example, if your Apex used to be at 192.168.1.106, but then it got powered down and back up in such a way as to trigger a "need new IP address" plea, it might get assigned the IP of 192.168.1.113. The exact IP it's assigned is sort of based on how many devices are connected to the router at that moment (kinda...).

SO. The trick is to find your Apex's IP address. If you know how to log into your router (usually browse to http://192.168.1.1 and enter it's username/password), then you should be able to get a "client list" that will tell you what's connected to it and what their IP's are.
If you can't connect to the router (or it doesn't give you that info), then you can try this (I'm going to assume you're on a Mac; if not, no worries - let me know and we'll go from there): http://www.chriswrites.com/how-to-find-ip-addresses-of-devices-on-your-local-network/

The result of the "ping" will be a repeating list of IP addresses on your network. You can just try to connect to each one and see how it goes...

I'm not an Apex pro (I've only just recently installed mine), but my guess is that the Apex's clock is off and thus not controlling everything as you would expect right now.

 

[DLHDesign]

hmm so it seems the apex is not connected. Not sure how that can be. It is hard wired.

Worst-case could be that the network card on the Apex is damaged. No idea what happened to cause the GFCI to trip, but computer components can be finicky about power surges. GFCI is designed to protect human life - not computer components. Good to have for sure, but potentially not enough in this case...

But let's assume that's not the case. It's also possible that the router thinks that your Apex never disconnected. It's possible that this could cause it to "lock up" an IP address for the Apex unit. Computers and such have something called a "MAC address" (not "Machintosh Address" - something else) that is like their fingerprint, so the router could see the Apex's MAC Address and get confused - which would result in it not being assigned a new IP address.
To fix this, I would suggest powering down your Apex and router, letting both sit off for at least 30 seconds, and then powering up the router. Once the router is stable (done loading and such), power up the apex. Doing that may allow the Apex to reconnect.

 

[Frop]

I'm not an Apex pro (I've only just recently installed mine), but my guess is that the Apex's clock is off and thus not controlling everything as you would expect right now.

So if it is the time then you're going to need to type the IP address In your web browser. Connect and see if there are some settings for time and date.

 

[DLHDesign]

So if it is the time then you're going to need to type the IP address In your web browser. Connect and see if there are some settings for time and date.

The Apex should self-correct the clock once it's back online, actually. At least; I think it will - I guess we don't know the specific version of Apex nor the firmware version, but I suspect that clock correction was an early feature (again; I'm still new to Apex).

 

[DLHDesign]

@Triggreef - Something that will help if you don't have a solution come out of the above would be to provide the following info:
- Which Apex do you have?
- What type of router do you have (make at least; model number ideally)?
- What OS are you using (Mac, Windows, etc.)?

 

[DLHDesign]

Also; I would suggest you plug all the gear you want "on" into a power strip or the like while the Apex stuff gets sorted out (it's possible you'll need to power-cycle the Apex several times, and you likely don't want your tank turning off and on that much).
You may have already done that, but I figure it doesn't hurt to mention things that may be obvious. When we're in the midst of an issue, sometimes the obvious stuff is missed. ;-)

 

[Triggreef]

well it gets worse. think I fried my apex lite module. I'm going to make an attempt at fixing it but it will be a long shot. Hopefully I'll be able to manually figure things out until I can find a replacement.

 

[Triggreef]

Also; I would suggest you plug all the gear you want "on" into a power strip or the like while the Apex stuff gets sorted out (it's possible you'll need to power-cycle the Apex several times, and you likely don't want your tank turning off and on that much).
You may have already done that, but I figure it doesn't hurt to mention things that may be obvious. When we're in the midst of an issue, sometimes the obvious stuff is missed. ;-)

Thanks for the help, its apex lite, and it covers 3 different systems with multiple eb8 so i'm really kind of screwed now because its the brain that got water and I suck at soldering so its probly a goner. I found one resister thing that came off on the circuit board (like it rotted off and probably came off while trying to dry this thing) and one of the aqua bus wires rotted away inside. I think I could fix the wire but I'm not even sure which direction to try the resister on the board. apparently this has gotten wet before and I didn't realize. I've had a couple minor overflows on this tank.

 

[Bluefish9]

What flooded and why? I understand that the Apex got wet and is now fried but should it have prevented the flood in the first place or was the flood from something else? Rain... etc

 

[Diesel]

Disconnect for the time being the USB cords from your apex control module and all EB8's should work as a power strip.
That said it won't have the clock on it so heaters and lights or everything that was set on a scheduled time or PH for CaRx will be running on ON.
I fried my controller once in the frag room and just used the EB8 as a power strip.
I had some timers on hand for the lights to come on but did shut down my CaRx and a good thing is that I have the Eheim jager heaters with their own thermostat in side and not the titanium heaters.
I will bump this to the #reefsquad to see if we can determine if the controller is fried.
Sorry to hear this my friend and hoping it's just that and don't lose any livestock.