Apex Modules Disconnecting

[ca1ore]

Curious if anyone has similar ....

Occasionally some of the modules on my apex system become disconnected. Seems to be the aquabus/usb cables. Connection between the cable and one of my EB832 is a bit loose, and if it gets jostled all modules downstream show disconnected. But, I would have thought that there would be some indication that there was a problem with the led on the disconnected module either blinking green or turning yellow? Nothing. All outlets on the disconnected power bar modules revert to fallback position and any tiles related to any of the modules disappear from the dashboard. Thus any alerts related to those modules don’t work. The only way I know that something is amiss is either to routinely check module status or happen to notice that something is off that ought to be on. Then yesterday a different power bar showed disconnected and the only way to restore it was to replace the aquabus cable. Sigh .....

Anyone have something similar happen? Any clever way to be alerted? Do any of you proactively replace cables?

 

[Radman73]

I've never proactively replaced cables or had one go bad in 9 years. Did you try a different USB port on either end or are they all taken?

 

[Radman73]

Also, is anything pinching the cables or do they run near fluorescent lights?

 

[Sleepydoc]

the most common cause of something like this is a bad connection where the USB outlet is connected to the circuit board in the device but it could be a cable or a corroded connector. Replacing the aquabus cables is relatively cheap and easy, so that's a good first step.

As far as dealing with the issue, if the modules have their own power, either from a dedicated power supply, or from another powered device on the aquabus, I wouldn't expect them to necessarily give an error. I've never tried just disconnecting a module from the aquabus, though, so I wouldn't know for sure. You could try making a virtual outlet that turns on when it doesn't get an input from the module and have it included in your alarms to alert you when something disconnects.

 

[ca1ore]

Yeah I’d done all the common sense troubleshooting steps. Just seemed odd to me that a usb cable that had worked fine for years, and shows no signs of any physical damage or degradation, suddenly stops working. Odd that there doesn’t seem to be a way to send an alert if a module becomes disconnected. Clearly the apex ‘knows’ because it’s reported on the modules page in fusion. Am going to suggest this to Neptune as an enhancement.