MOBIUS APP TIMEOUT CONNECTION.????

[n2585722]

The devices will function with whatever they were doing for the current schedule but will eventually start rebooting on a 1-2 minute loop when they fail to get a connection from the server. This was brought to my attention via a support ticket and was honestly shocked that this was the solution. It means that if CoralVue ever has an extended outage period, or goes out of business, within 30 days (certification expiring time that ultimately causes the yellow breathing lights) all these devices are toast and people will be holding a big bag of useless bricks. When it enters this "reboot loop mode" with flashing yellow led's, it will constantly reboot all of your equipment plugged into it as well and restart any schedules. It caused so many issues with my tank that I almost ripped it all out in frustration before eventually finding a solution. While you wait on that though, you can't even put your tank in feed mode and the only way to shut equipment down is to physically unplug things. I honestly feel like none of this equipment has been tested in a "worst case" failure kind of scenario and it's just waiting to drop on everyone. Those kind of scenarios always come as such a shock to people that think "this will never happen to me" which is the vibes I get from CoralVue currently.

The issue has been frustrating reporting to CoralVue because they refused to acknowledge that it is an issue and anyone who brings it up quickly get's their threads locked on their facebook group. I've looked into parameter monitoring for some of the open source platforms and eventually want to move to one of those given that CoralVue has no interest in some of the things the community has brought up like this and an actual API integration.

I just did a no internet and also a no wifi scenario with my collective of 15 controllers. I left my router unplugged for over 40 minutes and not one of the 15 controllers rebooted during that time. I could also log in to the app using my phone in mobile and the switch to bluetooth mode and see the inputs and outputs in the collective. I can also start a mode if I want. That will all with my router unplugged so it had no power. I have been without internet for 5 days straight before and the collective continued to work as it was setup. It did breath a green yellow on the LED's but that indicates there is no connection to the cloud. It does not mean it is rebooting. Rebooting is a completely different pattern on the LED's. Here is an X4 and three of the other contrllers when there was no internet access.

 

[xCROv]

I just did a no internet and also a no wifi scenario with my collective of 15 controllers. I left my router unplugged for over 40 minutes and not one of the 15 controllers rebooted during that time. I could also log in to the app using my phone in mobile and the switch to bluetooth mode and see the inputs and outputs in the collective. I can also start a mode if I want. That will all with my router unplugged so it had no power. I have been without internet for 5 days straight before and the collective continued to work as it was setup. It did breath a green yellow on the LED's but that indicates there is no connection to the cloud. It does not mean it is rebooting. Rebooting is a completely different pattern on the LED's. Here is an X4 and three of the other contrllers when there was no internet access.

I've tried to explain this issue to you extensively the Facebook group and I think that you're well aware of what I'm talking about and that it's an actual problem. Dozens of other people commented that they were able to replicate this. We're past trying to "prove" this isn't actually a thing. Your devices are also not breathing yellow which was the state that was mentioned. The Bluetooth access issue has also been confirmed as an issue when Greg claimed to have spoke to Carlos about the issue and apparently they are working on a fix? No clue since nothing has even been acknowledged on it so who knows if that's even correct.

If actually true, this is absolutely insane... just insane.

Can anybody else confirm this is the case? Do all Hydros devices reboot if they can't communicate to the Hydros hosted services?

There is not ANY valid reason for logic like this given the context of what these controllers are responsible for. If it is truly the case [the cyclical reboots, restarting timers, etc.] -- product decisions are being poorly made.

Somebody please tell me there is a misunderstanding here and these devices do not behave like this by design!

If this is actually confirmed I would run away from this product and these people as fast as I can.

Edit: reworded a bit… how can we confirm if this is happening and by design?

Explain please - is there direct language indicating that the devices will be disabled if they don't check in for 30 days?

Can you please indicate the ticket and exactly what was said? Not that I don't trust you, but there are people saying that this is not true and others that are saying it is.

The logic for this would probably be assuming there is some issue with the devices and rebooting to try and fix it. It only becomes an issue if there is a long term server outage, or something else going on. You can replicate this by just blocking their AWS services on your local network and waiting for the device to start breathing yellow on the status LED's. The breathing yellow state itself is caused by the device not being able to access the cloud. When I asked why it was rebooting in this state constantly I was informed by Carlos that if a HYDROS device cannot connect to the internet, it is programmed to restart itself to reconnect.

The issue itself is just paired to make it worse with the fact that if your phone or mobile device has no internet (put it in airplane mode and kill and restart the app), then you can't even access the Bluetooth section because of the way authentication is done. It forces you to attempt to login before you can even get to that menu, which is exactly what the issue was with Mobius and how this originally got brought up. I don't think HYDROS is a bad product at all, I just wish CoralVue was more active in at least communicating that this is an issue when people are asking if there has been any updates since, in my opinion, these two issues are critical problems.

 

[n2585722]

I've tried to explain this issue to you extensively the Facebook group and I think that you're well aware of what I'm talking about and that it's an actual problem. Dozens of other people commented that they were able to replicate this. We're past trying to "prove" this isn't actually a thing. Your devices are also not breathing yellow which was the state that was mentioned. The Bluetooth access issue has also been confirmed as an issue when Greg claimed to have spoke to Carlos about the issue and apparently they are working on a fix? No clue since nothing has even been acknowledged on it so who knows if that's even correct.




The logic for this would probably be assuming there is some issue with the devices and rebooting to try and fix it. It only becomes an issue if there is a long term server outage, or something else going on. You can replicate this by just blocking their AWS services on your local network and waiting for the device to start breathing yellow on the status LED's. The breathing yellow state itself is caused by the device not being able to access the cloud. When I asked why it was rebooting in this state constantly I was informed by Carlos that if a HYDROS device cannot connect to the internet, it is programmed to restart itself to reconnect.

The issue itself is just paired to make it worse with the fact that if your phone or mobile device has no internet (put it in airplane mode and kill and restart the app), then you can't even access the Bluetooth section because of the way authentication is done. It forces you to attempt to login before you can even get to that menu, which is exactly what the issue was with Mobius and how this originally got brought up. I don't think HYDROS is a bad product at all, I just wish CoralVue was more active in at least communicating that this is an issue when people are asking if there has been any updates since, in my opinion, these two issues are critical problems.

My Hydros collective was without internet access for 5 days straight and I didn't see that there was a reboot issue. I had my internet out last Thursday for over 3 hours and none of the 15 controllers in my collective rebooted. I was not home at the time but I did check the reboot log and none rebooted during that time. I also kill my router for over 40 minutes and did not have any of the 15 controllers reboot. Not sure what the difference is but I have not been able to recreate it. I also have not had an issue when the Hydros cloud is down. Unless I happen to try and access the Hydro collective during the outage I would not know it has happened unless someone were to post about it. If I were to duplicate the issue I would send a report to CoralVue and let them know what I did and what happened so hopefully they can also duplicate the issue on their end. I have had my Hydros setup for over 4 years now and it has been through rolling blackouts that lasted for a week when it was below 32 degrees outside. I did not have battery backup on the Hydros or my router and cable modem at the time. There were instances where the power was off a little more than 4 hours but however long it was off it would stay on the same amount of time so basically it was off 50% of the time. I did not loose any fish or corals during that time. I also lost internet for 5 straight days and had no issues with my collective during that period. I have 4 of the wifi power strips and since getting a new router in December I have not had an issue with them. They used to disconnect two to the times a week but would reconnect on their own. It looks like it was my router since it has not done since and it has been months now since replacing it. Unfortunately there are a lot of outside forces other than the controllers and their equipment than can cause problems with the setup. As an example I had a wifi camera malfunction and cause lots of issues with the wifi communications. Unfortunately it was close to my tank so most of the issues were on things related to the tank. It took a few hours to find that since I was not using the camera at the time and had it turned off in the app. That is about as close as I have come to what you have described but I was also having issues with other devices other than Hydros also.

 

[SpyC]

If I am understanding correctly, the issue is when wifi is available, but cloud services are unreachable. Which you would think is the same as no wifi since the cloud services would be unreachable, but maybe the combination of being connected to wifi and not be able to reach cloud services is the combo required to recreate the issue. It is possible the system expects to access the cloud services if it can connect to wifi differently. As though logic reads it as an issue with the hydros device itself.

 

[n2585722]

If I am understanding correctly, the issue is when wifi is available, but cloud services are unreachable. Which you would think is the same as no wifi since the cloud services would be unreachable, but maybe the combination of being connected to wifi and not be able to reach cloud services is the combo required to recreate the issue. It is possible the system expects to access the cloud services if it can connect to wifi differently. As though logic reads it as an issue with the hydros device itself.

I have done no internet by powering down my cable modem. Since I have a separate router I still have wifi when I do that. I had no issues other than having to use bluetooth to connect to the controllers. I also did the same by powering down my router and I was still able to connect using bluetooth and check things out. Also I have lost internet for 5 days straight and the controller continued to run that whole time they were breathing a green-yellow color the whole 5 days with an occasional time when the would breath red. So my guess is my network must be different somehow since I do not have the issue when I loose either internet or wifi.

 

[SpyC]

I have done no internet by powering down my cable modem. Since I have a separate router I still have wifi when I do that. I had no issues other than having to use bluetooth to connect to the controllers. I also did the same by powering down my router and I was still able to connect using bluetooth and check things out. Also I have lost internet for 5 days straight and the controller continued to run that whole time they were breathing a green-yellow color the whole 5 days with an occasional time when the would breath red. So my guess is my network must be different somehow since I do not have the issue when I loose either internet or wifi.

When you had no internet, was the system still connected to wifi? This would be the same as on wifi and unable to access cloud services and rule that combination of ‘triggers’ out

 

[n2585722]

When you had no internet, was the system still connected to wifi? This would be the same as on wifi and unable to access cloud services and rule that combination of ‘triggers’ out

Yes since I only had the cable modem up plugged from the power source. The router was still running. I have also had the internet drop out for 6 hours early in the morning and it came back up around 7am and also for 3 hours in the afternoon. Both of those events happened last week. The only reason I knew about it was there is a gap in the graphs that match those time frames. I also ask my wife if she had noticed and she had. She gets up early sometime and did that morning. I was not at home when the event happened in the afternoon but she was. I would think that those two would be long enough to cause the issue if it was just a no cloud service issue since it cannot be accessed without the internet. Below is a screenshot of some of the graphs. All but the sampled and static inputs have the same gaps.

 

[SpyC]

Yes since I only had the cable modem up plugged from the power source. The router was still running. I have also had the internet drop out for 6 hours early in the morning and it came back up around 7am and also for 3 hours in the afternoon. Both of those events happened last week. The only reason I knew about it was there is a gap in the graphs that match those time frames. I also ask my wife if she had noticed and she had. She gets up early sometime and did that morning. I was not at home when the event happened in the afternoon but she was. I would think that those two would be long enough to cause the issue if it was just a no cloud service issue since it cannot be accessed without the internet. Below is a screenshot of some of the graphs. All but the sampled and static inputs have the same gaps.

With the missing data in the graphs, would it not know how to manage heaters or other devices?

 

[n2585722]

With the missing data in the graphs, would it not know how to manage heaters or other devices?

The reason the data is missing is it could not be uploaded to the cloud. If an outage last long enough then you will get a gap. Any data that is stored to the cloud will be lost during a long internet outage. The controller had the data at the time and would act accordingly. I had a 5 day gap during a ice storm because it killed my internet and my heaters worked the whole time of that outage along with my lights, skimmer, return pump, AWC and ATO. I have a lot controlled with the Hydros and did not have any issues other than using bluetooth to communicate with the controllers. I powered down my wifi this weekend and got several screenshot of the app in bluetooth mode while there was no wifi. If my heaters quit for 5 days during an ice storm I think I would have noticed it since the tank would have probably crashed if it was without heaters during the cold for 5 days.

 

[xCROv]

If I am understanding correctly, the issue is when wifi is available, but cloud services are unreachable. Which you would think is the same as no wifi since the cloud services would be unreachable, but maybe the combination of being connected to wifi and not be able to reach cloud services is the combo required to recreate the issue. It is possible the system expects to access the cloud services if it can connect to wifi differently. As though logic reads it as an issue with the hydros device itself.

You're correct. Getting the devices in a state where they have internet or wifi access but are unable to reach the cloud servers is what is required. What you would be emulating is a scenario where the cloud servers are unreachable (hydros outage or they go out of business or something).