Years ago I worked in an environment with heavy equipment, run by computers.\u00a0 Very leading edge at the time, well as on the edge as big corporations can get.\u00a0 It was entirely possible for the system to crash as all computer programs like to do.\u00a0 For most of us real world users, this meant possibly a hours worth of work lost, more or less. Not life threatening.\u00a0 At the time engineers recognized that there would be bugs, and life threatening or catastrophic damage was possible.\u00a0 They devised (or borrowed) an elegant yet simple solution.\u00a0 The “Watch Dog Timer”, this timer had ultimate control.\u00a0 A simple count down timer had to be reset before a specific interval had passed.\u00a0 If the timer ran out, implying that the computer was possible becoming unresponsive, then all control signals for live equipment were cleared, effectively stopping everything before bad things happened.<\/p>\n
I find decades later I’m going to be doing the same with my Yardcam setup.\u00a0 Several times this past Winter an inexplicable event has occurred.\u00a0 My LTE Hotspot has stopped communicating with the cell phone network.\u00a0 Past experiences have been limited, but the unit gets hung negotiating a connection with the local Cell Tower.\u00a0 The unit will have 3-4 bars, 3G or 4G status, but no data moving.\u00a0 Most annoying as it requires me to drive several hundred kilometers to press and hold the power button, turning it off.\u00a0 Then I release the button.\u00a0 Then I press again to turn it back on.\u00a0 With in moments the unit has a functioning cell tower connection. Duh. \u00a0 I’ve requested from my service provider at their end to effectively hang up on the LTE Hotspot, forcing the LTE to try again, but to no avail.<\/p>\n
Recently I had a compound failure.\u00a0 The computer serving as the host for the webcam decided to reboot.\u00a0 Though I thought I’d turned off every possible avenue for that behaviour, I missed something.\u00a0 The result is the image showing “No device selected”, a bug between the HP Netbook and the Logitech Webcam I’m using.\u00a0 On an Acer Netbook its fine, the device is found after a reboot and selected.\u00a0 The solution here, is of course to reselect the device.\u00a0 Again Duh!\u00a0 In future I’ll be able to do this with a Remote Desktop connection.\u00a0 However can’t do that if the LTE Hotspot is broken, which it did about 4 days later.<\/p>\n
This is where the Watch Dog Timer comes in.\u00a0 I’m going to set it up to force a restart of the LTE Hotspot every X number of days.\u00a0 How I’m going to do that, I don’t know, but I’ll figure out something.<\/p>\n
Years ago I worked in an environment with heavy equipment, run by computers.\u00a0 Very leading edge at the time, well as on the edge as big corporations can get.\u00a0 It was entirely possible for the system to crash as all … Continue reading ![\"2015-03-17](\"http:\/\/georgianbayphotographs.ca\/GBay_Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/2015-03-17-19-32-45.jpg\")
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