Vue 2 intermittent reporting despite network access

[speedy]

I just got a Vue 2 and while it works ok, it has a tendency to stop reporting (all zeroes and default devices in app).  From this forum, it  seems it has a tendency to loose it’s wifi access, but I have been monitoring the network when it is not working and it all seems fine:

– I can ping the Vue 2 device on my network

– My wifi WAP is telling me that it is connected and has good signal level

– With a packet analyzer, I can see the device communicating with Emporia’s AWS servers

Despite all these positive signs of working, there are STILL times when I launch the app and get all zero readings, indicating no connectivity. The only way I have been able to get it working again is by forcing a disconnect via my WAP and when it reconnects, it starts working again.

Has anyone else experienced this or can Emporia support shed any light. It’s a great device for the price but is not much use if it doesn’t run reliably.

[djwakelee]

I had a similar problem.  In my case, I have 2 Vue2’s and  1 had gone offline for no reason.  Even power cycling it would not restore operation.  Ping would work ok, so knew WiFi was fine.  Did try to re-setup WiFi a few times per Emporia support, but it didn’t solve the issue.  After some troubleshooting, I found that I had to power cycle my WiFi router.  After that, everything has been fine.  I don’t know for how long – but it has been working ok for a few weeks now.  Granted it worked for several weeks before going offline.

Perhaps try a full power cycle of your WiFi router (instead of forcing disconnect) and see if you have any different results.  I’m guessing this may be something related to NAT and Emporia not liking some local port numbers that the router assigns, but this is only a guess.

[speedy]

Well, I’ve been doing some more investigation and come to the conclusion that emporia has some bugs in their tcp network stack. Their wifi radio appears to need pretty good signal strength or it tends to drop packets. These dropped packets manifests itself in missed pings and also results in retransmissions of the secure MQTT protocol that they appear to use. Normally, this runs over lossless tcp protocol and the underlying stack should take care of the retransmissions. But when tcp packets are lost, I can see in the packet analyzer that they are attempting retransmissions but they apparently never get back in sync and this causes the hangup and loss of data. Normally, when occasional packets are lost, the tcp protocol takes care of it and although updates may slow down a bit due to retransmission, it should never stop working like emporia does.

So, if you have a good wifi signal and never loose any packets, you may never see this problem, but if you have a weaker wifi signal and get periodic (though normally acceptable) data losses, you are more likely to see these problems.

As for myself, by repositioning the wifi antenna, I was able to get a stronger signal and this eliminated the dropped packets and the subsequent no data state. But Emporia needs to fix their stack as it should be able to suffer minor packet losses  without issue.

[speedy]

I should also add that I had turned on the app’s notification to be notified when the Vue is no longer sending data to the mothership, and it never triggered despite the retransmissions and stuck at zero state, so that’s another thing they need to work on! 🙂

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