Control 4 losing connection to WiFi after installing 178

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Mike

Mike

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My Control 4 has been up and running for about three months now. After I installed 178 last week, my Control 4 has started losing connection to WiFi. It has a flashing green light that goes around and around the Control 4. This has happened four times since I installed 178.

The first time this happened, I left it alone to see if it would correct itself. I left it that way for 8 hours, but it did not change, just the same green flashing light going around and around. I power cycled the Control 4, it immediately connected to WiFi, and everything was fine.

In each of the three subsequent times this has occurred, I power cycle the Control 4, it reconnects to WiFi and it is corrected.

My guess is that something has changed with the way the Control 4 connects to WiFi in 178. Carlos/Don, have you seen this problem before? Any suggestions?

Thanks!
 
it happen to me also, i can only tell what fixed mine was i unplugged the controller for about 30 seconds plugged back in and it corrected itself. Since than i have not had anymore issues
 
There were a couple of issues with the server and the notifications that we fixed this morning. That probably explains why you were getting lots of notifications of disconnect when it was not really happening.

The control is built and programmed to handle the WiFi disconnects and connect again once the hiccup is passed. Depending on the router's quality and the amount of traffic it is handling, the number of drops and frequency will vary.

Most folks experience short WiFi disconnects all the time but never notice it. The difference is that the HYDROS monitors your WiFi and will let you know if there is a drop. All other devices such as phones, cameras, televisions, radios, lights, and whatnots do not send you a warning letting you know they cannot connect to WiFi. They stay idle until they can reconnect again.
 
Anyone else losing connection with the cloud today? At least a half dozen times my C4 has been breathing yellow and that means cloud connection has been lost. Half the time it reconnects, the other half I need to power cycle the unit. Also got a couple alerts that connection to the power strip has been lost and this is causing heater to stay on or not come on at all. I have been running this C4 for about 6 weeks and it has been SOLID. Upgraded to 178 a few days after it came out and it seemed ok. No other wifi devices have been alerting me about being offline so I really don’t think it’s my wifi but I’m not 100% sure. Rebooted my router anyways but that didn’t fix it. Strange that it all started this morning and I hadn’t touched anything at all. Anyone have any ideas?
 
Voodoo99 said:
Anyone else losing connection with the cloud today? At least a half dozen times my C4 has been breathing yellow and that means cloud connection has been lost. Half the time it reconnects, the other half I need to power cycle the unit. Also got a couple alerts that connection to the power strip has been lost and this is causing heater to stay on or not come on at all. I have been running this C4 for about 6 weeks and it has been SOLID. Upgraded to 178 a few days after it came out and it seemed ok. No other wifi devices have been alerting me about being offline so I really don’t think it’s my wifi but I’m not 100% sure. Rebooted my router anyways but that didn’t fix it. Strange that it all started this morning and I hadn’t touched anything at all. Anyone have any ideas?
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Yes, I had the same problem on my C2 on Saturday, but not on my C4. WiFi connectivity seems to be less stable after the 178 update.
 
Mike said:
Yes, I had the same problem on my C2 on Saturday, but not on my C4. WiFi connectivity seems to be less stable after the 178 update.
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I've been giving this some thought. I have cams, Wemo's, Alexas, Fire TV sticks, Apple TV, Nest Thermostat, garage door controllers, Ring doorbell, and so much more in addition to my wifi connected Ecotech and auto feeder which are located right near my C4. None of these devices had issues on Saturday which is surprising since Wemo's are notoriously sensitive to lost connection. My router is located in the same room less than 10 ft away and it is NOT a mesh router. I have been running a network monitor since Saturday night and it has detected zero drops from my ISP. This leads me to 3 things:
1) My wifi router was very unlikely the problem.
2) My internet was indeed flaky on Sat and I was too late to configure and catch it with monitoring. If this is the case, why is the C4 so susceptible to these hiccups when nothing else in my entire house was?
3) 178 has a problem. It started with dropping my wifi strip and then locking my heater on and later locking it off. The C4 was sending me notifications about these problems but doing nothing to stop it. Both times could only be resolved by cycling the power. This would have been a worse situation if I was away from home when this happened.

I'm now stuck researching options and at least for now, will be removing control of heating from the C4 as there is no way I can trust it. I can live with the other devices getting stuck on or off but NOT the heater. I hope these issues get sorted out in forthcoming firmware releases. I'm not giving up on it yet.
 
Voodoo99 said:
I've been giving this some thought. I have cams, Wemo's, Alexas, Fire TV sticks, Apple TV, Nest Thermostat, garage door controllers, Ring doorbell, and so much more in addition to my wifi connected Ecotech and auto feeder which are located right near my C4. None of these devices had issues on Saturday which is surprising since Wemo's are notoriously sensitive to lost connection. My router is located in the same room less than 10 ft away and it is NOT a mesh router. I have been running a network monitor since Saturday night and it has detected zero drops from my ISP. This leads me to 3 things:
1) My wifi router was very unlikely the problem.
2) My internet was indeed flaky on Sat and I was too late to configure and catch it with monitoring. If this is the case, why is the C4 so susceptible to these hiccups when nothing else in my entire house was?
3) 178 has a problem. It started with dropping my wifi strip and then locking my heater on and later locking it off. The C4 was sending me notifications about these problems but doing nothing to stop it. Both times could only be resolved by cycling the power. This would have been a worse situation if I was away from home when this happened.

I'm now stuck researching options and at least for now, will be removing control of heating from the C4 as there is no way I can trust it. I can live with the other devices getting stuck on or off but NOT the heater. I hope these issues get sorted out in forthcoming firmware releases. I'm not giving up on it yet.
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Yeah I agree, with you. Run your heater off a dedicated thermostat like an inkbird and use the hydros as a backup alarm/cutoff.

I've been running 178 and its precursor beta builds for months with no issues but that being said everyone's networks are slightly different so there could be some other condition that I don't have that your system does that might be exploiting an issue in 178. Keep collecting information and passing it along to Carlos and the team for sure. Overall I've had much better stability with the 178 branch over the 165 branch myself. With 165 I had multiple reboots a day causing issues with the collective and now reboots have gone away completely with 178.
 
178 seems to have been a relief for those running a collective. For me, I was extremely happy with my C4 since installing it 6 weeks ago. Could be that 178 is not to blame and there was always something there waiting to happen under the right conditions.
 
I am growing more and more frustrated with 178. Today’s problem was with my Control 4. This aquarium has a C4, three quad outlets, and one single WiFi outlet. When I switched from Normal mode to Water Change mode, the C4 did not communicate with two of the three quad outlet strips. So, half of my devices turned off like they were programmed to do and half did not. I had to power cycle C4, wait a minute, then try it again. After the power cycle, the C4 communicated with all three quad outlet strips and it worked.

Thirty minutes later, I was switching from Water Change mode back to Normal mode. Same problem. This time the C4 did not communicate with one of my three quad outlet strips. So, power cycle C4, wait, try it again, and it worked.

I had zero problems while using 165. I’m going to reinstall the older firmware and stick with it until 178 gets updated or repaired.
 
Mike said:
I am growing more and more frustrated with 178. Today’s problem was with my Control 4. This aquarium has a C4, three quad outlets, and one single WiFi outlet. When I switched from Normal mode to Water Change mode, the C4 did not communicate with two of the three quad outlet strips. So, half of my devices turned off like they were programmed to do and half did not. I had to power cycle C4, wait a minute, then try it again. After the power cycle, the C4 communicated with all three quad outlet strips and it worked.

Thirty minutes later, I was switching from Water Change mode back to Normal mode. Same problem. This time the C4 did not communicate with one of my three quad outlet strips. So, power cycle C4, wait, try it again, and it worked.

I had zero problems while using 165. I’m going to reinstall the older firmware and stick with it until 178 gets updated or repaired.
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They need to get a wired power strip released asap. In theory, wireless is a great idea but it is a failure waiting to happen.
 
JRill said:
Not sure that's true. The wifi version seems to work fine for the vast majority of us.
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In retrospect, my statement was rather self-serving. It’s not up to CV or anyone else to solve my problems. I just ordered the new Helio system. Sure it’s expensive but if it will prevent another 17hrs of troubleshooting on a Saturday and the risk of hosting an unintentional fish fry in the future, then to me it’s worth it. The Hydros will be just fine monitoring, watching for leaks and filling up the ATO res, etc. Excited to see how this works as I’ve read some good things about it.
 
Voodoo99 said:
In retrospect, my statement was rather self-serving. It’s not up to CV or anyone else to solve my problems. I just ordered the new Helio system. Sure it’s expensive but if it will prevent another 17hrs of troubleshooting on a Saturday and the risk of hosting an unintentional fish fry in the future, then to me it’s worth it. The Hydros will be just fine monitoring, watching for leaks and filling up the ATO res, etc. Excited to see how this works as I’ve read some good things about it.
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Might not hurt to reach out to support directly (support.coralvue.com) so engineering can dig into these potential issues. Using the support poral gives them an easier way to contact you and access your system to help debug issues.
 
JeffB418 said:
Might not hurt to reach out to support directly (support.coralvue.com) so engineering can dig into these potential issues. Using the support poral gives them an easier way to contact you and access your system to help debug issues.
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Yes. I guess I was waiting to see if anyone from Coralvue thought this was concerning and would chime in. I do have the temp graph, emails etc to back up my experience if they want to deep dive. Thanks Jeff! From what I have seen you are one of the good ones here.
 
Voodoo99 said:
Yes. I guess I was waiting to see if anyone from Coralvue thought this was concerning and would chime in. I do have the temp graph, emails etc to back up my experience if they want to deep dive. Thanks Jeff! From what I have seen you are one of the good ones here.
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Sorry you're having troubles! Please don't ever feel that you cant reach out to us , that's exactly why we have the support portal! :) Just drop us a ticket and we will get into it as deep as we need to! CoralVue Support Portal
 
Mine keeps dropping as well, shuts power to the c4 dumb, love having return pump turn off and on constantly. Firmware is due needs some work ASAP. Will my heater control function hmm probably not can’t even keep return pump on. Have disassemble hydros controller manual power everything to normal outlet
Great product support so far of nothing
Bring back firmware 168 or figure it out fast
 
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