Edge Devices Are Down

If you are experiencing trouble with edge devices, then follow the troubleshooting steps below.

1. Go to the CMS Devices widget and check the current state.

   1. If device appears to be down, but is expected to be up, then do one of the following:

      1. Click the device's Action button () and select the Test action to verify communications to the device.

      2. Go to the CMS Datapoints widget and filter on at least one of the device's datapoints, and either have the polling interval greater than 0 or click the Refresh button ().

      3. Use MQTT explorer to check device health (e.g., topic glp/0/17qam88/fb/dev/lon/2/sts health parameter).

   2. For LON devices only that are using power line repeating:

      1. The CMS Datapoints widget polling interval should be set either to 0 or a very large number. Do not leave the polling interval at the default 30 seconds since this can affect power line performance.
         
         

2. If data logging is enabled for a datapoint on the device, then check the data log using Datapoints widget and filter on logged data.

   1. Each data log entry will report whether the device is running (normal) or down.
       

3. Go to the CMS Alarms and Events widget and look for warning or error messages.

   1. Check the device information, typically available in the alarm event Details or Description.

      1. Manually review the information in these columns; there is no filter capability for the columns.

      2. Filter on Raising local time column to reduce the number of events that are displayed.

         1. Raising local time is when the alarm/event occurs (based on the SmartServer local time). 

      3. Export the alarms and use Excel to search for the device name. 
         
         

4. For LON devices only:

   1. Use LonScanner.

      1. Use LonScanner to check whether the device is responding to write or read requests.

      2. Use the SmartServer's built-in LonScanner RNI to look at LON traffic.

         1. To fully check a LON channel, use a laptop with its own network interface and place it near the problem device, and open LonScanner with two log windows, one for the laptop network interlace and one at the SmartServer. In this way, you can determine if a request from the SmartServer reaches the edge device, and whether the edge device response is received by the SmartServer. You can also determine the degree of delay in responses. 

      3. A delayed response, due to heavy traffic on the channel or noise, can cause the device to be reported as down even though there is communication to the device.

      4. Sustained traffic on a LON FT-10 or XF-1250 channel should be 40% or lower, since this half duplex channel needs to allow some bandwidth for important traffic to get through without delay.

         1. If the SmartServer is originating all of the communication (it is the only one sending request packets), then you can have a higher sustained bandwidth value. 

   2. Use NodeUtil to communicate to the edge device using the SmartServer RNI or another network interface.

      1. Check whether you can communicate to the device by:

         1. Getting node status information.

         2. Looking at the device's domain/subnet/node IDs.

         3. Reading back network variable values.

      2. For power line repeating channels, you can only communicate to devices with direct communication to the SmartServer.