Using ZTE MF275R for remote monitoring

[drh]

Yes, it sure takes some patience when each session of troubleshooting takes 8-10 days.    The Rocket Hub has great potential for remote monitoring for only $10 per month.   I am also able to turn the furnace up and down remotely when it is working.  

After posting yesterday, I spent a very long time on hold for Rogers support but I eventually talked to Dominic and he didn't just want to move on to the next caller.   He spent a good amount of time discussing the situation and suggested a 12 second reboot.    Hold the power button down for 12 seconds to power off and reboot the ZTE.   It seems to be an undocumented procedure and it appears to force the ZTE to get a new IP address.     So now I am running the arduino and it is doing a 12 second (actually 12.5 second) reboot of the ZTE every 12 hours.   So - wait 10 days and I will let you know how it works out.  

As for changing the Network Selection to 4G only, it is set to auto and the selections are greyed out, so I assume a user can't change that.    I would also doubt that is a factor as it is very reliable for those 8-10 days and then totally disconnects.    Thanks. 

[Airell]

Thanks for all your hard work and dedication on this issue. I’m experiencing the same issue with my ZTE router. I’m using it for monitoring a cabin as well. Did you find a solution to the issue? Mine will stay connected and require a reboot every 10-15 days so slightly longer however still an issue when using for remote monitoring.

I hope you have found a solution to this problem.

Thanks,
-Airell

[drh]

I haven't completely figured the problem out.    I experienced some losses of communication that were not occurring on a "regular" basis.   My earlier experience was with a loss after 8-10 days and I wasn't experiencing that with the arduino hooked up to the internet at home (without the ZTE).   Later I started to experience the odd loss of communication at irregular intervals, sometimes after only a day.    As fall approached I took the crude route.   I have a good old fashioned timer on the power supply for the Arduino.   It is on 11.5 hours then off for 0.5 hours.   Additionally, when the arduino is running, every 6 hours it does a 12.5 second reboot of the ZTE as previously discussed.   So occasionally I have a disconnect and miss data for a few hours, but I don't have to drive to the cabin.   This setup means that I couldn't use the continuous power supply and monitor the power line as I had planned.     There may be a more refined solution, and I will work on that next summer,  but during the heating season I won't be messing with it.   There may be some problems with String commands causing memory overload on the arduino, however, I haven't found a difference using a Uno or a Mega.   

Are you using an Arduino and Thingspeak?    Or are you using a different microprocessor?  

Here is a screenshot of the cabin temperature. 

 

[drh]

I should also ask, have you already set up so your ZTE doess the 12 second reboot every so often?     If not, one thing to check when you experience a loss of communication it to connect your laptop to the ZTE and log in and see if it has an IP address or not.  

[HuguesM]

Hello,

I'm pretty happy to find this thread because I'm having exactly the same problem with my ZTE MF275R. It disconnects on a random basis, a few days or hours. And this is not a problem of power failure, the electricity is there but the WAN link does not seem functional anymore. When I have the chance to be there I connect to the interface of ZTE and for him the connection seems made, when I click on "disconnect" j, have an error message and the only option that works is restarting the ZTE (I do it through the setup menu), and everything is working again.

Is there a script that would simulate the remote restart request from my NAS for example? So, rather than doing a mechanical trick, it would be done in a software way.

[RogersMoin]

Hello, @HuguesM.

Welcome to Rogers Community Forums! 🙂

I appreciate you finding this thread and joining the conversation. It may not be possible to run a script remotely on the hub.

Hopefully, as indicated in the previous message; @drh may be working on a refined solution this summer, which may benefit you as well. 

Cheers,

RogersMoin

[drh]

"So, rather than doing a mechanical trick, it would be done in a software way."     haha  - funny you should put it like that.   I am a retired mechanical engineer!    If I had more electrical & software knowledge maybe I could have solved this another way.     

I did plan to do more messing with it this summer, but our summers are too short to spend time on this.     I have been running the arduino mega with ethernet shield with the power supply from a mechanical timer that shuts off 1/2 hr ever 12 hours.     After 6 hrs running, the arduino does a 12.5 second reboot of the ZTE MF275R.     The arduino reports to Thinkspeak every 10 minutes.   Because of the timing of failures, I have determined that sometimes the ethernet shield fails to communicate and sometimes the ZTE looses its connection.   A more elegant solution would be nice, but this is getting me by.    I do have a Wemos D1 mini reporting temperatures on a neighbor's house I monitor in the winter.   It has never lost a connection and seems more dependable than an arduino with an ethernet shield, but that is unrelated to the ZTE issue.

[drh]

If you do find another solution, please post it.   There might be some other people trying to use these for remote monitoring.  

[Althor56]

Looking for assistance with using the MF275R with a lorex security system.

I have a static IP for the MF275R but can not ping it. Port forwarding has not solved the issue.  Rogers says the MF275R can not support remote monitoring.

Has anyone had success in remote monitoring a security system with the MF275R?

[drh · Accepted solution]

Well - I have things working pretty rock solid now.    Since July the old mechanical re-boot timer has been gathering dust.     I had an arduino with ethernet shield connected to the ZTE hub and rebooting every 12 hours.   That kept the ZTE connected but sometimes the arduino with ethernet shield failed to connect.   It is a well known problem with the shield.   So I went to an Arduino Mega with a ENC28J60 ethernet module.  This has proven much more dependable.   This arduino mega reports the cabin temp to Thingspeak and also reads a field containing the furnace set point.   If the set point is >15, then a solenoid is activated to pull in a second thermostat that is set at 20C.  This is wired in parallel to my primary thermostat set at 10C.   Both are good infallible mercury thermostats.   I can write to this 'furnace setpoint' field from any web browser to turn up the furnace before I head to the cabin.      

I have also now added a Wemos D1 Mini that also reports the cabin temperature to Thingspeak on intervals of about 15 min.   Just before it connects to Thingspeak, it pings Google, if that fails, it pings Rogers.   If both pings fail then it does a 12.5 second reboot of the ZTE and then waits 1 minute for the re-boot to complete before sending data to Thingspeak.   It also keeps track of a reset counter and updates that on Thingspeak.     Since this was put in place in July, there has only been one reset of the ZTE by the Wemos.   YAHOO!