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Thread: how do I setup wired Apex so when router is down I can still log in

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    Post how do I setup wired Apex so when router is down I can still log in

    I have a new Apex which is on wired ethernet. When the router is down I cannot access, I cannot get the Apex to concurrently use both Wifi and wired ethernet. SO if I am away, I would like to have a caregiver be able to access the Apex if the router is down. The APex and Aquarium is on a very large UPS (APC Back-UPS Pro 1500VA UPS Battery Backup plus APC External Battery Backup Pack (BR24BPG) plus 4 large marine batteries) so the aquarium can run for a while. I also have an amazon fire tablet on that battery backup. The Fire tablet can talk locally (10.0.0.253) with WiFi to the apex provided the router is running, however when the router is down I can't log in in as WIFI is not present.
    I am relying on my programming is adequate to a power failure. Without a communication method, I cannot make adjustments to that programming.
    If the Apex cannot concurrently run wired and WiFI, can I add something like IOGEAR Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal Wireless Adapter GWU637 also on battery backup and log in through that using WiFi?
    If the Apex can run both wired and WiFi, how do I make that happen and is http://10.0.0.253/apex/dash local to the Apex? Or is 10.0.0.253 in some table on the router.
    I tried cascading 2 routers in series but in that configuration, I lost Fusion.
    Thanks, Gary

  2. #2
    Frequent Contributor zombie's Avatar
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    Put your router on a UPS and all your problems will be solved. If internet is down, the apex can still be accessed locally whether you use ethernet or Wifi.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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    Already have UPS on the router (same APS and external battery), but it won't last as long as the aquarium UPS. It would cost about $500 for each pair of high capacity marine batteries plus an additional 24 charger ($99)and relay to beef up the UPS for the router. I would rather spend that money on adding additional capacity to the aquarium. I do have a gas generator, but a caregiver would have to haul that out and it will a run a day before needing more gas. I have not yet run a dedicated line from outside down to the aquarium so would require door to be cracked open to run an extension cord down to the aquarium.
    I was hoping for a way to get access to the Apex without router. If I can have that, I can either personally adjust the APEX programming or coach a caregiver over a cell phone if I am away.
    If I could have the apex simultaneously run both wifi and wired I would be set but that does not appear to be possible or I am doing something wrong. SO Apex programming in the advent of power failure runs an air stone, heaters and 1 circulation pump. Sump and main pump, skimmer are off so when power returns, the Apex will resume those which means 35 gallons of cold stale water will be dumped into a 150 gallon tank, not ideal. IF I had access and with knowledge of how long the outage might be, I or caregiver could adjust programming to perhaps cycle the sump as well as well as check tank status.

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    Do you have frequent power failures of more than 4 hours ??? Heating the tank is usually not needed during most power failures of less than 4 hours IMHO. Circulation in the tank is number one concern. Really need more details about your situation ... including how your house is heated.

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    The longest power failure was 10 days (ice storm) but that was 25 years ago. Most recent was 2 days (and power company estimate was correct), luckily was in summer so not much heater demand. I was lucky on both extended outages in that I was home. For the 10 day outage, I was running the generator. For the 2 day one, I just waited it out.

    House is on propane heat and I am in somewhat rural area in vermont so outages more than 4 hours is not a rare occurance.

    UPS on router (143W) will run router for 2 hours.

    The UPS on the aquarium (not allowing for heater demand , not sure how to calculate, working on this) will run in power out mode for 6.4 days. This is running the 1 circulation pump (43W) for 1 minute in every 4 and air pump (1W) for 1 minute in every 2. Heater is active in power out mode (2 300W heaters - redundancy in case of a heater failure). I could not see for the 2 day outage what the heater demand was as no communication. Normally heater does not run much due to heating from pumps, lighting, chiller runs more.

    SO If I have an idea on how long power would be out and I had access to APEX, I could modify operation. For the 2 day outage, I would have cycled the main pump (70W) as well, probably 1 minute every hour to swap out sump countents.

  6. #6
    Frequent Contributor zombie's Avatar
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    There are a couple solutions for this. They will require some coaching as they aren't plug and play.

    1. (Probably the easiest) have the caregiver hold the reset button for I believe 7 seconds, which will put the apex in hotspot mode. They can then connect to the apex hotspot wifi by following the directions in the getting started guide to access apex local. Once power is restored, you will have to set it back up to your wifi.

    2. Connect the apex over ethernet using a static IP. Have the caregiver connect directly to the apex with a laptop and have them adjust their ipv4 settings to be the same subnet as the apex with no assigned gateway.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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    1) won't holding reset that long also lose programming? and if caregiver holds reset too long I definitely lose programming
    2) If i were to use static IP and use IOGEAR Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal Wireless Adapter GWU637 on battery backup, wouldn't I be able wirelessly to connect to APEX local, I would only have to switch to a wired connection to do an update? And switching to wired would be only disconnecting the IOGEAR ethernet and reconnecting the wired ethernet cable?

    Thanks (sorry I don't understand networking to understand what I can do)



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    Maybe I'm not understanding what you want to achieve.

    If the router goes down, meaning you loose wired AND wireless connection, how is connecting the Apex to a wifi adapter going to help?

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    Quote Originally Posted by ggrise View Post
    1) won't holding reset that long also lose programming? and if caregiver holds reset too long I definitely lose programming
    2) If i were to use static IP and use IOGEAR Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal Wireless Adapter GWU637 on battery backup, wouldn't I be able wirelessly to connect to APEX local, I would only have to switch to a wired connection to do an update? And switching to wired would be only disconnecting the IOGEAR ethernet and reconnecting the wired ethernet cable?

    Thanks (sorry I don't understand networking to understand what I can do)


    You have to hold it for like a full minute to factory reset. I don't see that as an issue if you are clear about 7 seconds.

    If your router doesn't have power neither wifi or ethernet would work. You would have to connect directly to a laptop to connect to apex local if your router is down.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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    Apex is presently set up for a wired connection. So when router goes down, I lose access.

    I think if I have added the IOGEAR Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal Wireless Adapter GWU637 (wifi bridge to ethernet wired) on the UPS circuit. Being on the UPS, the adapter will still be running and I believe might be able use wifi to log into 10.0.0.253/apex/local. If I need to do an update to the Apex I could unplug the adapter and replug in the wired ethernet and do so.

    Not being into networking, I am not sure this works, the adapter
    (on UPS) is wifi so I should be able to see that adapter listed when I do a wifi survey. Then connect to that wifi.

    However, I am not sure I can access that adapter and
    log into 10.0.0.253/apex/local. I could spend $45 to try but I am hoping for more than a trial and error method.

    If the adapter method worked then I would not need anyone to mess with APEX reset and the exposure to accidents or the hassle of resetting back to the original wired settings when power returns. Just leave instructions on the wifi name and apex local address.

  11. #11
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    If you unplug the ethernet cable, the Apex should be back to a blue status mode. If so, you can then connect directly to the Apex using its WiFi though the AP lock Mode.

    From the Get Started guide:

    Wi-Fi Lock Access Point Mode



    While it is preferable to have your Apex connected to your network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi and in turn be able to communicate with APEX Fusion through your Internet connection, there are times when this is not possible. In the rare situation where an Apex cannot be connected to a local network via Ethernet or Wi-Fi, the Apex has a special network communications mode called Lock Access Point Mode. When Lock AP Mode is enabled, the Apex will always broadcast it’s own Wi-Fi network name, just like it does in WiFI Setup mode (Apex Setup_#### where ### is the Apex’s serial number), however when in Lock AP Mode, the Apex will require your APEX Local login in order to access it. The Apex’s WiFI name can then be selected on a Wi-Fi capable desktop, notebook, smartphone, or tablet within a reasonable distance of the Apex. The effective range of Lock AP Mode will vary, but typically will be at least 25 feet.The disadvantage of AP Lock Mode is that APEX Fusion cannot be used.
    To enable Lock Acess Point Mode, follow the initial W-Fi setup procedure previously covered in this Get Started guide, but instead of choosing a Wi-Fi network, click or tap the drop-down menu, then select Lock AP Mode and click/tap the Lock button.



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    to vhuang168, I unplugged the ethernet cable (been unplugged for 10 minutes now) and still have a yellow light on the ethernet port and no wifi. So looks like getting AP lock mode would require a reset.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by ggrise View Post
    to vhuang168, I unplugged the ethernet cable (been unplugged for 10 minutes now) and still have a yellow light on the ethernet port and no wifi. So looks like getting AP lock mode would require a reset.
    Yes. You have to hold the reset button for 7 seconds to get it in hotspot mode.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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    And if I (or caregiver) were to do a reset then after the router came back online I would have to go back and redo wired setup. Or caregiver would have to do that on next visit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ggrise View Post
    And if I (or caregiver) were to do a reset then after the router came back online I would have to go back and redo wired setup. Or caregiver would have to do that on next visit.
    No. You just plug it back in and reboot.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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    Presently I have aquarium set up so I can be gone 2 weeks and it can run on its own. I just need to make sure the 65 gallon new salt water container for water changes is topped off, 5 gallon Kalkwasser container is full and dosing containers are full. I can remotely login and look at status and make adjustments as required. I have 3 webcams set up so I can even look. If there is an issue, can easily talk someone through what to do. Water changes, kalk, dosing will shutoff if switches indicate empty.

    Problems are when I do not have communication, then I would need to make up manual on reset, setting up wired connection when router comes back on line.

    I can from when someone has apex/local ask questions about status and determine what if any actions are needed.

    I was hoping to have something easy where I could just have someone connect to IOGEAR WiFi adapter (if that would work) and answer questions if I weren't there.

    If I were home, going through a reset and then connecting and later resetting up wired would not be too hard.

    Perhaps I should just drop wired mode and just switch the apex over to wifi. Wired was preferred for updates.

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    Thanks zombie, Your reply came through as I was typing the prior reply
    So I would just have to get someone to do a reset and then coach them. on next visit have them do a reset again if router was back online. I would not be able to look until the second reset. Otherwise, the rest of the care would remain the same.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by ggrise View Post
    Thanks zombie, Your reply came through as I was typing the prior reply
    So I would just have to get someone to do a reset and then coach them. on next visit have them do a reset again if router was back online. I would not be able to look until the second reset. Otherwise, the rest of the care would remain the same.
    Yep. The whole reason you couldn't go the wifi bridge route is that those devices are only capable of talking to a router as a bridge and dont create their own network.

    One option you may want to look into is possibly relocating your router near the tank where it can be plugged into your giant UPS.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

  19. #19
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    Unplug the Ethernet cable and reset the Apex WiFi. Apex will go blue

    Plug the Ethernet back in and it will go to orange. Now you are back to where you were before.

    Now if you unplug the Ethernet cable, the Apex will go back to blue. You can then go to AP Lock mode


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  20. #20
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    SOLVED MY PROBLEM!
    I found an old router and set it up in a WAN-LAN cascaded router setup. this took a few tries to get right. I had tried previously in a LAN-LAN configuration, but this did seem to work. This is because the cascaded controller is on the same network (thanks Zombie for the hint). In WAN-LAN cascade, the APEX is now on a new network.

    WAN-LAN means DCHP on, I input the 1st router's address as the default gateway
    I looked at the starting and ending addresses for the DHCP and chose the last one in that range as the address for the APEX. I then using the display module, I set the IP address as the last one in this range (from the display module, you need to turn DHCP off to be able to edit these fields). I set the gateway to the new router.

    I tried to change these fields from APEX Local while connected to the original router but the change would not complete so I did it from the display module. I suspect I should have been able to do from the original apex local screen while connected to the base router but probably an error on my part. And I could not connect to the APEX after a 7-second reset. (and Apex Setup-xxxx is still showing in the wifi list, so I am assuming the reset was correct)

    The cascaded router is connected to the UPS.

    TO access APEX local, you need to be connected to the new cascaded router WIFI using the IP Address set in the APEX (last available address in the range for DHCP). Fusion connected to the new controller setup, so I did not have to do anything there. I have an Amazon Fire tablet in the aquarium room and set up wifi to go to the new cascaded router WIFI and loaded the controller net address into a web browser. This connects me to apex local. The browser on the Fire is set up to remember user name and password so in the future I am good to go.

    NET, If I lose internet (either internet down or power failure, I or a caregiver can still communicate to the APEX controller as long as the aquarium UPS is still up using the Amazon Fire. I don't have to have the caregiver bring a notebook and an ethernet cable. HAPPY!

    The only drawback is you need to connect to the cascaded router WIFI for apex local and the additional load on the UPS. This cascaded router, however, is 1/5 the power draw of my Xfinity router.

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