I have observed where sense cannot get an IP from the WiFi network due to network issues, once resolved, no amount of time will the sense device timeout the network and attempt to reconnect so in scenarios where there is a temporary network issue with WiFi, even resetting/restarting the WiFi AP, sense needs to be “Hard Reset” power cycled by the breaker to recover WiFi connectivity. I have observed this behavior multiple times. It needs to be able to detect bad network/no internet connectivity and disconnect/reconnect itself on a reasonable interval until network is restored rather than a hard reset. This would also allow for continued data collection from the home, and then push that data to sense once network is re-established rather than losing that data/time due to power cycling the device.
Mark,
I have had the very same issue, your correct that the only real resolution seems to reboot the WiFi AP ( I use Google Mesh) as I am not willing to wait for an extended period off as of yet unknown periods of time hoping for the Sense until to recover.
BRW
Had this issue today as well. Same issue when there is a power issue which could be the same problem.
Me too.
Hey Mark,
This Wi-Fi issue shouldn’t be happening. Could you either post here or message me a description of your network setup (including make/model of your gear) and the steps taken to get to the issue (seems like you have most here already)? I’ll pass that info onto our engineering team so that they can try to identify what may be going on here.
I’ve just experienced this same issue, I upgraded the firmware on my two access points (Sense can see both, although one is much further away and Sense has low connection strength to it) one at a time and Sense lost WiFi connection and never re-connected until I hard reset it. Happened between 6:35p and 8:03p EST if the engineering team is interested. My access points are UniFi AP-AC-LR’s.
I have also experienced this. In both cases, we have experienced a power outage (very brief). My assumption is that it was brief enough to knock out my WiFi router, but not the Sense device. Even though the WiFi router comes back online, my Sense device stays offline until I cycle power to the Sense device.
Sorry that that happened but thanks for letting us know. Difficultly reconnecting after a very brief power outage (brownout) is an issue we’re aware of and have been looking into.
@tboettcher, thanks for sharing (and sorry for not seeing that before). I’ll pass that information along!
Battery Backups or UPS go on sale a couple times a year. (Once for sure just before or around Thanksgiving / Black Friday.) Maybe a battery backup for your Router might help in this case?
Anyone else still seeing this issue? Happened to me for the first time today. I mowed over my ATT fiber cable last night and lost Internet access for 18 hours. Internet was restored today, but Sense won’t come back online.
I use Unifi access points for my wifi. When I log into the AP management, I can even see the Sense device connected with activity. I’ve tried forcing a reconnect, and Sense drops off and comes back but still shows offline in the app.
I’m wondering if because the access points didn’t actually go down during the outage the Sense device got a bit confused and is having trouble recovering after the fact? I sent in a support ticket just to see if there’s something else I can do before power cycling. When I get home I may also try the “change wifi” option while up close to the unit itself.
Is there still no fix for this? I was out of town for 5 days and apparently, my Internet service in the house had a brief glitch the first day and while everything else in the house came back to normal (countless HomeKit devices accessible while away without problem) without intervention, the Sense never came back online so now I’ve lost 5 days worth of recorded data. I power cycled the breaker when I got home tonight and it came back online again. Every other device out there can recover from a brief WiFi outage; it seems this is a basic feature of creating a device that works over WiFi.
I believe they did fix the wifi issue a while back. But there are a few things that often get conflated to be the same issue.
There is still an outstanding issue with some Sense devices where if there is a momentary power blip, the Sense gets stuck in a weird state and needs a power cycle to get it back.
In your case, you mention the internet service had a brief glitch. Is it possible you actually had a power issue? If not, in regards to your ISP issues = do you mean that your wifi stopped broadcasting, or that your internet connection went down (usually two different things).
I know that @brbeaird had an experience that an interruption in the internet connection caused him to have to reset the Sense, but I’m about 95% sure that Sense fixed the issue where if internet or wifi connectivity goes away, it can recover. I know that in my house, Comcast has outages several times a week. Sometimes for 30 seconds, sometimes for 2 hours, and the Sense is always fine. Not that my experience means that everyone else’s is wrong, but I know its been stable since Sense pushed some updates.
And please know, i"m not trying to discount your issue. If it wasn’t a WiFi issue, but a power issue, it is still a problem and an annoyance and you should reach out to support so they can look at your monitor and see if they can see what happened.
See this post from one of the Sense engineers about both the power issue and at least one WiFi issue.
I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how does this happen? Does ATT just toss you a line onto your property and make it your issue to deal with mounting/burying it?
The word I got from Sense support was that the device tries to reconnect for up to 6 hours, after which point it will try to power cycle itself. If it still can’t connect, it needs a manual reboot once Internet access is restored.
lol, great question. Most of the line was buried, but a small section of it apparently wasn’t done good enough and worked itself up high enough such that when I mowed lower than usual getting ready to seed the yard, the blades did their thing.
ATT came out and fixed it for no charge since the outside cable run is their issue. Things appear properly buried now.
Unfortunately, since all of this happened while I was away from home for 5 days I wasn’t there to see what happened but here is what I know.
- I see no indications that there was a power outage at the house while I was away. I say this because one tell-tale indicator that the house lost power (however briefly) is that all my Hue lights default to ON when power is restored and that was not the case when I returned home last night.
- My entire network infrastructure including the modem, router, and all but one of the wireless AP’s (I have a first gen Eero system in the house) are all connected to UPS backup and the router even has LTE backup that kicks in automatically when the cable Internet is out for an extended period (>10 minutes is current timer).
As near as I can tell (I still need to review the router logs if they go back that far) but it looks like the Internet service went out for a brief period at ~3:15PM on Wednesday and the Sense lost contact. I got the alert in the app that it had lost contact and when I checked, I could not see my HomeKit devices in the iOS Home App. About 30 minutes or so later I checked again and all of the HomeKit devices were back accessible remotely from the home, so all of the connectivity was restored and everything went back to operating normally.
All of these devices share the same wireless infrastructure and Internet access infrastructure so this all points to the Sense not recovering from the loss of Internet connectivity on Wed, until early this AM when I returned home and power cycled it. It came right back online at that time but I have a 4-1/2 day gap of data. Every other smart device I have in the house recovered just fine from that brief internet outage except for the Sense which went offline until a hard reboot. In today’s world, technology should auto-recover automatically from something like that, not just die.
EDIT: I tried to look at the router logs last night and was alerted (much to my dismay) that when the router was replaced recently after a lightning hit I didn’t turn logging and SMS notifications back on. And a result, I don’t have any router logs of the specific timing and details of the Internet Outage. I have aggressive logging and SMS notifications back on now so I get a text message when the Internet service goes offline using the LTE modem connected to the router.
Oh joy, blown off by support again.
Quote from the response I received so you don’t think I’m making this up:
We’re sorry to hear that you’ve lost 4 1/2 days of recorded data. We understand that this can be an inconvenience. Unfortunately, there is no way to retrieve this data at this time.
Not a single bit of an attempt to isolate why the Sense did not recover just told my data is lost (duh!), We’re sorry. Really?
We are investigating the issue and will be in touch.
The issue does sound relevant to the thread that @ben posted above. It might be worth a read. Wi-Fi outages and brief power outages or brownouts can have similar effects. In any case, you’re right, Sense should recover on its own and in most cases it does not have a problem doing this. I can’t diagnose from afar as to why your monitor did not recover from whatever took it offline, but engineering will take a look.
I know I’m getting picky here, but … did they indicate if reconnect meant associate to access point with IP connectivity, or actually establish a connection to the Sense servers?