Way to reboot remote piece of equipment

I live in a very remote area, with very few internet options. The company I currently have is a WiSP, but there system is junk, and needs to be reset quite frequently. My house is in a valley so I have their antenna/modem setup on a hill, on my property, and I have Ubiquiti transmitters/receivers that send a signal down to my house. If I have to reset their hardware it’s a 15 minute trek to do so, and the weather (rain, sub-zero temps, scorching heat and humidity, ect) can make it a very miserable 15 minutes. When I reset it I just unplug the ethernet cable from the PoE injector.

What I am looking for is a small device that will plug into the ethernet cable that I can remotely tell to turn off the power. I can reset my Ubiquiti devices (haven’t ever needed to) from my desk via the browser, and it would be nice if I could kill the power to the WiSP’s equipment in a similar manner.

If all else fails, hack the power grid and cycle power to the neighbourhood

edit:
more seriously, from memory most of the APC smartUPS models allow you to turn on/off individual power outlets via webUI

probably not the small device solution you’re chasing, but if you need/want a UPS anyway, it may be worth killing two birds with one stone. If you already have a UPS, look into whether they have a network management add-in for it.

For around the house, I’d recommend setting up watchdog using one of those esp8266 based smart power sockets that connect to WiFi. They cost <$10, since all they have is a relay and an esp8266 in some plastic housing.

A relay can’t exactly be used for poe, how does power get into your ethernet injector? Is it solar powered with just a lipo battery pack? or is it there a sealed lead acid battery there? Ability to use a dumb relay would add a lot of reliability there.

Additionally in terms of how to control it?

I can think of 3 options:

  1. If there’s wifi over there, buy a smart socket example. This gets you manual+watchdog control.
  2. If there’s ethernet, diy: get a lan8720 on an esp32 and a relay (total <$10, maybe even <$5)
  3. If you want remote control, diy: a pair of esp32, a pair of RFM95 LoRa modules (a few km, very low bandwidth high range wireless) and a relay. Total <$10.

NASA? Is that you?

1 Like

would something like this work for you?
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-accessories/products/unifi-smart-power

That is an interesting device, didn’t know they made such a thing. You know we have a BIG problem with ISPs if they are marketing it as a way to reboot modems and routers.

Unfortunately there is no WiFi at that site. I might be able to get the Nanobeams (I am using) to act as a WiFi access point, but I don’t think the Nanobeam can be setup to be both a WiFi access point and a wireless network bridge at the same time. I would be nice if there was something like that I could connect to the ethernet cable, that comes out of the PoE power adapter, then it wouldn’t need the WiFi.

However (since I was there), while looking through Ubiquiti’s site, I found https://www.ui.com/accessories/edgepower-24v/ it has a remote management utility, basically it could work as a remote managed PoE power adapter (I believe the WiSP antenna/modem is 24V). But, I will have to look into whether rebooting the EdgePower devices will kill power to the devices plugged into it? Don’t really need the battery backup option, but it may be a nice to have.

You could get mikrotik hex in between the two nanobeams, and toggle poe from a script. different poe standards

But I think a pair of rfm95 + esp32 and a dumb relay is probably the most reliable solution of those offered on this thread.

edit: maybe get a cheap gigabit wifi accesspoint to add to that an old 2.4GHz only wifi accesspoint, and use it with a smart socket. Not sure what’s the cheapest you can get - it doesn’t have to be reliable - the socket could toggle it as well.

Maybe a router with both PoE and OpenWRT support - connect it before their modem, have a script ping it regularly, and cycle PoE/restart if there’s no response ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Best comment! haha

1 Like