Flex 6300 Shut down on its own??

KC9NRN

I went on vacation this week and enjoyed listening to my 6300 via my laptop or iPad Pro but Thursday night I noticed the radio was no longer available. I pinged for it, nothing, nada zippo.

When we got him last night I went straight downstairs and say the power supply was on but the 6300 wasn't. From Thursday night to just then a lump was in my throat thinking it died or something.

I pressed in the power switch, it blinked green for the usual amount of time and was online. I powered up the Maestro and all is well. It's still powered on and working so I'm guessing it crashed on Thursday at some point and shut down. It is after all a server with an OS, I just didn't think it would do something like this.

Has this happened to others? Is there a log I can look through like an event viewer to see what caused it?

Bob - W8FB

Maybe the service to your house was interrupted.

Mike va3mw

It sounds like an AC power bump.  I've had my 6300 on for months at a time.  Moving forward, you need to leverage the remote RCA connector on the back.  Had you had that, you could have remotely restarted it.  

Mike va3mw

KC9NRN

If this could have been power interruption I never would have posted about the shut down.

I should have mentioned this. The Power Supply for the 6300 is plugged into a 1500VA APC UPS plus the house had no power interruption as my UPS shows smooth power the whole week, it alarms on brown outs and other out of norm operations.

Could this have been a OS crash?

Mike, agreed, I need to get the remote start configured.

Ken - NM9P

As others have said, I have had a momentary power interruption that shut the rig off. Unless you have the remote RCA port shorted and the remote access enabled in Setup, the rig will not restart when the power goes back on...just like many computers if they don't have the auto-restart enabled. I now have a wifi AC switch and relay installed to control my 6500 remotely. It hasn't happened again. If you don't want to use a remote switch, you can short the RCA input and enable remote control and it wil automatically restart after the power cycles. The disadvantage is that even if the rig is off, it will turn ON if the DC power to the rig goes from off to on. There is no "remain in the state it was in when power was interrupted" option.

KC9NRN

Ken,

There was no power interruption and I have not used the remote RCA port. My UPS logs show no fluctuation in power last week.

My question since we know there was no power brownout or outage is still this, is it possible the OS crashed enough for it to power off, if not what else aside from power may have caused it?

KY6LA_Howard

Obviously Gremlins hacking Anonymous People Hi Hi. The rest of us just use a Remote Switch to reset the radio when Gremins attack mistakenly believing we were also anonymous.

Ken - NM9P

This one has me stumped. But that isn't unusual. You might have gotten a network interruption or Windows software update that confused the rig, causing a shut down? Do you have a cat or dog that could have bumped the power button? (Our cat has a habit of walking across the button of my wife's CPAP machine, turning it off in the middle of the night!) Perhaps a burst of static electricity glitched it? No solid theories, here, only guessing!

Cal N3CAL

It's possible you  had a internal fan speed error which will shut the radio down automatically.    The Flex monitors your internal cooling fan speed.  If for any reason the fan slows down too much or stops the Flex will shut itself down.   I had a fan go bad in my 6500 and the first signs of an issue was noise. At first it was intermittent. 

Cal/N3CAL

KC9NRN

Howard, using a remote switch has been stated in this thread and I stipulate how great an idea it is. I'd also like to stipulate how ridiculous it is this isn't built into the radio but I am going to configure it when I have the time.

The continued jabs at being anonymous is getting old.

KC9NRN

Ken,

I don't believe the 6000 series uses Windows, I don't have a cat and the dog would never be able to reach up where the radio is located.

If the radio were simply plugged into an outlet I wouldn't doubt a low voltage or some other strange anomaly could have occurred. The APC UPS is enterprise grade and spikes or low voltages don't get presented to the radio.

It would be nice though if Flex had a log we could look at similar to the Windows Event log that could state an error message.

Maybe a feature request is in order unless I'm missing a feature that the radio has for logging events?

KC9NRN

Cal,

NOW THIS is exactly what I was looking for! Something tangible in the radio that can be validated. I'll contact support and ask if there is a way to validate the fan is working properly.

Tim - W4TME

Yes, always contact support when you suspect a hardware issue.

KC9NRN

Tim,

I'll do that now, thanks.

Ken - NM9P

The 6000 uses some version of Linux, I believe for some of its internal processing.

My Windows comment referred to your desktop/laptop client. A Windows update in your client might have caused an anomalous network disconnect that confused the rig.

However, the cooling fan theory might have some merit.

In any case, with computer equipment, sometimes there are no easy answers for singular failures. If it happens again it might be possible to discern a pattern.... Not a satisfying answer, but often the only one available.

EA4GLI

I was going to throw that one out there too, do you have a way to monitor temperature in the radio room? Just on RX with no TX, it is very odd for the radio to overheat. It has pretty high threshold. And if it was a fan it will keep failing... do you hear any "different" sound coming out of the radio?

It will be interesting to know if the Flex keeps an internal Error Log for crashes.

KY6LA_Howard

The 6000 series runs a version of Linux internally. Maestro uses a runtime version of Windows.

John-K3MA

Maybe you could contact AA3RK whom wrote FRStack for Flex.  It has a window that displays Voltage, Temp, Forward and Reflected Power and SWR.  Maybe in a future release he could provide a logging function to track some of those values.  If he can it might happen faster than what Flex could accomplish.  He has done a wonderful job providing many other useful feature that many wish SmartSDR had but after a couple years still does not.

N9VC

To Nordic PC,

If you get to the bottom of it, please post your findings. Thanks

73, Jim N9VC

Tim - W4TME

Jim - if you are having radio shut down issues, I recommend that you open a HelpDesk support ticket (http://helpdesk.flexradio.com) so we can investigate further.

N9VC

Thanks Tim, no problem here. Sometimes things are resolved and I like
to know what was done to resolve it. By getting on the thread, I will see
subsequent emails pertaining to a particular subject. I have to be candid
and say all the Flex equipment I have run flawless. So hats off to Flex.

73, and Thanks, Jim N9VC

KC9NRN

My apologies, I haven't had time due to work being crazy hectic, I'll try and get a ticket open tonight.

David (AA9G)

I may be having this issue. No fan noise though and monitoring temp with DDUtil. Can anyone say  what temp C will cause a thermal shutdown?