Maestro Randomly Restarting

Moose

My Maestro running SmartSDR v1.9.13 has been randomly restarting. It doesn't completely restart, but the screen goes blank except for the slice A & B headers at the top, which are without any information. I hear my 6500 click as the relays change or dropout, whatever they do. After a few moments the Maestro comes back online all by itself. Typically when it does the frequencies aren't where I had them before the incident occurred and the display type changes, but other than that it is like it never happened.

Anybody else having this issue?

73 Chris AK4SK

k3Tim

Hi Chris,

I do not see this behavior on the Maestro. I would suggest using a known good 12 V-DC supply and direct Ethernet direct. If the misbehavior is still present it's time to open a ticket.

GL...

k3Tim

Moose

Thanks Tim. I'm using my shack 12v supply for the Maestro and Ethernet is via a switch.

73 Chris AK4SK

k3Tim

Hmmm.  Sounds like it's time to open a ticket...

Best Regards,
Tim

Burch - K4QXX

Mine did this twice yesterday while playing around in the contest.  I haven't used my Maestro much lately but I used it a few hours yesterday.  It's the first time I have used it with the newest software version.  Had the same behavior, blank screen except for slice headers. After a few seconds, it would come back to life and the network statistics would be reset.  I also noticed a lot more dropped packets than I used to get.  My Maestro has run very well on my Netgear router (not so on my Asus).  The last time I had used the Maestro I left it running for hours and only had 8-9 dropped packets.  Yesterday it would run fine for 5 minutes or so and then I would start getting auto drops and packet drops.  After a minute of two of this, it would run fine for 5-10 minutes.

KC9NRN

The Ethernet connection should be able to drop out completely off and on and not cause a reboot or crash. Mine has crashed a few times using 1.9.13 doing the exact same thing as yours Moose. It doesn't go back to the previous location because I believe like regular Windows, it wasn't able to save this information prior to crashing. Yesterday it ran all day flawlessly, go figure.

Moose

Thanks Burch. I'm not sure about dropped packets, how do I check that? I can't say for sure the restarting issue didn't happen with older versions of SmartSDR but it has happen more frequently recently. I was on the air for about three and a half hours last night, listening about 99% of the time, and it happened at least 3 times if not 4 or 5.

Another issue I've had, that I only bring up here in case there is a commom cause, is that the DAX connection will drop out with no warning or error message. I only notice because the digital mode program I'm using stops receiving and the received signal level bottoms out but it usually takes me several minutes to notice this has happened. Restarting DAX fixes the issue. 

73 Chris AK4SK

Moose

Thanks, I'm glad I'm not the only person with the issue. I usually have two slices open. Sometimes it goes right back where it was, sometimes it goes back to the previous frequency I was at on one slice and stays the same on the other. Thankfully it hasn't happened yet when I was in the middle of something.

73 Chris

Burch - K4QXX

This is the first time I have seen the restarting issue.  I was using a battery when it happened on mine.  If you go to the menu and then network at the bottom of the screen you will see the network statistics.  I usually don't have many dropped packets but I had a lot yesterday and several times the green bars went to red and I had a lot of audio drops.  I rarely had this happen in the past but this happened every few minutes yesterday, along with the Maestro restarting twice.  I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the newest software but this is the first time I have used the Maestro since updating the software and I never had these issues before.

Burch

Moose

Thanks, I'll check that out.

Bob - W7KWS -

I've had the same exact problem with my Maestro and my 6300 for as long as I've owned the Maestro. I called Dudley at Flex a few weeks ago with a description much like yours. Dudly knew right away what I was talking about. He asked about my network arrangement between the two units.

The only device intermediate of the two was a gigabit switch. Dudley advised that I replace it with a 100Mb switch. His explanation was that the 6300, when connected to the gigabit unit, auto detects the faster device and can produce so much data that, on occasion, it can overwhelm the switch creating a log jam and therefore latency and disconnect from the Maestro.

This advice seems counter intuitive to me but I followed his suggestion last week and put in a D-Link DES-1105 100Mb IP switch. Only the Maestro, 6300 and one network cable connect to this switch. The rest of my gigabit network remains as it was. So far it's six days later and I've had 100% up time with 24/7 power on.

Dudley also had some suggestions for gigabit switch models that would do better with the 6300 than mine did but I've lost track of the models as I had this slower unit on the shelf.

73

Moose

Thanks, my switch is a NETGEAR FS105 ProSafe 5-Port 10/100, only 100 Mb. I'll have to see if they think that model is ok.

Chris

Tim - W4TME

Chris - The behavior you described is the radio firmware crashing and then doing an auto restart. Once the firmware restarts, it automatically reconnects to client (Maestro).

Moose

Thanks Tim. So the issue is radio related and not Maestro related? That may explain why SmartSDR on my PC loses connection every once and a while also then?

What can be done to keep this from happening?

73 Chris AK4SK

Tim - W4TME

Not certain what course of action can be taken to prevent this from happening unless we can discover the root cause.

Bob - W7KWS -

Tim,

My 6300 & Maestro never reconnected on their own. Sometimes a crash would go over night and then I'd finally start things up again in the morning. These crashes were particularly frustrating when they occurred durring a QSO, which happened often until I got a handle on how to restart for the maximum trouble free result.

If I only restarted the Maestro, things would be fine for a few hours to maybe a full day. It didn't take long for me to learn that restarting both the 6300 and the Maestro would often result in several days of trouble free operation. The difference restarting both was obvious in the resulting time before the next crash occurred.

I've never had this happen when using my PC or Windows tablet and SSDR. Only when the Maestro is in use.

Moose

Thanks Tim. If there is anything I can do to help you figure it out please let me know. It happened again tonight within minutes of me turning on the radio.

73 Chris

Burch - K4QXX

After reading about the switches, I realized that I did recently add a new switch to my wireless access point.  I unplugged the 6700 from the switch and plugged it into one of the empty ports on my Netgear access point and ran the Maestro for about an hour.  I only had a handful of packet drops so I think my problem could have been the switch.  I will run the Maestro some more this weekend to see if that fixes the reboot problem.

Burch

Bob KN4HH

Not sure if this is related.  I have experienced the same condition when my Maestro internal battery gets low.  As soon as I change the battery, the problem disappears. 

Bob - W7KWS -

Bob,  The Maestro here has been on an Astron 12 Volt supply continuously for several months.


Moose

Tim,
Is there a way to completely reset or reload the firmware for the radio similar to reformatting a computer hard drive and loading everything fresh? Would that help?

73 Chris AK4SK

Tim - W4TME

My best advice is to open a HelpDesk ticket if you continue having these issues so we can do some one-on-one troubleshooting.

Tim - W4TME

Sort of.  You can do a reset to factory defaults.  The procedure is documented for the different FLEX-6000 radios in the FLEX-6000 Hardware Reference Guide.

It is not a complete "wipe to the bare metal and start over" type reset, but it clears the databases and restores most of the default settings.  

Bob - W7KWS -

Tim,  Thanks!  You might not have connected my posts above to this one.  After talking to Dudley and changing the switch between the 6300 and the Maestro to a 100Mb unit, everything has been stable for a full week.  If they are still crashing and then quickly reconnecting, as you suggested, I've missed it. Either that or the switch is no longer aggravating things.


KC9NRN

Chris,

Apparently if the radio disconnects it will reboot. Mine just now said on an Ethernet connection it could not find the radio (****??) even though it's been running fine all day, then the timer counted down and the Maestro rebooted to the "Select a Version" screen.

People can blame the network all they want, on Ethernet with no latency issues there is no excuse for the Maestro to lose connection to the radio unless either the radio or the Maestro started having internal networking issues or a firmware issue?

I powered the 6300 down and also powered down the Maestro and let them sit for 5 minutes.

They powered back up fine, so I'll let them run the rest of the day and we'll see.

Moose

Do you think that would be worth a try?

Tim - W4TME

Are you running the Maestro off a battery?  The Ethernet interface is one of the devices that has a modest power budget.  If you are running off a battery and the voltage dips below 5 VDC, that can cause the Ethernet interface to rest and lose connection to the network.

KC9NRN

Mine was plugged in at the time, the timer was the device looking for the radio, when the timer got to zero it rebooted. Power seemed fine? After rebooting the 6300 and the Maestro they both seem happy again.

Norm - W7CK

I use a gigabit switch and have had no problems.  It seems strange that the Maestro would have problem with some gigabit switches and not others.  The statement that it would produce so much traffic that it would overwhelm the switch doesn't sound quite right to me.  Regardless of the Ethernet connection 100mb/1Gb, the device should produce and attempt to pass the same exact traffic. 

The other issue that seems strange is that some switches work and others don't.  If the Maestro is adhering to standard Ethernet protocol, it should work with ANY switch that also adheres to those standards.  I've run hundreds of devices off of 100/1000 switches and have never come across a device that would not work properly due to the switch being used.

There must be something that I just don't understand here.....

Burch - K4QXX

I agree.  It doesn't make sense that the Maestro is so sensitive to the type of switch.  I can say thought that once I took my brand new Netgear 1GB switch out of line with the 6700, my Maestro is now working much better.  Very few dropped packets now.

Tim - W4TME

Was there a battery also plugged in when the Maestro was running off DC power?