Data uploading but I can't connect to IoTaWatt

I’m stumped on how to resolve this or what to investigate next.

Both my IoTaWatts are happily uploading to my influxDB/Grafana on a local Raspberry Pi - which is good news :slight_smile:

The light is flashing (dim/bright) green - which suggests no issues.

Both IoTaWatts show up in my Unifi Controller - Here is info for one of them:

  • Network Channel - 11 (11ng)
  • Signal - 99% (-47 dBm)
  • Rx Rate - 72.2 Mbps
  • Tx Rate - 54 Mbps
  • Power Save - Not enabled

But… trying to access the IoTaWatt using unitsIP address and http:// after a long wait gives:

  • server isn’t responding in Safari on Mac
  • [IP address] took too long to respond in Chrome on Mac
  • “Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding” on an iPhone.

I can access other servers (like the raspberry pi) on my network.

Any suggestions for what to try next?

Have you configured your UniFi network to assign a static IP via DHCP to each of your IoTaWatt devices? This will prevent them from changing IP addresses. I have a UniFi network as well, at it does not always display the correct IP address for devices (it usually does!)

Have you tried http://IoTaWatt.local ? If you changed the name of your IoTaWatt, then use that name instead of “IoTaWatt”.

Can you ping your IoTaWatt devices?

1 Like

Thanks for the suggestions. I can see the devices in the Unifi Controller which gives me the IP addresses but can’t ping them or connect to them via http://

PVOutput (externally hosted) hasn’t received any data since 1st November.

Everything is pointing to this being a networking/firewall issue but I don’t think anything has changed on the network since the end of October. I’ll roll back the Unifi controller to 1st October and see if that fixes it.

If that doesn’t work I will disconnect all of the Access Points in the area and create a stand alone network - (laptop, DHCP server, access point (old apple one) and iotawatt) using the same network credentials (the ones the iotawatt knows).

With the UniFi Access Points disabled the Iotawatt should connect on reboot to the stand alone network, and pick up a new DHCP IP address. - If I can connect with no Unifi kit in the system then I will have identified the culprit (unifi)

Going to take a couple of days until I have enough time to do that experiment

On the bright side the logging of the IotaWatt means that next to no data should be lost.

1 Like

Fixed - posting here to ‘close the loop’ and on the off-chance that what I did helps someone downstream.

Not sure exactly what happened but putting a temporary (apple airport) access point with the same SSID and password gave me access to the first iotawatt - proving it was a network issue.

My Unifi system threw some other wobblies giving me the not very helpful message “UniFi is having trouble with this direction” when accessing from a laptop (the IOS app was fine) - so I bit the bullet and restored from a backup from a couple of months ago.

I then looked at the wireless networks - in particular the one for the iotawatt (2.4 MHz) - I had to use a the old settings view and enabled the ‘Enable legacy device support (i.e. 11b)’ option. I also made sure that the data rate control was set for the longest range and greatest compatibility.

I don’t know whether the issues were caused by a Ubiquiti update, auto optimisation (which was previously ticked I think) or whether I accidentally did something while looking at the new UI for Unifi. Whatever the reason the fix seems to be enabling legacy devices and/or permitting low data rates on the 2.4 MHz network.