Got my IotaWatt working, but now

Received my IotaWatt and transformers today. I got it up and running and had it logging my line voltage and current for a lamp at my desk. Everything was working fine but now it’s booting kind of slow and the menu buttons don’t work. When powered up it loops through the R-G-G sequence 3 or 4 times and then goes to flickering green light. The initial menu comes up looking like this:


None of the buttons does anything.

I reloaded the webpage and the menu came up looking normal now. Hovering over the buttons will present the drop-down button lists but none of those buttons does anything.
image

Can you offer any suggestions?

Thanks,

Looks like a poor WiFi connection. As a diagnostic measure, try moving it closer to your WiFi router.

My IotaWatt base is about seven feet from my router. I hope it doesn’t need to be this close or closer as that won’t be acceptable. I do wish it had wired Ethernet capability. I don’t have any problem running wires to its eventual in service location

In reading some other forum messages I came across a user who was having trouble with the data graphs missing. I thought, hmmm, I can’t get to my data graphs either. It had been suggested that he delete his current log and possibly his history log. I figured I had nothing to loose at this point so I used those commands to delete my logs. The IotaWatt started working again and I was able to access everything including my data graphs.

I let everything run overnight so I could acquire some deeper history. In the morning it seemed to be okay for a while. But now it has become unusable again. I thought deleting the loges seemed to help the night before so I deleted the logs again but no luck this time. I have the normal opening menu but nothing works.

I’m getting ready o spend thousands of dollars on a standby generator. I need this thing to work reliably to help me determine what size generator to purchase.

If I open it up and pop out the SD card is there anything I can check on it? By the way, if you need it, my order number is 122920.

Thanks.

Could you run this command and see if it returns the message log?

http://iotawatt.local/iotawatt/iotamsgs.txt

If so, cold you save the page to a file and upload it to this forum please? Also, what is the state of the LED?

The command returned the message log data. The LED currently is not steady but rather is rapidly flickering green.
iotamsgs.txt (18.3 KB)

There is nothing unusual in that message log, except of course the deletelog commands which should not be an issue. The system appears to be logging fine, and it responded to your request for the log, so I have to wonder what is the issue with the config app.

Stop me if you get out of your comfort zone. Could you run the config app with the javascript debugger active (F12). I’m interested in both the console and network tabs to see if any javascript errors are being logged and also to see the HTTP requests to the IoTaWatt.

When the site first comes up I see this.
GEThttp://iotawatt.local/favicon.ico
[HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found 14132ms]

I’m getting this error in the Console tab below no matter which button I click on to launch that operation.

Uncaught ReferenceError: mainMenuButton is not defined
onclick http://iotawatt.local/:1

Here’s what I see in the Network tab:

Interesting, I’ve never used the javascriptdebugger before.

Hmmm. It looks as if the app file may be damaged. Lets upload a fresh copy.

First download the fresh copy: index.htm (106.8 KB)

Now run the file manager with the URL:

http://iotawatt.local/edit

In the upper left there will be a “Browse…” button. Click that and using whatever file selection method your browser supports, locate the file you just downloaded and select (open) it.

Now the filename /index.htm should be in the box to the right of the browse button.

Click the “Upload” button.

Now refresh or rerun the app and see if it works any better.

That seems to have taken care of it. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. I can’t imagine how the index.htm file got corrupted.

Now I just need to put something up adjacent to my power panel to mount the IotaWatt on and get it installed and fully configured. I’m anxious to see it in operation and acquiring data about our power usage.

Thanks, you were a life saver on this. Thank you too for your quick support.

Hate to say it but I fear I spoke too soon. I started getting those same “uncaught ReferencError: mainMenuButton is not defined” errors again. So I once again uploaded the index.htm file to the IotaWatt. After refreshing the page I still had the errors. After that I rebooted the IotaWatt and was still seeing those same errors.

I downloaded the index.htm file from the iotawatt and ran a file check between it and the file that I downloaded from the community site and they are the same.

I’m getting very frustrated.

For what it’s worth here are some errors I got loading the editor:
window.controllers/Controllers is deprecated. Do not use it for UA detection. ace.js:1:18403

The character encoding of the HTML document was not declared. The document will render with garbled text in some browser configurations if the document contains characters from outside the US-ASCII range. The character encoding of the page must be declared in the document or in the transfer protocol. edit

Security Error: Content at http://iotawatt.local/edit may not load data from https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/ace/1.1.9/worker-html.js.

GEThttp://iotawatt.local/favicon.ico

What browser are you using and what is the platform?

I’m running Windows 10 and have tried Firefox (my preferred browser) as well as Internet Explorer and Edge. All three give the same “SCRIPT5009: ‘mainMenuButton’ is undefined” error.

There’s something unique here. Not ruling out some kind of hardware problem, but of the thousands of IoTaWatt, I’ve only had one with confirmed hardware WiFi issues and this wasn’t the symptom.

What has me guessing is the mainMenuButton undefined message. mainMenuButton is the function that is called when you press one of the main menu buttons. It is defined near the end of the index.htm file. Why the browser considers it undefined is a mystery. The obvious reason would be that it wasn’t loaded with the file.

Another thing that gives me pause is the security error that you reported with the editor trying to load from the cloudflare CDN. Browsers usually allow that.

I’ll send you a new unit to rule out anything there, along with a return label to send the old one back. Mostly I’d like to just replace the SD card, but a new unit will eliminate any guesswork and save time.

1 Like

That’s kind of you to do that. Let’s hope that’ll take care of it.

Thanks

I have another update for you. I think issue may actually with my Comcast xfinity WiFi router.

I’m experimenting with an old LinkSys WRT-54 WiFi router that I have which has DD-WRT on it as an access point on my LAN. I’ve configured the IotaWatt to attach to it. It seems to operating properly now. I’m going to let it run through the night and check on it again in the morning. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Good thing I didn’t scrap that old router. If necessary I’ll press it into service if I cannot get my xfinity router straightened out.

Ok, thanks. I’ll wait to hear if you still have problems.

Just got off from work. Had a busy day.

I think I’m good now. Although I’ll need to figure out how to correct my Xfinity router. It’s got a stuck configuration…

Something that I think would a good change to the IotaWatt is an added button in the WiFi configuration that would take the user to a page to manually configure the IP address, the Net Mask, the gateway and DNS, etc. I feel that would be better than relying on having to set the DHCP acquired address to be a reservation in the router. I think that’s what got me because now I’ve got two appearances of the power monitor in my router and I am unable to remove the offending one and replace the configuration. This is why adding an AP to my network is working. The power monitor is not attaching to my Xfinity router but rather my wireless AP.

If you cannot add code to provide for manually configuring the IP configuration then It wold be very helpful to document the IotaWatt’s MAC address somewhere like the back of the module.

I really appreciate all your help

Im happy that this issue is resolved.

Regarding your suggestions, probably going to stick with DHCP exclusively but I am adding a WiFi tab to the status display and I think it’s a good idea to add the MAC address to it.

Just a tip: If you have wifi connection issues, & the IotaWatt is screwed to an earthed, steel panel, you may find (like I did) that the Aerial is shielded. My solution: mount to a wood block screwed to the panel. (Works like a charm now!)

regards, Doug

1 Like

Thanks Doug. I got it working some time ago and I’d say it has probably already paid for itself. With it I was able find and resolve an issue with a constantly running sump pump (bad level switch) and resolve an issue with my heat pump (condenser fan not running sometimes when it should be running causing high pressure and high compressor current) that were wasting energy.

As far as configuration goes I think it would be much better if the MAC address was printed on the box or an insert sheet. That way a person could establish an IP reservation for the IoTaWatt before even powering it on. As it is you have to let it acquire an IP address by DHCP and then make that address a reserved address. I don’t particularly care for that. Other than that I think the IoTaWatt is great and have recommended it to others.

OR, better yet I would prefer if I was able to once it’s on my network and I can initially communicate with it then change it to a fixed IP address of my choosing. That way I could give it an address in my manually configured address range for my network equipment and not have it consume one of my DHCP addresses.

Tom