For days my chimes are not showing video when pressed

[JPK72]

Hi,

for several days I notice that while the chime itself works, when it is clicked, the video is not showing.

On my iPhones all I get is "Bad connection. Continuing with audio. Video will return when the connection improves." This is on the same LAN/WLAN than the C4 installation. Connectivity is great. It also happens outside my WLAN over 5G. Subscription is active.

On my C4 Wall tablet I only get a black screen. The rest of the functionality is there (audio, door opening). Funny thing: If I outside of a call scenario go to security and cameras I do see all cameras including the chimes in question. Moreover the ring history also is there. 

There were no changes to the network, firewall, whatever between 2-3 weeks ago (when it was working like a charm) and now. 

Any idea? Debug logs (e.g. freeswitch.log) do not show something very obvious. Core Reset (CA-10) did not help.

Regards

   JP

[chopedogg88]

Reboot the chime itself? 

[JPK72]

Indeed that is what I did after writing the post. More an act of desperation. Strangely enough it works. Even stranger: Both of my chimes had the problem and resetting the first one fixed both. Does not make sense to me...

[chopedogg88]

what seems strange (to me anyways) is that rebooting the device in question wasn't your first troubleshooting step, but rather, your last act of desperation after trying everything else!

[JPK72]

And why is that if I may ask? The device itself in its core function was working all along. It triggered the necessary events when pressed. It delivered video all along when looked at in security. It delivered audio. Why would the lack of video in this one scenario (which to me feeling is mainly handled on the core and the freeswitch components) be related to the originating device? At least not my first thought.

And IF it is solely related to the chime itself (and hence I as a customer of course should have know this and thought of resetting the door-bell device instead of being able to rely on resilience mechanisms in this professional product), why does restarting ONE chime fix it for BOTH chimes that are not working? And why did both devices pretty much stop working at the same time if it is individual chime problems? All this led me (or rather still leads me) to believe that it is not a Chime error per se and more a core or subscription related issue. 

[chopedogg88]

Good questions, unfortunately I don't understand all of the inter-relationships and inner workings of everything Control4 makes...so perhaps best answered by someone from Control4 who really does.  All I know is that troubleshooting 101 has taught me over the years that technology has glitches/bugs/etc and the first thing I do before digging much deeper is to try a quick reboot of the devices in question since that only takes a minute or two, and 95% of the time that solves the problem.  If not, then look deeper.

[JPK72]

Support ticket is open. 

The problem is that whenever a problem goes away with restart and then eventually comes back, you will never understand the root cause. I have the same with my C4 <-> KNX connection. Every now and then C4 looses its connectivity to my KNX Gateway. Since most of the switches, lights etc. are handled via C4 this eventually means that 90% of "the house" is not working. Not really improving the Wife Acceptancy Factor. And yes: Restoring the Core does fix it (the KNX system itself keeps working, the gateway is working like a charm even if C4 chooses not to communicate with it anymore). I have a Core3 and a CA-10 in this project. And spent an awful lot of money on the hardware and installation. It is my expectation that C4 looks at these tickets and fixes them. "Have you tried rebooting everything first and if the error is gone, simply be happy" is not matching my expectation of resilience of this system.

 

[South Africa C4 user]

I tend to agree with your comment regarding lighting.  Lighting should just work and I’d be very irritated (my wife more so) if rebooting was needed to get it working.  I use native C4 lighting in 2 houses (for 13 years and 6 years respectively) and don’t think I’ve ever had to reboot to get lighting working. 

Like it or not, door stations are slightly more ancillary.  I have 3 door stations (DS2 over the same 2 hoses and the same time and have to reboot one or other of them 3 or 4 times over that period for no apparent (rational reason).  I’m still happy with these odds.

[JPK72]

After running into a very annoying bug that basically lead to total Core3 freezes every few days (which was then acknowledged and hot fixed by C4) and still having the infrequent (but still one in every two weeks) hangups on the KNX driver I am just disappointed a bit. One of the reasons I did not go with open-source do it yourself solutions like ioBroker etc. was that I wanted to have maximum stability. Everything in the house depends on C4 working. Lighting, heating (to a certain extend), security (in terms of camera and door stations), all sorts auf automatisms, shades, audio in all rooms, video in the main room.... 

Bugs happen. I agree. And if we are talking a reboot per year.. Agreed, no big deal. My current uptime is maximum 2-3 weeks until the next KNX issue forces a reboot... Not very satisfying. And clearly the issue is on the C4 core. KNX/DALI issues are completely ruled out.