DoorBird goes offline once a day

Posted on
Fri Aug 31, 2018 2:42 pm
kwijibo007 offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

That's interesting, I hadn't noticed this behaviour. The reboot doesn't worry me too much but what's really bizarre is that it's occurring at 24hour intervals and not at, say, 3am everyday? My Doorbird's last state change was at 9:45pm last night. I'll check tonight to see if it's occurred again. I'll also configure a pushover notification to trigger on a "doorbirdOnOffState" state change.

lanbrown wrote:
In the API you can perform a soft reboot of the device. Maybe this should be added in so that we can control when the reset happens?


Yep, great idea. I'll get this added to the next update.

Pete

Posted on
Sun Sep 02, 2018 1:12 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

FWIW, I am seeing the same behavior. The one real problem I have with the DoorBird is the receptivity of their support department to any idea, suggestion or, heaven forbid, criticism, that does not follow their view of how their products should be used. They simply describe the issue as a feature and tell the user they don't need the requested feature or fix.

Posted on
Sun Sep 02, 2018 1:25 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
...How about just allowing it in the plugin, but you would just create a schedule in Indigo to carry it out?....



+1 (as an action)

Posted on
Sun Sep 02, 2018 4:05 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
...if anyone else doesn't like their DoorBird doing a reset every 24 hours, I would contact DoorBird and voice your displeasure. This is something they could fix. Does the reset clear out all connections to it? Sure, but I don't see why it has to be a reset, why not say an interface bounce or some other means?


I have voiced my displeasure!
In an email to DoorBird support, I wrote:
I have noticed my DoorBird is rebooting approximately every 24 hours. If this were to happen in the early morning, it might not be an issue. However, it is now happening in the middle of the day. Since it takes up to 2 minutes to reboot, this means my DoorBird is unavailable during the time it is most needed. Can this behavior be turned off or at least allow me to set the time for the reboot?

As to why they do this. My guess is they have a memory leak they can't track down. And, as for the timing, my guess is around 150 seconds after the reboot they send an instruction to the DoorBird to reboot in 24 hours. That would be about add around 4 minutes per day (reboot time plus delay in receiving the command). By doing it this way, they would be able to extend or delete the reboot delay when they get the problem fixed. But, like I said, just guessing.

Posted on
Sun Sep 02, 2018 5:27 am
kwijibo007 offline
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Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown & berkinet wrote:
lanbrown wrote:
...How about just allowing it in the plugin, but you would just create a schedule in Indigo to carry it out?....



+1 (as an action)

Yep. Agreed. I'll get this added.

My Doorbird is also rebooting every 24 hours (plus a couple of minutes). Confirmed two days in a row. I really don't mind the reboot, especially if it keeps everything running smoothly. But why it's not configured to do so at 3am every morning is very strange. As lanbrown pointed out, the time drift will force it into the middle of the day in a few months.

Posted on
Mon Sep 03, 2018 8:02 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

DoorBird support responded to my email and wrote:
The 24-hour reboot is normal. You can change it as you like. You have to disconnect the DoorBird from the power supply at the desired time and then restart normally.
The 24H reboot starts now when you have disconnected Doorbird from the power supply.

and in response I wrote:
...in order to do what you suggest, I must wait until a time when I would normally be sleeping. Further, the time creeps about 4minutes per days, each month the restart time advances 2 hours (4*30=120). If a reset must happen, please allow the user the option to schedule the reset time in the Administration UI.

We'll see how they respond. But, they probably won't change anything.

I'd also note, given their instruction to actually power the DoorBird down and then power it back up again, doing a reset through the API may not have an impact.

Also, I found this thread on remote central that discusses the reboot issue.

Posted on
Mon Sep 03, 2018 9:54 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
I guess I'm just hopeful as it appears the restart via the API seems to do the restart silently like builtin that happens every 24 hours:...

Easy enough to test. Sometime tonight send the API command using curl. Then watch to see if the 24 hour reports get rescheduled from that time onwards or follow their previous schedule.

Posted on
Tue Sep 04, 2018 7:41 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

While waiting for lanbrown to report back, I have something related to report. For the past three days I have been getting phantom rings. I reported it to DoorBird yesterday, but they have not yet responded. However, when it happened again to day I realized it was about the same time as the daily reboot. So, I looked through the logs and found the phantom ring occurs around 5 minutes after the reboot.
Code: Select all
2018-09-02 14:38:15.079 DoorBird        DoorBird Status: Offline
2018-09-02 14:39:17.484 DoorBird        DoorBird Status: Online
... ...
2018-09-02 14:44:06.548 DoorBird        Doorbell has rung

2018-09-03 14:44:35.612 DoorBird        DoorBird Status: Offline
2018-09-03 14:46:06.165 DoorBird        DoorBird Status: Online
... ...
2018-09-03 14:50:55.182 DoorBird        Doorbell has rung

2018-09-04 14:48:39.382 DoorBird        DoorBird Status: Offline
2018-09-04 14:49:41.755 DoorBird        DoorBird Status: Online
... ...
2018-09-04 14:54:31.178 DoorBird        Doorbell has rung
I have updated my ticket. It will be interesting to see if they finally treat this as a bug, not a feature.

Posted on
Thu Sep 06, 2018 12:42 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
Have you heard back from DoorBird yet?

Sort of. There got back to me late Wednesday. But, they want to RMA the button and didn't address the software issue at all. I have responded and am waiting for a response. 48 hour turn-around time on support emails is not acceptable.

Posted on
Thu Sep 06, 2018 8:46 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
...They should probably just get a distributor to handle North America and let them provide the support, etc.

Well, that would be great for those in North America... I am in France :wink:

BTW...
DoorBird support responded and wrote:
Our specialists are always with us and we ask you to trust us so that together we can find a solution for your concerns. We are aware that this can be a software error but to exclude a hardware error we ask you to fill out the RMA process.
I guess I'll RMA my button.

Posted on
Thu Sep 06, 2018 9:33 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
See, you're even closer to Germany. The biggest issue is the timezone difference; you are at least much closer time wise as well.

Hmmm. The Pacific Time zone is at most 3 hours ahead of anywhere else in the US. :lol:
    Bird Home Automation GmbH
    201 Spear Street Suite 1100
    San Francisco, California, 94105
and
    San Francisco Job
    Technical Support – DoorBird – San Francisco, CA –
    March 2, 2017
    Answer telephone calls and answer tickets throughout the day to assist partners with any level 1 & 2 technical support….

Posted on
Thu Sep 06, 2018 9:54 am
berkinet offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

lanbrown wrote:
... Some of the emails I've received were sent after I went to bed and arrived before I woke up and I'm ahead of California time.

In practice, almost all of the emails I have received recently have been from Pascal Plenter. It would seem he works somewhere in Central European Time, but sometimes his emails do come at odd hours. I will be in San Francisco this fall and I will drop by their office top se what I can learn.

Posted on
Thu Sep 13, 2018 5:43 am
kwijibo007 offline
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Re: DoorBird goes offline once a day

Plugin version 0.6.0 is now available which adds the restart command. Hope this helps :D

https://github.com/kwijibo007/DoorBird

Pete

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