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Met-ecom reboots and strange relay behavior
sphere27
Posts: 40
I've been using some met-ecoms for intercom, looking at their cameras on touch panels and triggering a door release using a relay. There are a couple strange things I've noticed.
First the relays. It seems like the relay numbers are reversed from how they are labled on the device. (1 is 2 and 2 is 1) So when I want to trigger relay 1 I hit channel 2 on port 3. Also I noticed that when rebooting the device relay 1 behaves differntly than relay 2. 1 will close during boot up and open when it's finished. 2 will just stay open. This is important because doors will open if the relay is triggered.
But it's even more important because for reason the met ecomes are rebooting. I use netlinx to fire the RMF command at the touch panel to change the IP address of the metecom to display based on what the user chooses. I haven't totally been able to verify but it seems that when I cycle through the cameras on a touch panel eventually a metecom will reboot. I am suspecting that when I change off of a camera there's some amt of time before the metecom totally releases it. So if I'm switching to it and off of it eventually the ecom looses it's mind and reboots. I've seen this on a couple of the 8 that are installed.
And then there's the touch panel mjpeg viewer 'locking up'. Usually switching to another camera or switching pages and back will get it going again. But it's not ideal at all.
Has anybody seen these things? I searched for ecom in the forum and didn't find mention of the reboots.
First the relays. It seems like the relay numbers are reversed from how they are labled on the device. (1 is 2 and 2 is 1) So when I want to trigger relay 1 I hit channel 2 on port 3. Also I noticed that when rebooting the device relay 1 behaves differntly than relay 2. 1 will close during boot up and open when it's finished. 2 will just stay open. This is important because doors will open if the relay is triggered.
But it's even more important because for reason the met ecomes are rebooting. I use netlinx to fire the RMF command at the touch panel to change the IP address of the metecom to display based on what the user chooses. I haven't totally been able to verify but it seems that when I cycle through the cameras on a touch panel eventually a metecom will reboot. I am suspecting that when I change off of a camera there's some amt of time before the metecom totally releases it. So if I'm switching to it and off of it eventually the ecom looses it's mind and reboots. I've seen this on a couple of the 8 that are installed.
And then there's the touch panel mjpeg viewer 'locking up'. Usually switching to another camera or switching pages and back will get it going again. But it's not ideal at all.
Has anybody seen these things? I searched for ecom in the forum and didn't find mention of the reboots.
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Comments
We've seen a fair number of bad door units that arbitrarily reboot or otherwise fail, and they have been replaced. We don't see it once we get them stable. No amount of viewing/unviewing/round-robin viewing multiple units from as many as 24 panels has given us a hint that it causes rebooting. We have customers viewing them in slideshow mode for hours without incident.
The AMX Panel mpg viewer does occasionally freeze, and newer firmware does it less. This isn't limited to door cams, we see it with any streams. Yes, picking a new stream does restart it, same if you refresh the same stream. We auto-refresh periodically and it can help prevent an hours-old view on a window left open. Also important - clear a view window once dismissed! If the cam unit fails, and cannot send a new image, and you don't explicitly take action to clear the window first, the old one (last delivered, still image) is seen when the window pops open. The user can presume what he sees is live, and open the door for whom he thinks is there - but is not.
We have not noticed that the relays are reversed or that one can fire on reboot... will look into that. We don't use them because it's unsafe to use the relays on the MET to operate your door. By prying the met out of the housing, an invader has the wires he needs to open the door. Just like on every tv show and movie where they yank the control and short a couple wires. Don't do it. Use relays in the NetLinx or somewhere secure.
Thank you for the hints and suggestions. I also have a suspision that the POE switch that is running all these panels is potentially under powered. But now I know that rebooting could just be a bad metecom.
As for the relays. I really don't want to use them, and the client is aware of the security whole. But he is sticking to his guns with these things (even though they are getting wet and corroded). I'm pretty sure we are going to end up investigating something that can go on the phone system instead of these things eventually.
How do I clear an image? I use the ^RFR to refresh the dynamic image on the touch panel.
The only way we've found to clear a dynamic image is to replace it with another. And since you just pass a URL to a panel and don't really know if it resolved the URL, the panel may continue to show the last image it did get. And that's the whole problem, this is dicey.
To avoid requiring a live Internet connection to assure the image can clear, we've placed a small bitmap in the NetLinx and tell the panels to show that, but I feel that's a poor solution. There seems to be no command to do a clear. If anyone has other ideas, please contribute.
It would be nice to have a command to clear a dynamic image. All the hoop jumping is getting me tired.
But It's nice to know that there's a potential work around by having the dynamic image pull a bmp from the processor.