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Pretty Cool Device
vining
Posts: 4,368
Here's a link to a pretty cool device for remote management and automatic reboots. And this thing is only $295.00 US.
http://www.digital-loggers.com/EPCR2Large.html
http://www.digital-loggers.com/EPCR2Large.html
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If you google "web relays" you'll find some interesting stuff as well.
Found a really good cheap device from synacess.com for remote management of ip devices to reboot power.
Check it out.
working link www.synaccess-net.com/
These are nice too and a larger selection. Searching for Web Relays will find other cool stuff. I don't see anything about auto ping or remote power monitoring (which could act as a current sensor or AMX power ON status or if its connected at all) but some do have RS232. These are slightly more expensive.
Link posted at beginning on thread:
http://www.digital-loggers.com/EPCR2.html
--John
Here's a post I made on another forum. Sorry - it's just gonna be a copy and paste - I'm lazy and need to get ready to leave for P3.
Okay folks, I just got two new products in. I got in the Digital Loggers Ethernet Power Controller II. So far, it's a pretty slick piece. Does everything that it says it can do. The only problem is, that you can't create a custom power up sequence. You can however, set up power delays, so you could in theory power up your modem first, wait 60 seconds, then power up your router. The problem though, is it goes in sequence (bank 1, bank 2, bank 3) in 60 (or whatever time you put in there) seconds intervals. I put in a request for th next firmware update that we could do custom power up sequences. We'll see how it goes.
...
The auto-ping is pretty slick. It has to establish a connection first (10 successful pings), and then it'll start monitoring it. You can set how many times it needs to NOT respond before it reboots; how many times it reboots it; the power up time for the devices (in seconds); set more than one power channel to power cycle.
Overall, if you need something to remotely manage device power, and you want it to ping stuff too - then this is the piece to get.
So there you have a it, a small little write up on it. Good luck!
http://www.amxforums.com/showthread.php?t=4080&highlight=Ethernet+power+controller
You may have to tweak the parser to match the HTML the unit sends. They change slightly between firmware versions.
I generally plug in cable boxes, TP power supplies, Music servers, serial servers, the master's power supplies and anything else that occasionally requires a reboot. The auto ping and if no response cycle power feature is nice but so far most things that have locked up still responds to pings.
Being able to access the Power Controller's web interface to reboot the master has saved me a few times when I remotely program systems.
I'm also a big fan of MOXA multi port serial servers now. An 8 port server that can handle 8 RS232/RS485 devices is around $750.00 US and works extremely well and easy to set up. I even use them with AMX locked comm modules which are set up for a NI ports with no problems. I would prefer though if AMX would make a comprable serial expansion device that would allow me to keep these serial devices off the public network. Using 4 comm 2's to much money and I don't find them as reliable. I'm actually setting up a system that uses 2 8port MOXA's and 2 COMM-2's and the comm-2s sometimes would show up on the device tree as 5002 & 5003 and other times they wouldn't. Last week they just stopped working all together which may be due to the flaky ICSNET port on the master.
We've had several of them up and running for a few months now and they've been phenomenal. They add a huge degree of flexibility for us, plus they're able to monitor the network and the IP devices you have on the network like the Netlinx master, and have saved our butts on some crappy DirecTV gear several times already.
On an additional note, this is specific to Synaccess, the main guy over at Synaccess whose name is Shaun is awesome. He's extremely knowledgeable about their product, and has been willing to help out in many ways. On one of the boxes we received there was an indicator LED that we thought was burned out. Without any hesitation Shaun offered to overnight a replacement unit to us in Hawaii at his expense (which was not cheap). Fortunately after sitting for a while the LED came on so there was no need to ship a new one and we haven't had any issues since (it might have been turned off when we were testing the commands on it). He was also surprised that there was a problem with one of their units which I also thought was pretty cool -- it doesn't seem like they get many defective complaints. I appreciate someone who's willing to put the needs of the project ahead of all things like that and his attitude was incredibly customer oriented. Turns out they're also local to us which is another nice thing.
Control of the Synaccess device is very simple and can be done through IP telnet commands. You can also hit the built-in web based gui using any browser for added control. Again, just wanted to praise and endorse the product, the company, and the main guy there. We've been using the NP-1601D products.
--John
--John
--John
PS Audio
http://www.psaudio.com/ps/products/detail/powerplay?cat=power
On that note, I am wondering if I could just accomplish what I am looking for with an NI-700???
Jeff
I just remembered I had a short cut on my PC to one that controls the office equipment and it doesn't appear to have any email capability that I could see. The way I look at it for $300.00 it worth it just to have the manual switches that are on the front of the unit in the front of the rack to turn stuff on and off. The ability to connect to it via the web or a touch panels to control power or auto ping and power cycle if no response after x amount of pings is just icing on the cake.
I think the module for it may still be posted on the forum but if it's not I could always dig it up.
Zabbix or Nagios, both are open-source GNU GPL products designed to do what you want: monitor network equipment and much more (SNMP mostly plus watchdog processes), alert by email, syslog, SMS whatever and take actions needed (reboot via UPS etc.) . Widely used in IT enterprise environments. Might be an overkill for home installations so discussed here out of the box solution seems to be OK for simple home environment. However, considering modern home network I do not see monitoring system to be the overkill nowadays...
If one has a UPS with managed outlets, usage of such matured monitoring software would cost the UPS and a Linux/Windows server box, both a UPS and a server box we always have in IT environment anyways.
Zabbix looks nice and I see that it supports proxy based monitoring, which is basically what I need. The problem is that I am trying to avoid putting a server that requires maintenance in at the job site. Are you aware of anyone selling a solid-state linux box dedicated to run a zabbix proxy client? I am looking for a set-it-and-forget-it type thing
Jeff
In short, any Linux distribution that you are familiar with, limited set of processes, standard MySQL distribution is OK for home grade Zabbix proxy.
--John