Anybus Wireless Bolt Connection Issues
I have an application where 12 wireless bolts are connected to a server through a wireless access point. We had an issue with one losing connection to the WAP, and I was told by IT to update the firmware, and see if that helped. I attempted to update the firmware of all 12 at the same time from the server.
During the process, the file downloaded successfully in each (the first bar turned green), but none of them successfully completed the re-boot (the second bar turned red).
After that, I have had great difficulty setting them back up.
I often have to attempt to reset a bolt several times before I can connect on the default IP. Then after I get connected, the bolt usually stops responding after either setting the IP, or going to the WLAN settings and connecting to the WAP. After that happens, the only thing I can do is reset the bolt and start over, but the same issue happens again.
What might be causing this? Could it be a failed firmware update?
What can I do to solve the issue?
Thank You,
Joshua Reinhart
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Hello @JReinhart,
Before service pack 3 when you updated a bolt it will reset the settings. When you updated your bolts they most likely updated but then were no longer configured to connect to the AP.
JReinhart:Then after I get connected, the bolt usually stops responding after either setting the IP, or going to the WLAN settings and connecting to the WAP.
How are you connecting to the bolts? Is it though the LAN side? Do you have a static IP set in the same subnet and do you change it over to the new subnet when you change the IP address? If not you are probably losing connection from your pc due to not having a route.
Deryck
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Deryck,
After some difficulty, I was finally able to reset, flash firmware and reconfigure all the bolts that I am using. However, upon completing this, it seems that the network reliability has dramatically worsened. Before, we just had 1 of 12 bolts lose connection once, so we updated firmware as a precaution. Now, almost every bolt seems to be intermittently losing connection about every 5 minutes or so.
Does it make sense that a firmware change would affect this? That is the only variable that has changed since everything was working.
Thanks,
Joshua
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Hello @JReinhart,
JReinhart:Does it make sense that a firmware change would affect this? That is the only variable that has changed since everything was working.
This is very odd issue the latest firmware is the most stable so far. It actually corrected an issue where after several hours some device would briefly lose a connection to an AP. This was a very quick disconnect only lasting a second but would cause PLC's to fault out.
What is the signal for the devices ? How long does the connection drop? Are there multiple AP's in the area with the same SSID? They could be jumping between access points.
Deryck
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Deryck,
We have 12 bolts connecting to a single WAP. Although in the future, we will have 4 groups of bolts, with each group having its own WAP. The connection seems to drop until we physically go to the bolts and unplug/plug the Ethernet cable.
We have played around with the quite a bit, and we think we may have discovered the issue.
One of our troubleshooting attempts was to set half to 2.4 GHz, and half to 5GHz Wi-Fi. We left this over the weekend, and on Monday, all the 2.4GHz bolts had disconnected (at the same exact time within one minute, as we are tracking comm status), and all of the 5GHz bolts were fine.
We realized that there is a Wi-Fi network in the building, that is almost certainly 2.4GHz, and we believe that this was interfering with the bolts. After changing all the bolts to 5GHz, we have not had another problem yet, but it's still too early to say for sure.
Before this, all the bolts were set on 2.4 & 5. Does the new firmware update affect how the bolt decides between using 2.4 vs 5?
I'll let you know if anything else happens.
Thank You,
Joshua
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