Internet watchdog relay project

[Solder_Junkie]

I have a remote controlled system that uses a mobile broadband router, occasionally it has needed a reboot, which is a job that could be done automatically saving me driving to reset it...

There have been one or two Raspberry Pi projects that turn off a relay for a few seconds if a return ping to an internet address fails. There are also Chinese internet watchdog units, such as eBay.co.uk item 296195240193, that might be  cheaper than buying a Pi, but lack details and have a general "toy shop" look about them.

It seems like such a common requirement that others must have done this before, yet such projects seem scarce... Any pointers and ideas, other than using a clock timer to turn it off twice a day?

Thanks

SJ

[Berni]

Yep, however the alternative is buying proper networking equipment that keeps working without the need to be restarted every so often.

I had to restart routers at home too here and there say once a month or two. Some of the failures wouldn't even be picked up by such a internet watchdog device, like one of the failure modes was that DHCP stopped handing out IP addresses. So technically the internet is still working for all existing devices, but plugging in a new device set for dynamic IP would fall on its face and not work.

Then once it was time to upgrade my network to gigabit (yeah this was a good while ago) i decided to spend a bit more money on a serious router (rather than the cheep home routers i had until then) and so i bought a little 5 port Mikrotik routerboard. It was a game changer. In the over a decade of owning it, i had to only reboot it twice, both of those was due to performing a firmware update. They are rock solid. Also am running my modems all in bridge mode to prevent them from trying to do anything to my traffic.

I also had coworkers that had lots of reliability problems with their home network, recommended them a Mikrotik and from then on they have 0 issues.

[nali]

It's quite an old problem for mobile data modems/routers where the site is static and stays registered to the same cell. The network just "forgets" the device until it re-registers which is normally done by repowering the modem. More a cellular network issue than the quality of the mobile device.

Most of the equipment I've seen (and all the equipment I've comissioned) contain either a watchdog in the router itself, or a modem power switch controlled by a GPIO for this very purpose.

[fourtytwo42]

There have been one or two Raspberry Pi projects that turn off a relay for a few seconds if a return ping to an internet address fails. There are also Chinese internet watchdog units, such as eBay.co.uk item 296195240193, that might be  cheaper than buying a Pi, but lack details and have a general "toy shop" look about them.

Use an ESP8266 much cheaper than a Pi, about a fiver IIRC (Ebay).
I have quite a few dotted around and they all check there connection to whatever net device they are interested in, it would be very easy to drive a relay from a pio line.