{"id":2421,"date":"2017-05-23T11:09:47","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T17:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/162.243.68.163\/?p=2421"},"modified":"2018-08-07T11:21:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T17:21:13","slug":"i-made-a-thing-to-reset-my-modem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/?p=2421","title":{"rendered":"I made a thing to reset my modem."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Duck Tape Optional<\/p><\/div>\n

CenturyLink can’t seem to stay online without frequent manual resets, so I made a thing out of other things that I got from the internet. Writing the code, soldering on some pins, and wiring up an intercept to the relay took about 3 hours, maybe 4 if you count the time I took sharing the code on github etc. It only switches the 12v DC so it’s pretty safe. Arduino sketch\u00a0available via gitlab<\/a>. It’s quite primitive but, unlike the commercially available WifiResetPlug, it works with my configuration, and you have all of the source code to inspect for nefarious intentions.<\/p>\n

Still, SO MUCH better than Comcast<\/h3>\n

My CenturyLink modem loses its connection at least twice a week, and does not reconnect until\u00a0I go downstairs and\u00a0turn it off and on. While I appreciate the additional exercise in my daily routine, sometimes it disconnects two or three times in a row, or while I’m\u00a0in the middle of a skype call.<\/p>\n

There are commercial products that address this issue, but they don’t seem to help. I bought a WifiResetPlug, which should fix the problem.\u00a0While it\u00a0does seem to be working as designed, it never resets the connection on my<\/em> network. I can unplug the DSL line and it does nothing. I assume this is because my\u00a0router responds to all requests when the net is down with its magical “autoconfigure” screen. Which can not be disabled, of course. So that didn’t work.<\/p>\n

Even if it worked, how can I\u00a0trust it?<\/h3>\n

And, I don’t want any unnecessary devices on my home network connected to the internet 24\/7. What, your house is full of IoT light bulbs? And you have a cloud-connected thermostat that tracks what room you’re in at what time of day 24\/7? And it also knows when you’re >30 minutes away from home, and all the valuables in your house are unattended, and it’s connected to some third-party web service that is not audited or regulated? OK then, that’s your decision I guess. I don’t want that.<\/p>\n

And at some point I realized it would be actually faster<\/em>\u00a0to make my own reset device from scratch than to keep purchasing third party devices. I had, on my desk, an ESP8266-based Arduino device\u00a0(D1 Mini clone) and it has wifi, a really simple programming interface, and there’s an off-the-shelf “shield” board with a relay. I don’t even have to figure out which pins to wire up. And, my flaky CenturyLink modem uses a 5.5×2.1mm power connector, the same used by BOSS stompbox pedals. I have a box of those from my pedal experiments. The only thing I don’t already have on hand is the relay. It’s a sign!<\/p>\n

So, within a week, and about 3 hours of actual work later,\u00a0it was done.<\/p>\n

Update (It works great!)<\/h3>\n

Update?\u00a0I never even posted this, it’s still a draft. In any case, it works beautifully, and has reset my modem several times during the recent precipitation. I updated the code and now there are stats. It’s also smarter about temporary outages, and servers up a tiny web page showing uptime stats (all in seconds at the moment).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

No resets yet!<\/p><\/div>\n

Whee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CenturyLink can’t seem to stay online without frequent manual resets, so I made a thing out of other things that I got from the internet. Writing the code, soldering on some pins, and wiring up an intercept to the relay took about 3 hours, maybe 4 if you count the time I took sharing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekhedd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}