Thoughts on remotely resetting or rebooting network hardware
Posted By RichC on June 16, 2018
Frustration in tech land! Power out – now the cable modem or router won’t reboot properly! If you haven’t following along with my updating the progress on the Florida condo, I’ve been adding bits and pieces to “home automation” besides the normal “construction updates” to the kitchen (and eventually bathroom). 
Most of it has been for fun gadget items, but also good for convenience and security. The push I needed was the Samsung SmartThings Hub that came with a couple sensors and wall plug switch, but I’ve added a couple items on my own. The first failure was last month as the Schlage Smartlock was missing parts and needed to be shipped back to Amazon – bummer. Next I added the “impulse buy” a $25 Wyze Cam … which was amazing and worked great. I added one of the The Nest Thermostat was another buy and was working great until the power was turned off in the complex. The final addition was the DeeBot N79S for hard surface floors (all tile) and it was fun to watch and worked great (at $179 was a special priced deal). 
Unfortunately all my smart gadgets have failed to function the way I want without a network (being able to monitor).
So all of this frustration has be contemplating a fix or solution to the problem of the “home network” going down (could be Internet modem?). Initially I looked at the wifi connected plugs that switch off and on when it loses a wifi connection. The reviews were not promising.
Next I talked with my son-in-law Drew and he offered wise advice; he suggested I upgrade the router to a better quality unit as that has always solved his connectivity issues in the past – he hasn’t had to reboot for quite some time.
Third, is my clunky idea …after reading Dr John’s Tech Talk post – I’m thinking of taking down one of my extra Raspberry Pi computers, a 110v relay and program it to monitor a “wired” or “wifi” Internet connection. When it detects a “down” network (perhaps 3 times over 15 minutes – ever 5 min) then it switches the relay off and restarts both the ISP supplied modem and router. It should reboot correctly if given enough time (the problem with the hardware based units) between powering off and back on.
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