What Happened??? Apex went crazy!

[drummereef]

All was good in Apex land then all of a sudden the system reset to default values. I lost my whole program (luckily I have it backed up) and half of my outlets shut off. Luckily I was home when it happened so I could get my heaters and Vortechs plugged into a strip.

So what the heck would cause this? I'm also not able to log into via the browser to upload my saved program. I get a "404 not found" error!

[aquamanic]

It sounds like somehow your firmware got corrupted.

Reload your firmware and web pages (that's probably the 404 error) and see if that fixes the problem.

[kenargo]

+1

If you had older firmware there was an issue fixed in later firmware that could, if the timing was just right cause memory corruption during a brown-out or power surge. Just guessing but it matches your description of the problem.

[drummereef]

Thanks guys. Yes, after the issue last night (while RC was doing nightly backups - couldn't post a reply) I found a thread of someone who had similar issues and did what you recommended. After loading the web pages again I could access the controller again and reload my program. A little scary though as I'm getting ready to leave town for a day.

I'll go ahead and reload the firmware and web pages again just to make sure there's no corruption on either end.

[joshbryer]

Just to resurrect this thread...... I'm running the latest firmware and I just had this exact problem today. When I got home this evening my lights we on even though I had hardcoded them to "set off", and I'm getting 404 errors when accessing the apex through host name or ip. I'm going to try re-uploading the webpages shortly...

Apex is also reporting power failure at ~2AM on the 17th that it says wasn't restored until 7pm today, which I know is not the case.

Luckily there's no water in my tank yet and only my lights are plugged into my eb8's, but this is more than frightening and hopefully doesn't foreshadow things to come. This type of behavior is unacceptably buggy for such a sensitive application.

[joshbryer]

Just to resurrect this thread...... I'm running the latest firmware and I just had this exact problem today. When I got home this evening my lights we on even though I had hardcoded them to "set off", and I'm getting 404 errors when accessing the apex through host name or ip. I'm going to try re-uploading the webpages shortly...

Apex is also reporting power failure at ~2AM on the 17th that it says wasn't restored until 7pm today, which I know is not the case.

Luckily there's no water in my tank yet and only my lights are plugged into my eb8's, but this is more than frightening and hopefully doesn't foreshadow things to come. This type of behavior is unacceptably buggy for such a sensitive application.

As an update, reuploading the webpages did fix the 404 error. I was mistaken regarding setting the outlets to auto->"set off". I had switched them all to "manual off" and when this happened they were all set back to auto. Very strange....

[swearint]

When you say you are running the latest firmware, are you referring to the new beta release 4.04? If so, then you may want to post this in that thread as well so Curt can look into it.

Todd

[joshbryer]

When you say you are running the latest firmware, are you referring to the new beta release 4.04? If so, then you may want to post this in that thread as well so Curt can look into it.

Todd

Hi Todd-

No, I'm running the latest official firmware not the beta, I should have clarified that.

As of last night when I went to sleep, everything was fine. As of this morning I tried to log into the apex to check things (from home, in network) and it wouldn't find the host. Went out to check on the apex and the eb8s were flashing yellow, the apex is a brick and the display is black. Calling Curt......

[watsonj]

I had the same thing happen this morning trying to load the new firmware. I couldnt get the tank back, up the firmware didnt load but the web pages were wipped so I could not get into the apex unit. I had to load the 4.04 web pages with the 4.03 software. I dont understand how I could load the webpages but not the new firmware?
It also took 4 tries until the apex took the config reload. This is a real pain I do find it interesting that through all of this my reeftronics page worked I guess it takes an xml feed and then displays. I am now scared to touch the box as when it wiped itself this morning it caused havoc with skimmer overflowing, cup cleaner pumping freshwater causing the overflow cup to spillout, heater stuck on.... I had to run around the back of the tank and pull out all the plugs.

[watsonj]

I also now have under net setup a aquaserver config setup

[kenargo]

AquaServer is an upcoming new feature; you can ignore this for now.

[kenargo]

I had the same thing happen this morning trying to load the new firmware. I couldnt get the tank back, up the firmware didnt load but the web pages were wipped so I could not get into the apex unit. I had to load the 4.04 web pages with the 4.03 software. I dont understand how I could load the webpages but not the new firmware?
It also took 4 tries until the apex took the config reload. This is a real pain I do find it interesting that through all of this my reeftronics page worked I guess it takes an xml feed and then displays. I am now scared to touch the box as when it wiped itself this morning it caused havoc with skimmer overflowing, cup cleaner pumping freshwater causing the overflow cup to spillout, heater stuck on.... I had to run around the back of the tank and pull out all the plugs.

I have a float that turns off the skimmer when the sump gets too high (to keep from dunping tank water).

That said; it shouldn't have dumped the program but if you had been running older firmware it is possible you had a known bug where memory corruption caused program memory to be bad; usually happened when power loss at just the right moment. Not sure if this is your case or not.

[joshbryer]

I have a float that turns off the skimmer when the sump gets too high (to keep from dunping tank water).

That said; it shouldn't have dumped the program but if you had been running older firmware it is possible you had a known bug where memory corruption caused program memory to be bad; usually happened when power loss at just the right moment. Not sure if this is your case or not.

Hey Ken,

Have you ever heard of this condition happening with the latest released firmware? In my case I didn't re-up the firmware, just the webpages. I spoke with Eugene at neptuneSys and I'm going to try re-uploading the firmware tonight using a 12v dc adapter with the apex and routing around the eb8s because they're not providing power to apex unit.

This could have been disastrous if my tank was up and running, and is making me think about my controller choice, so thanks in advance for any input.