All, I have been moving my park sensors over to the Particle platform and it has been a great experience. With my sensors deployed in remote locations, reliability is key. To that end, I have built a carrier board for the Electron with an external Texas Instruments TPL5010 watchdog timer. You ca…

Thanks for posting this and including the explanation!

[image] chipmc: Also, and I apologize if this is obvious, here is how the watchdog works. Hi Charles, it's never obvious, and thank you for your post!!! Gustavo.

Great setup, thanks for sharing. I understand pulling the reset pin does not directly reset/power cycle a locked up modem in HW, as that needs a Cellular.off() - does Cellular.off() actually happen implicitly when the reset pin is pulled or would that need to be added to the code below if (System.…

Pulling RST low does not reset the modem and as it directly resets the STM32 it has no chance to do anything in regards of calling Cellular.off()

@thrmttnw , I have two levels of reset as my boards are off in the woods and have to operate without human interaction. The first level is the watchdog as described above. But, if a “soft reset” does not solve the issue. My carrier board includes a circuit that I can use to power-cycle the Particle…

[image] chipmc: By pulling one pin HIGH, it turns off both the LiPo and Vin to the Electron causing a “hard reset” Thanks @chipmc and @ScruffR . Well, to avoid the "hard reset" part of the HW/SW design, I am wondering if this could work: When the watch dog pulls the RST low resetting the STM3…

Cellular.off() is probably the better choice, since after a HW reset of the cellular module will wake into a half-woke state. There are some discussions about low power mode where @rickkas7 explains the ins and outs a bit better.

In your external hardware watchdog wake with pin reset case, you’d actually have to do Cellular.on(), Cellular.off(), then I’d probably go into SLEEP_MODE_DEEP for 30 seconds. That will likely clear up any potential modem state issues. Just be careful to not get into a rolling cycle of doing that.

[image] rickkas7: That will likely clear up any potential modem state issues. Just be careful to not get into a rolling cycle of doing that. Thanks. It sounds like Cellular.off() done the right way is something that would mostly work. I am thinking that I am after something "certain" when all…

Improving Electron Reliability - External Watchdog Timer

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micromet July 26, 2017, 4:01pm 3

Thanks, this is very helpful. Going to give it a try myself.

Is it necessary an external watchdog timer for improving reliability?

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Improving Electron Reliability - External Watchdog Timer

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