Require unbreakable ! mobile 3G connection ( dongle )

[Londoncalling]

Guys , mnay thanks in advance for your help and know it will be copious and send me off in many creative directions to come up with a solution , im looking forward to it

Criteria is to have a unbreakable mobile 3G connection ( via dongle ) ( cat5 connection is impossiblity )

Reason is that i require to log into view camera 3/4 times a day to take images , and the setup is in remote location. Currently the connection is "hanging" / Breaking at least once a week and i have a 2 hour round trip to reset everything.

This is NOT data intensive 2/3 GB lasts a month and im currently using THREE dongles , I have spoken to 3 and they say they DONT have a solution as their dongles are NOT designed for 24/7 use and dont have self reset facilities.

Currently im looking for a hardware solution , rather than a software solution , id rather NOT have a laptop involved at present

Currentlty the 3G dongle is plugged into into a tp link router which on paper should have failsafe mechanism , but does not in reality reset itsself they way it should IMHO. ( TP link 3G - TL-MR3420 )

Camera has DDNS to allow it to be found anywhere on internet.

Im currently thinking of adding a GSM Remote Control ( "power" controlled by text message ) system so i can remotely reset everything , in the order it needs reset ( simply applying power at same time to everything means it does not setup properly , camera needs to be started 3 mins after router)

Ok , in theory this should work , although to be fair in theory the MR3420 should be working although it aint

So i need an unbreakable 3G connection and thats my solution , whats your ideas , or is there a product out there i have missed that looks to provide this unbreakable 3G mobile connection.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No such animal.

and thats

I think 'reboot by mobile phone' option is as good as it gets.

I assume there's no chance of a land phoneline?

You MIGHT be able to do something with a more intelligent system in the field - something linuxish that could reboot all or part of itself if e.g. a ping fails.

i.e replace the TPLink with a low power computer with the dongle pugged in.

I have also found that router based DDNS is not always reliable: running a DDNS client under cron on a linux box works better,

TP link is not the best router in the stable either.

>

[Andrew Gabriel]

What about a digital timeswitch which turns the router off for 1 minute in every 24 hours, to power cycle/reset it?

[Dave Liquorice]

KISS. 24hr time switch that kills the power for a minute in the wee small hours. Power feed to camera through a delay on time switch.

You can probably find both in one module width units that will fit in a small CU.

[Dave Liquorice]

Great minds. B-)

Depends if the camera gets upset (or will if it just happens to notice) by the link disappearing for that minute plus reboot plus reconnect time. I get the impression that it's the dongle that is falling over rather than the router. I guess the dongle is powered from the router though.

I wonder if this camera is located on a ski slope? Had a similar request earlier in the week but this one appears to have mains power.

[Londoncalling]

Its for monitoring animal behavior , if i can come up with robust location i will need to install in 10 sites hundreds of miles apart. Im not making money from this project just covering costs.

I have access to mains power at all locations but no access to any internet/cat5 at any locations , that would have made it too easy !

[Londoncalling]

note that should have read , "robust solution" , not "location" :-)

[Londoncalling]

Guys im kinda answering my own question here

my interpretation of failsafe in the TP link manual i beleive was wrong , it switches from wan to 3g , and 3g to wan but it does not seem to reboot to restart

it seems those magical keywords im looking for are ...

" 3G router - ping reboot ! "

[The Natural Philosopher]

If that works its the best answer yet!

[Andrew Gabriel]

I don't use 3G very much, but on Vodafone, I find it sometimes connects, and then I can get only a few hops into Vodafone's network before everything is dropped, which is useless of course. Repeatedly dropping and restablishing the PPP session will eventually get me connected to a part of the Vodafone network which can actually get packets to/from the Internet. It used to work much better.

[Dave Liquorice]

For 10 off this seems sensible.

Strikes me as an ideal project a Raspberry Pi. Small, cheap, low power, USB and ethernet on board. Quick google shows several means of getting a

3G USB dongle to work.

[The Natural Philosopher]

still needs a case/PSU

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

Loads available, you can even build one in Lego which it fits surprisingly well.

[Martin Brown]

An entirely different approach to the problem why not have the system reboot itself periodically say just after midnight and use two timers one for the router and another for the camera (or custom electronics). A neater solution would be to monitor traffic and have a watchdog timer that counts down to zero and is reset whenever an image is transferred.

[Dave Liquorice]

Case can be a plastic project box for a couple of quid. PSU is a bog standard USB thing again for just a few quid.

[Dave Liquorice]

That's assuming that a simple warm start will reset the dongle when it has locked up. From what the OP says I get the impression that the dongle requires a power cycle to get it going again.

Having said that having the box shut itself down properly then kill it's power might be better than just yanking the power via a time switch.

[Owain]

Does the connection have to be unbreakable / does the monitoring have to be live?

IP cameras (which I presume you're using) with local storage on an SD card could do batch uploads of images to a server when a connection is available.

You may still need to reboot the router/dongle but at least your recording would be continuous.

Owain

[Steve Firth]

The problem seems to be the router rather than the 3g dongle. I have a similar setup for a remote farmhouse providing 24/7 internet connection. In the "advanced" router set up control panel it is possible to select "dial on demand' options to drop the 3g connection when there is no traffic and to redial on demand.

I don't have the problem that you have been experiencing, the conection stays up for months on end.

I also don't like TP-link products, so I may be prejudiced against them, I use a Digicom router at the moment because it was the only one on offer locally. It's not that good and I would have preferred to use a Draytek 2920 which is far better IMO. Vigor capability, robustness and security features are generally better than other makers.

[Dave Liquorice]

So how do you tell the router to "dial on demand" from the internet so you can download an image?

I guess the OP could set things up such that the latest image gets FTP'd somewhere on the net every so often thus forceing the dial on demand but that could use up the data allowance for images that aren't required. A ping somewhere remote would also bring the link up but sods law says that the link will be down when you want and image and will have to wait for the regular ping to bring it up...

[tony sayer]

Very good those Draytek's they are. I wonder if it might be the high contention ratio such 3 G systems have. Take the average 3G site and the area of which it covers say in suburban areas a mile radius.

Now think of the possible number of subs in that area all loading the site?..

I've yet to hear of anyone who's used a 3G system for net connections of anything like the stability and thruput of a half decent wired connection..