UbiSwitch not passing data between two cameras

BotBlox Hardware
1

– Copied from a customer email –

I have a botblox ubiswitch and I’m having some issues with it. Occasionally when I go to power the switch on it will not pass data between sources. In the picture shown below you can see from the LEDs that the switch has power and the two cameras attached to it also have power but what you don’t see are the LEDs indicating the switch sees traffic on the ports the cameras are connected to. In fact, the single board computer we have on the other end of the switch does not see that anything is connected over the switch interface.

I tried disconnecting the cameras and power cycling the switch but the behavior does not seem to change. This same setup used to work fine, then became an intermittent issue, and now I can’t get any communication. Does anyone have any idea on why I am seeing this behavior?

2

Could you help me first by answering the following questions.

  1. You have a single UbiSwitch along with two industrial cameras. Is there anything else on the network?

  2. How are you powering UbiSwitch (benchtop power supply, battery, etc)? If you’re using a benchtop power supply, what is the voltage setting and current limit you are using?

  3. You mention that the LEDs on the switch indicate they are seeing traffic from the cameras. Can you just confirm what color these LEDs are, and are they solid or flashing?

  4. You mentioned this setup used to work fine. Has anything changed between then and now?

  5. When you have this issue, does power cycling the switch solve the problem?

  6. Can you confirm that both cameras are on different IP addresses? In a similar vein, does the single board computer (SBC) see anything when only one camera is connected to the switch.

  7. How do you check that your SBC is seeing the other devices on the switch? Are you using a ping test?

It is strange that your setup used to work, and now does not. Some initial networks may cause a network to not work, but it’s odd that it would suddenly stop working. Usually that implies some change in the overall network topology, or some kind of hardware damage.

Once you get back to me with your questions, I’ll be able to diagnose further.

3

Thank you -

  1. You have a single UbiSwitch along with two industrial cameras. Is there anything else on the network?

Just the two cameras, a power source, and the single board computer.

  1. How are you powering UbiSwitch (benchtop power supply, battery, etc)? If you’re using a benchtop power supply, what is the voltage setting and current limit you are using?

It gets its power from a mauch power cube v3 providing 12V and is rated for continuous current of 10A, short bursts up to 15A, and cutoff at 20A.

  1. You mention that the LEDs on the switch indicate they are seeing traffic from the cameras. Can you just confirm what color these LEDs are, and are they solid or flashing?

When I was able to get traffic to flow then the corresponding port LED would show a solid reddish color. You can see from the picture that the cameras are plugged into ports 1 and 2 but no LEDs are active for those ports on the ubiswitch.

  1. You mentioned this setup used to work fine. Has anything changed between then and now?

Not really. I moved labs but all the hardware/setup is the same.

  1. When you have this issue, does power cycling the switch solve the problem?

That’s what I was doing when the issue was intermittent but it doesn’t appear to be working anymore.

  1. Can you confirm that both cameras are on different IP addresses? In a similar vein, does the single board computer (SBC) see anything when only one camera is connected to the switch.

Yes, both cameras have different IP addresses. If I remove the switch then I can see and talk to each camera (individually of course).

  1. How do you check that your SBC is seeing the other devices on the switch? Are you using a ping test?

I do a ping test and then send an ifconfig command to check that the interface is active, which it isn’t.

4

Thanks for the information. Given what you’ve said, it would appear that the issue is related to the physical side of things. This is in contrast to it being a network level issue, for example, some IP addressing issue or even something higher.

This also seems to fit with what you described, where it previously was working fine but now isn’t after moving labs (higher level network issues can’t be solved physically).

I also note you mention that the LEDs are red, and I can just about make this out in the photo you sent. Can you confirm that they are red and not yellow. Red means that the connection to the camera is a 100Mbps connection, whereas orange means it is a 1Gbps connection. I am going to assume that your cameras are 1Gbps (please let me know if not).

All of this points to a potential cabling issue. Are you able to try a different cable and port on UbiSwitch and see if the same issue occurs? Also can you confirm you are using the cables supplied with the board?

5

In the first photo I sent they are not fully lit up. I’m not sure what that slight red light is. This shows up when things are NOT working but its lit up on a port that has nothing connected to it and its no where near as bright as it should be as if things were working. If fact, if I see that light, I know the switch is not going to work.

I did finally get the switch to work a single time today and the picture is below. Those LEDs could very well be orange and not red. Its hard to tell but you can see the intensity of the LEDs vs the first photo.

Considering it only worked one time I’m assuming it was not the cables causing this issue. I tried to power cycle after it did work to see if it would continue to work but no such luck. I can also tell you that I am using the cables that came with the switch.

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6

Thanks for the information, very helpful.

So, firstly, orange LEDs when it is working means that you are seeing 1000Mbps connections, this is good.

The dim red light briefly illuminates every time UbiSwitch is powered on. This is expected and normal behaviour. The video below shows how this looks (ignore the fact that the board is blue, it is the same UbiSwitch board).

Therefore, I believe there are two potential reasons for this behaviour.

  1. A power supply issue
  • Check the voltage being supplied to UbiSwitch with a Multimeter
  • Check the cable is securely attached, sometimes a bad cable connection can cause intermittency
  • Can you use a benchtop power supply as a test to check whether the issue is related to the power supply. This also means you can measure the current, which is another useful debugging step.
  1. A damaged UbiSwitch module
  • If none of the above solve the issue, it would appear that the UbiSwitch is damaged. Can you think of anything that could have caused this if so.
7

Sorry for the delay. The Mauch power supply I use has three 12V outputs. I moved the connector to one of the other outputs and things seem to be working… I powered it on and off several times and it continues to work. I then moved it back to the “bad” output and, as expected, it stopped working so I think we can say we found the issue.

Probably should have tried that before reaching out but I appreciate your patience!

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No worries, glad you found the issue.