THE PROBLEM:
Like most people, we have tons of things connected via WiFi to our router. Be it AppleTVs, Rasberry PIs, Amazon Echos, weather stations, overhead airplane trackers, security cameras, etc. etc. etc…. The problem arises when you think and expect a device to “work” and it doesn’t. Is it the device? Is it the service being accessed? VNC server not running? Most of the time “all is well“, but if it isn’t it can be frustrating. Who knew the security camera was down? Why can’t I VNC into that Raspberry PI? Most of us have been there and this project helps solve the problem.
PROBLEM SOLVED:
We had in the ‘warehouse‘ a Raspberry PI Zero (mainly because it was cheap so why not) and a BLINKT (who doesn’t like flashy light things) doing nothing and just waiting for a project. Setting up the gear to monitor our LAN seemed perfect for the pair.
The solution is pretty straight forward: Get the RaspBerry PI Zero on your LAN via WiFi. Plug in the BLINKT module. Every thirty seconds or so send a ping to an IP of a device on your network.
If the device IP ping is good then
– flash the BLINKT green.
If the device IP ping is bad then
– retest the device just to make certain the failure wasn’t an anomaly.
– two failed pings back to back then flash the BLINKT red and log the failure to a Google Drive Sheet.
The rig works perfectly. We can check the Google Drive Sheet or the BLINKT quickly see if anything on the LAN is down. We use IFTTT.com to log the failures to the Google Drive Sheet. We can just as easily use IFTTT.com to send out a text message, post a Tweet, call our phone, or a host of other IFTTT.com supported actions. In short, it is pretty darn useful.
