USB modem as repeater requiring frequent restarts

My current setup consists of 1 PR55-17A connected to a PC and 4 additional PR55-17A units spread out within a building acting as repeaters.

I have found that after about 2 hours, these repeaters stop functioning and require a power cycle to start communicating again. I also used XCTU’s networking mode to see if the connected modem could find the repeaters after this ~2 hour mark, which it did not. Once power cycled, they are seen again in XCTU’s network scan and once closed I start node-red to start capturing data. But after about 2ish hours they are not found and node-red isn’t capturing any sensor data relayed by those repeaters.

Do note that the sensor nodes close enough to the connected modem that don’t rely on the repeaters are getting data captured in node-red.

Another observation I found is that if repeater is relaying data and I start up XCTU and then do a network scan, that seems to “break” that repeater even early than the 2 hour window and I have to power cycle it. But it only seems to “break” it when I do a network scan after it has already relayed some sensor data. If I get it scanned before any data relay, it appears to function that roughly 2 hours before I don’t see data anymore. It’s hard to pin down a fixed pattern for the issue I am seeing.

The settings I modified for the Xbee module include PL (TX power level), ID (Network ID), and EE (Encryption Key). Other values were left as is from NCD’s assigned values.

Hi,
in order to work as repeater these should be powered over USB not 12V.

Thanks

@Bhaskar If that is the case, what is the purpose of the 12v power input?

I have been attempting to replicate this in my testing environment using a PR55-17A USB gateway connected to a PC and then using a PR55-17B as a repeater and it is connected to 12v power input and hasn’t had any issues. It is a different model (I didn’t have any extra PR55-17A units), but I am just a little confused why the 12v power input is even on the USB PR55-17A model if it shouldn’t be used for repeater functionality and wouldn’t be used for connecting to the PC via USB.

It was originally meant to power the unit, but the FTDI has a quirk — if it’s not powered, it puts the radio into sleep/reset mode. I’m not exactly sure why it takes a few hours to recover. Most people power the device through USB anyway, so we kind of pushed this issue to the back burner.

If you need to power these with 12V, we’ll need to make a modification.