I am using my Raspberry Pi to check if my Internet connection is still working. If the connection to the Internet fails, my Internet router (Fritzbox) should automatically be restarted. For that I am using a Belkin WeMo Switch which can be controlled from the Raspberry Pi via a Python.
First you need to install Python and the ouimeaux library. I used the directions from this website.
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sudo apt-get install gcc-4.8 gcc-4.8-base python-setuptools python-dev |
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sudo easy_install ouimeaux |
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This takes some time, so be patient.
After the WeMo support for Python has been installed, you can use the “wemo” command e.g. from inside a shell script.
I created the following script and saved it as “/home/pi/checkInternetAccess.sh”:
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#!/bin/bash # Check if Internetaccess is working and restart Fritzbox if this is not the case # MU / 2015-02-23-1656 logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Check Internet access ..." # Trying to reach "google.de" /usr/bin/wget -q --tries=5 --timeout=10 --spider http://google.de if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then # "google.de" was successfully reached logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Internet access OK - Nothing to do ..." else # "google.de" could not be reached. We assume broken Internet connection logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Internet access not working ..." logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Switch off Fritzbox ..." # Clear the device cache python /usr/local/bin/wemo clear >nul # Turn WeMo switch with name "FRITZBOX" off python /usr/local/bin/wemo switch "FRITZBOX" off # Wait for one minute so that the Fritzbox can cool down a bit ;-) sleep 1m # Now turn on the WeMo switch again logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Switch Fritzbox on again ..." python /usr/local/bin/wemo switch "FRITZBOX" on # Wait for 4 minutes (my Fritzbox needs about 3 minutes until it rebootet and reconnected to the Internet) sleep 4m # Now try again if the Internet connections is working ... /usr/bin/wget -q --tries=5 --timeout=20 --spider http://google.de if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Internet access OK again after restart of Fritzbox ..." else logger -t "WEMO FRITZBOX" "Internet access still not working after restart of Fritzbox ..." fi fi [/codesyntax] |
This script is called by cron every 30 minutes. For that I created the following cron entry with “contab -e”:
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# Check Internet access and restart Fritzbox if needed */30 * * * * /home/pi/checkInternetAccess.sh <span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; line-height: 1.5;">[/codesyntax]</span> |
The output via the “logger” command will be written to “/var/log/messages”. So every 30 minutes you should see in that file what the script is doing.
I also activated the Raspberry Pi hardware watchdog so that the Pi will be restarted as well if hangs for some reason.