Well, I have no clue what is happening - the mill did not disconnect today, Ethernet is working and the jobs I did this evening went off without a hitch. I am looking forward to tomorrow morning to see if there was a disconnect overnight.
The one thing that happened between working and non-working was that I disconnected the Ethernet cable from the gControl and plugged it into the Linux box. Maybe it was a poor connection of the Ethernet cable? But then the Ethernet cable connected to the Linux box did not work? Further tests showed that the now working Ethernet connection still did not work on the Linux box (and I can connect to my in-house network on that box). It is quite possible that something is not configured correctly with the version of gSender that is running on the Linux box.
BTW, when gSender offers the Ethernet port as a possible connection, it does so not because it sees the port but because of it’s configuration. Even with no Ethernet cable connected on the Linux box, it offers a connection to 192.168.5.1
Well, worst case scenario is that I will have a spare controller …
@Jens You should not be using 192.168.5.1. I may have misunderstood you. However, if you are using that ip address in windows, you will have connection issues. As the tech manual sets out, select 192.168.5.5 and try that.
@gwilki I think when @Jens says “it offers a connection to 192.168.5.1”, he means the IP address of the controller, which is fine if he has a direct connection from the computer to the controller.
Good news (hopefully) - the controller did NOT disconnect overnight (yayyy) and I have cancelled the order for the new controller. Time will tell if the issue is fixed (I suppose it’s possible but I am not exactly confident)
The only thing I can guess at is that it was a bad connection on the Ethernet connector at the gControl computer. It is odd though and I am not confident that the problem is fixed. Since the original issue was intermittent, only time will tell.
The thing is, the disconnect always happened when there was no interaction with the gControl. I would have thought that if the connection was wiggled (ie I am typing or moving the computer)a bad connection would have caused problems then and not when the computer was sitting idle overnight.
@Jens Maybe zip tie the cable to the SLB case. Connectors are frequently a week point and reducing strain on them can help. This might be especially important on a machine with lots of movement or vibration.