Network showing 4G today, Diags indicate HaLow is fine?

My network icon is showing 4G while the rover’s out mowing. Yet:

  • No numbers are changing under Cellular, all zeroes
  • Data Center Connection 3 (Local HaLow)
  • HaLow Connection true, Signal -41 (or whatever, always > -70)

I’m not sure the network icon always reflects reality. Ignoring for now, may try a hard power cycle of everything after the rover’s done its work.

Anyone else? Is this new (or, rather, more prevalent) with the latest firmware? Or is there something in the diags I didn’t spot? (I’m still learning those.)

1 Like

That happened to me yesterday, the day after I got the new firmware. I ended up bouncing the DC to fix it.

1 Like

This has been a recurring issue for the last few firmwares at least. If your cellular data usage doesn’t increase at the end of the day, it is most likely a visual glitch.

1 Like

Wrinkle: My fiber connection may have been shaky, it’s down now 'til at least Monday noon. Won’t be able to do anything with this for now. Could explain why Bluestacks wasn’t talking to the rover.

Stand by.

1 Like

Should’ve went with the lucky charms for breakfast instead of the fiber.

Yes your internet being down would explain the 4G and DC connection status mode 3 (local HaLow). By the way, it’s normal for it to flip back and forth periodically between 2 and 3 now, so I just assumed you snapped the screenshot during that flip.

2 Likes

Fiber tech is on his way…a day early?

Can someone tell me exactly what that network circle icon represents? I assumed how the rover is talking to the Data Center. But it may be how your phone is talking to the rover. I’m beginning to think it’s an overloaded icon and shows either when it wants.

1 Like

That icon just like the GPS icon is an enigma of ambiguity. In this instance it is how your rover is connected to the internet so that you can connect to the rover. I see your gps icon is grey. Assuming that is just from not waiting long enough as you should be good to go in local HaLow mode even with the internet to the data center being offline.

3 Likes

Well, THAT’S better, now my fibre’s been fixed.

(Yeah, I hadn’t waited long enough for GPS earlier.)

The street end of the fibre was plugged into a port with a poor signal, so they moved it to a better port. And we’re back – showing HaLow. Bluestacks works, phone with Bluetooth turned on or off works.

Great. But not so fast…

A. I still don’t know what that network icon is telling me. If it tells me BT when my phone’s doing BT to it, then that’s a phone-to-rover thing. Now that it tells me HaLow, that’s a…well, is it how the Data Center and rover are talking, or is how the phone (and Bluestacks) are talking over WiFi to the Data Center and to HaLow?

B. The symptoms that showed up as a result of my fibre feed from the street being flaky and then dead seemed inconsistent. My WYZE cameras could still be seen by Bluestacks, but not so the rover in the App unless I turned on Cell (and presumably rover WiFi) in the App. If the Data Center doesn’t “need” Internet, why didn’t everything behave like the WYZE cameras? And my Chromecasts? Well, when the fibre finally went dead, nothing was really talking to anything else because Fidium’s router took a vacation, so I’ll write this off as “bad network do bad things.”

Not sure there’s much else to discuss on this one 'til next time, other than nailing down what that network circle does for sure and get it documented in the Wiki for me to look up when I forget for the third time.

1 Like

If you have somewhat of a working Internet connection things won’t full fail to local is my assumption. It will still try to go out to the internet.

2 Likes

Thanks for your question! The network icon may reflect two scenarios:

  1. When you’re connected to the rover via Bluetooth, the icon will indicate the Bluetooth connection.
  2. In other cases, it shows how the rover is accessing the network—whether through HaLow, Wi-Fi, or 4G.

Hope this helps clarify things! Let us know if you have more questions.

4 Likes

TY @Yarbo-Forum - I have started a page in the Wiki to capture this and maybe the other features on the Main Page.

4 Likes

should be in comms wiki

Overloading an icon like this leads to confusion. I know this because I’ve done it. It usually doesn’t end well.

2 Likes

I haven’t heard the “overloading an icon” phrase before. :slight_smile: There should a separate Bluetooth connected/disconnected.

1 Like

“Overloading” is a computer coding term. In this scenario it is for that single GUI element meaning two different things. It’s one of the things you refrain from doing unless you’re making it obvious and have really a good reason for it (tight space on the GUI, an OBVIOUS context change, whatever).

If you look at Area settings, they just replaced Route Order’s “Zigzag” with “Area First” and have an Edge Priority Setting that’s also “Area First”. Same term, different meanings. I’ve already fielded a question about that out here in the Forum or on Facebook.

I understand that Yarbo now has a dedicated UX engineer who will be reviewing and improving customer experience, a large part of which is GUI. Hopefully that will include any confusing stuff in the doc or GUI, insufficient contrast in font colors (Work Plan History timestamps), why you have to Exit Edit on maps while in the middle of bouncing around editing things, and so on.

2 Likes

Thanks for detail. Overall the UI is attractive but there a few non-standard and potentially confusing items.

1 Like

Yes, and GUI is one of the tough things about software development because most of it is opinion. There are standards we’ve grown to expect, and there are guidelines and even laws around accessibility, font contrast, font sizes, and so on. You can’t use just color to show the status of something – you must also use shapes or words. And you want a great workflow for new users AND power users.

Don’t forget the Help and Documentation, too…yikes.

Neither easy nor trivial, no.

2 Likes

Got the same thing going on now for the 3rd time in a month. Stuck in 4G. Rebooting the DC has cured it both previous times, but I’m not resetting this time. I opened a ticket and Recorded Issue and noted the time. There was no firmware update near any of my incidents. Halo is stuck at -58db. and Connection: False The Cellular diags haven’t indicated any activity. I’m about 100’ away from the DC. Something is causing Halo to crash.

I just had this happen, but it wasn’t Yarbo. I started seeing 4G in that icon, and Bluestacks stopped talking to the rover at all from my laptop. Everything else around the house was working, though. Hmmm.

I found the cause: My fibre connection had degraded, and the light on the little fibre converter box had gone red but still had blinky green connection lights. So it was barely hanging on, and after rebooting that box the connection was dead.

Once the fibre people fixed the connection, Yarbo was back to HaLow, and the App running on Bluestacks is talking to the rover again.

Understood in your case, but I’m not having any internet issues. Actually been streaming video without issues when this happened.