Cisco Room kit goes offline until there's motion in the room.

[SFeinstein]

I've been trying to solve this problem for a really long time. I don't think it's ever worked.

The Cisco Room Kit will after about 15 minutes go offline, be inaccessible on the network until someone walks into the room with it. Then it wakes up and is fine as long as there's someone there. After 15 minutes it'll fall offline again. When it does wake up, it seems to be booting like it was off. The touch panel shows that it's unable to see the codec.

I've had the device replaced on an RMA, spent hours with TAC sending all sorts of logs. And they haven't been helpful. The logs just stop at 15 minutes.

It's not plugged into a timed or switched outlet or anything like that, and there are other identical configurations in the same building which don't have this problem.

Everything seems to be pointing to a configuration problem, since the hardware was replaced. So, I factory reset it and configured it from scratch and the problem is still happening.

We're using Webex if that makes a difference. It's driving me nuts that nothing I've tried seems to change this behavior. And it blew my mind that a hardware swap didn't even fix it.

Attached a copy of the config with identifying details redacted.  

[Ashish Patel]

https://roomos.cisco.com/xapi/Status.Standby.State/?search=standby
Could be that your device has some weird setting to go into standby at the 15 mins but this isn't normal. Can you reset that standby value perhaps?

[SFeinstein]

The device doesn't just go into standby, it goes into some kind of deep sleep, drops off the network, the touch panel which is plugged directly into it shows that it can't connect to the codec.   It can be woken by waving to the camera.  And the system doesn't just wake up, it boots as if it was off.  When checked, the logs show that it was just booted, and not just woken up.

This is a replacement device so unless I got two defective devices it doesn't seem like it could be the hardware. The device has been factory reset, and then added back into Webex.  Other than for network settings the configuration wasn't changed.  I said 15 minutes in my previous post, that was an estimate, and as the configuration shows it's 10 minutes, which is close enough to what I thought it was. 

Here's the config for standby, they all seem to be set to the Cisco default:

xconfiguration Standby
*c xConfiguration Standby BootAction: DefaultCameraPosition
*c xConfiguration Standby Control: On
*c xConfiguration Standby Delay: 10
*c xConfiguration Standby Halfwake Mode: Auto
*c xConfiguration Standby Signage Audio: Off
*c xConfiguration Standby Signage Mode: Off
*c xConfiguration Standby Signage RefreshInterval: 0
*c xConfiguration Standby Signage Url: ""
*c xConfiguration Standby StandbyAction: PrivacyPosition
*c xConfiguration Standby WakeupAction: RestoreCameraPosition
*c xConfiguration Standby WakeupAtMeetingStart: Auto
*c xConfiguration Standby WakeupOnMotionDetection: On
** end

OK

[zrobertbrown · Accepted solution]

I'm having the EXACT same problems with 7 out of 28 recently installed Cisco Room Kits. It's always the same units, under the same circumstances as you have detailed. Nothing we have done has helped.

The only other commonalities among our devices is that hey are on different floors, but in the same area of the floor (Section "A"). I know that's kind of an odd thing, and unlikely to have anything to of with it, but is is what it is.

The other thing I noticed this morning, is that all the serial numbers have the same first 9 characters. Of course, there are others with that same serial number sequence and are fine, so far, but the only units that are acting exactly as @SFeinstein described are those 7 with that same serial number sequence. Aside from two older units, no others without that same sequence are acting up.

I hope my rant is clear.

[SFeinstein]

I finally figured out what was happening.  It's obvious and simple in hindsight, but one out of the six outlets on the wall behind the display used for this system was switched by an unlabeled motion sensor.  So, it looked like it was waking up because of that, but in fact it was waking up because the power to the codec was restored. 

The power was restored when I walked into the room, so to me it looked like the device was sleeping, but it was just booting, and by the time I got to waving, it was just booted far enough to light the light by the camera.  

[zrobertbrown]

Thank you, @SFeinstein. Your solution worked for me, too.
You said you were waving your hand in front of the device. I would walk in, see the indicator pulsing, and tap the Touch10 or Navigator, thinking that was causing it to come back up, when it was coming back because I entered the room.
I had no idea these rooms had receptacles that were on a motion sensor! It was an annoying problem made worse when one of my colleagues said, "Oh, yeah! I forgot about that! I had that happen to me" when I told him!
Once again, Thank you for your help!