FrontlineSMS allows you to text message with large groups of people anywhere there is a mobile signal.

Modem and Clickatell both (separately) stop responding at random times

This is my only serious problem with FrontlineSMS and one which makes it useless for unattended operation:

At seemingly random intervals, my modem (Huawei E170) stops sending and/or receiving. Without a constant flow of messages, it's hard to tell when it happens.

I thought that perhaps it was just a funny problem with that model modem, but I haven't seen any other comments to that effect. Furthermore, the same thing happens even to the clickatell interface. Suddenly it will just stop sending. It might simply keep the msg status as Pending, or show an error, and (I'm not sure) may even show the messages as sent. But they are not. (This is without my making any Clickatell account changes, which will also break the HTTPS connection.)

In both cases, if I "disconnect" the device using the phone panel and reconnect it, the messages start flowing again, including backed-up incoming messages.

Any ideas what could be causing this? A workaround, satisfactory in my case, would be to automatically disconnect and reconnect the modem every 10 minutes. Otherwise, I know the system will not keep working for more than some minutes up to an hour or two.

Thanks.

Tags: Clickatell, Huawei, freeze, lockup, modem, reconnect, restart, stop

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mike Blyth on May 16, 2009 at 10:53am

I will check on it.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Blyth on May 23, 2009 at 6:13am

Excluding "c:\program files\FrontlineSMS" from the scope of Avast antivirus does not solve the problem. I'll try excluding "C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\FrontlineSMS" and see if that makes any difference.

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Permalink Reply by kiwanja on May 24, 2009 at 5:13am

Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the help.

No-one else is reporting this problem, so hopefully we can get to the bottom of it for you.

Ken

P.S. Are you on version 1.5.8? If not, it might be worth trying an upgrade. Let me know

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Permalink Reply by Steve on July 31, 2009 at 4:34am

I am also having the same problem. I have an Huawei E160 modem.... it worked great in the shop sent and received a couple of SMS. Now though it just stops sending and receiving after a few minutes. If I start it up again it will send and receive again for a minute or two then stop again. SMS that are backed up don't get downloaded into frontline which makes it pretty useless for me.

would I be better off trying a phone? I was using an LG phone successfully for a week or so and now frontline can no longer connect to it and as far as I can remember I have made no changes to my laptop setup

cheers

steve

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Permalink Reply by Alex Anderson on July 31, 2009 at 5:09am

Hi Steve,

This sounds very strange. Can you send in your logs so that we can take a look? Might be something there to help us troubleshoot.

If the issue is happening on both devices, it may not be a problem with the Huawei itself.

Cheers,

Alex

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Permalink Reply by Steve on July 31, 2009 at 6:33am

Hi

I think it may have something to do with the forms.

I was working fine just with regular SMS until I sent a form which did not appear in Frontline...after that I sent a couple more sms which also did not appear. I then closed frontline and saw that the form and sms were on the Huawei. When I started fontline and sent another form and sms both appeared in frontline but the 'lost' form and sms still remain on the Huawei.

FYI I am using a phone as a client that is not in your supported list but seems to work ok most of the time (lg HB620)... it did work as the server for a few days but now does not.. hence why I bought the Huawei today

I am attaching the logs

thanks for you help

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