Some days my GF will go online. Some days it won’t. Today is one of the days it won’t. I know the standard answer is to unplug everything and run setup again, but it didn’t work last time, and I’m sure not going to do it every time the GF is in a bad mood.
Don’t bother with the standard cut-and-paste answer you normally give when people can’t go online.
Give us a better answer. WHY IS MY MACHINE OFFLINE???
Is it definitely offline, i.e. doesn’t move, click or the button flash, rather than the GFUI just thinking it is offline?
Are you able to access your router to see if thinks it is connected? Perhaps get is IP address and try pinging it?
You can also put it in teal mode and download a log file, which might have some clues.
Nvm, it’s online now. 
So it could have been updating its firmware.
For the curious who want to help track this down, could you give some details about your internet setup?
Things like:
With the variety of setups, it would be helpful to know what environmental/configuration potential gotcha’s are contributing to your (and others) issues.
If you are looking for information on the WiFi congestion in your area, there are several apps for both Android and iPhone that will give you a look at the number of WiFi access points and the channels that are most congested. The one I use is called WiFi Analyzer. You can also get a different app to do a heatmap of the WiFi strength in your house or GF area. While it takes longer, the heatmap will show you where your WiFi signal is weaker. If you have an area where your signal is weak and a neighbor’s is strong and both are on the same channel, this will cause problems with any WiFi device in the area since the stronger signal will cause radio interference.
Just a quick point, I keep seeing mention that it may be updating firmware when it says offline.
If this is the case why on earth do they not have a firmware updating status instead of offline!!!
yeah that’s my suggestion. How about a unique status and blink pattern on the Glowforge itself to tell you it’s updating firmware
Sometimes I wonder if they just really like getting a lot of tickets about the same thing all the time. It’s kinda of the only answer as to why they keep doing it.
Just been trying to get mine going again after yesterdays first print.
But it states Offline, then goes to Calibrating, makes a few noises, then goes back to Offline and just keeps repeating this process with variable time periods! My Asus router is reporting 144Mbps connection so it isn’t weak signal!
You’ll want to open your own case about this so it gets the attention it deserves and won’t sidetrack @christineharris’s ticket.
I just did a reboot of my wifi router, didn’t touch the GF, and it finally allowed me to print!
So if anyone else is having this problem, just try rebooting your wifi, but leave the GF on. Not a long term solution but it may stop some of the wasted time.
What type or router is it? Is it known to need rebooting?
The way routers work, the connecting device gets an IP address on the LAN that is “leased” for some amount of time before it times out and the device must renew the lease. This is intended to keep your router from using up the limited range of IP addresses with reservations for devices that are no longer on the network. But this feature adds complexity that some devices might not handle as gracefully as possible. And router behavior (what it does when a device goes off line and then on line again quickly) is different from router to router. So you could potentially end up with a bad network configuration if the GF is doing something wrong and the router’s response isn’t handling it right. (for example, I’ve got a device someplace on my network that doesn’t always give up it’s IP address when it’s supposed to, and I get warnings about duplicate IP addresses on my LAN).
You probably don’t need to reboot the entire Router if the problem is a messed up LAN configuration. Most Routers have an administration page you can access from your LAN, typically 192.168.1.1, and you ought to be able to disable/enable the wireless from there without having to go through the more lengthy process of a power cycle and cold restart…
I don’t need to be taught to suck eggs!
The router is an Asus dual band and has performed flawlessly for over a year with all manor of devices that I have, lease time is 24 hours. I have TP Link plugs, Alexa, Netatmo Thermostat, Hue Lightbulbs, Harmony remote, Synology NAS that all are quite happy with the router.
There is to my knowledge, and I have searched, no known router issues, so with the GF being ‘new’, I am fairly certain the problem lies with it!
Just because the router has worked flawlessly up until now does not mean it doesn’t have a problem with whatever the GF is doing. But since you can’t fix your GF, if the problem is the router’s handling of the GF “misbehavior” a restart of the wireless on the router will probably do the trick without having to go through an entire router restart.
As for sucking eggs, I see in another thread your statement that you have some technical expertise. I didn’t see that one until after this one. My thinking was that anyone who’s done significant network management has almost certainly had to deal with devices that did not behave well on an otherwise well-running network. Since you didn’t make any representations to this end in your original post, my offering a vague guess about what might be happening and how to deal with it seemed like it might be helpful. Didn’t mean to piss you off.
If I could make a suggestion for next time, be sure to include a disclaimer to the effect that you know what you’re doing and aren’t looking for basic advice maybe…
Sorry. Am just getting frustrated with the interface being so limited.
I have been a programmer since the early 80’s, started out with 6502 assembler. I have developed commercial applications from initial concepts through design, to finished products. This has included custom tcp/ip & udp stacks with a distributed sub sea control system.
Anyway, I have looked through the logs downloaded from my GF and there seems to be a lot of messages referring to incorrect msg/command sequences, of course these could just be debug messages. I have passed this onto support as hopefully with more information they can resolve these issues permanently.
Haven’t seen those before. Can you share an example?
Lots of these in a row:
2018-04-04_15:57:06.96963 (glowforge:618): GStreamer-WARNING **: /bamboo/xml-data/build-dir/FIR-MAS11-JOB1/poky/build/tmp/work/cortexa9hf-vfp-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi/gstreamer1.0/1.4.5-r0/gstreamer-1.4.5/gst/gstpad.c:4655:store_sticky_event:outputselector0:src_0 Sticky event misordering, got ‘segment’ before ‘stream-start’
And the point I think it keeps disconnecting:
2018-04-04_15:58:13.38004 123896 DEBUG: net: websocket interface has address 192.168.0.126
2018-04-04_15:58:13.38009 123898 INFO: settings [13445977]: state=cancelled
2018-04-04_15:58:13.38010 123898 INFO: settings [13445977]: ignoring state “cancelled” on non-existent action
2018-04-04_15:58:13.38011 123902 INFO: settings [13446022]: state=ready
2018-04-04_15:58:26.03280 136560 INFO: WebSocketClient: connection closed
2018-04-04_15:58:26.05046 136563 INFO: net: disconnected
2018-04-04_15:58:26.05050 136563 WARNING: canceling transfer https://app.glowforge.com/api/machines/status
2018-04-04_15:58:26.05050 136564 ERROR: update machine status: url=https://app.glowforge.com/api/machines/status http_code=0, result=42 (Operation was aborted by an application callback)
2018-04-04_15:58:29.03686 139560 INFO: net: requesting socket token
2018-04-04_15:58:40.09949 150626 INFO: socket token request: http_code=200, result=0 (OK)
2018-04-04_15:58:40.12190 150630 INFO: WebSocketClient: connecting to wss://status.glowforge.com:443…
2018-04-04_15:59:29.36783 199892 INFO: WebSocketClient: connection error
2018-04-04_15:59:29.36788 199892 INFO: net: connection error, attempts left: 4
2018-04-04_15:59:32.36896 202893 INFO: WebSocketClient: connecting to wss://status.glowforge.com:443…
2018-04-04_15:59:36.30699 206834 INFO: WebSocketClient: connection established
This one can be ignored. It’s related to a longstanding issue with the camera code. While not pretty, it doesn’t seem to affect operation.
Are there many of the WebSocket connection errors in a row, or just a few scattered over a period of days?
If they are frequent, it may indicate a communication problem between the device and the service.
If they are periodic, like once a day or so, it could just be a random connection drop or indicate the normal expiration of the authentication token. In either case, it will just reestablish the connection and those messages can be considered benign.