tasmota-bridge

Internet watchdog for an Airtel ONT that drops its session and needs a power-cycle to recover. The OpenWRT router checks reachability every minute, and when the WAN is genuinely down it tells a Sonoff SV running Tasmota to cut and restore mains power to the ONT.

   ┌────────┐    pppoe    ┌──────────────┐   LAN    ┌─────────────┐
   │ Airtel │ ──────────► │ TP-Link      │ ───────► │ Tasmota     │
   │  ONT   │             │ OpenWRT      │   HTTP   │ Sonoff SV   │
   │ (mains)│ ◄─────┐     │ 10.20.30.1   │          │ 10.20.30.15 │
   └────────┘       │     │              │          └──────┬──────┘
       ▲            │     │ ont-watchdog │                 │ relay
       │            └─────┤   cron       │                 │
       └─── mains ────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────┘

The watchdog only acts after several consecutive failures, won't toggle again until a cooldown elapses, doubles that cooldown per attempt within the hour, caps attempts per hour, and refuses to toggle when Tasmota itself is unreachable.

Quick start

# 1. Adjust config.env if anything moved
$EDITOR config.env

# 2. Deploy: pushes scripts, applies Tasmota settings, installs cron, verifies
./deploy.sh

deploy.sh is idempotent — run it any time config.env or any script changes.

Files

Path	Purpose
config.env	Single source of truth: hosts, timings, thresholds.
deploy.sh	Push everything to router + Tasmota, then run verify.sh.
verify.sh	End-to-end health check. Run standalone any time.
router/ont-watchdog.sh	The cron script that lives at /root/ on the OpenWRT box.
tasmota/apply-config.sh	One-shot HTTP calls to harden Tasmota settings.
AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md	Contract for AI agents working in this repo.
changelog/	Running record of changes (open changelog/index.html).

Common operations

# Tail watchdog activity on the router
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'logread -e ont-watchdog -f'

# See current watchdog state
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'cat /tmp/ont-watchdog.state'

# Force a power cycle right now (bypasses cooldown — for testing)
curl 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Power%20Off' && sleep 15 \
  && curl 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Power%20On'

# Reset state (clears fail count, cooldown, attempt counter)
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'rm -f /tmp/ont-watchdog.state'

Why each knob exists

• CONSECUTIVE_FAILS_REQUIRED=3 — a single ping failure shouldn't trigger a power cycle. Three minutes of sustained failure should.
• POWER_OFF_SECONDS=15 — long enough for ONT capacitors to drain; short enough that you notice if you're watching.
• BASE_COOLDOWN=300, doubling per attempt up to MAX_COOLDOWN=1800 — ONT GPON/DSL sync can take 2–5 min. If the first cycle didn't fix it, the second probably won't fix it faster, so wait longer.
• ATTEMPTS_PER_HOUR_CAP=4 — past four power cycles in an hour, the problem is upstream. Stop poking the box.

The Tasmota hardening

tasmota/apply-config.sh sets:

• SetOption65 1 — disable Tasmota's "rapid power-cycle = factory reset" feature. The relay clicking can self-trigger this and wipe the WiFi credentials.
• PowerOnState 1 — on Tasmota reboot, relay goes ON. Prevents the deadlock where a mid-cycle Tasmota crash leaves the ONT powered off forever.
• Sleep 0 — keep WiFi awake; the unit is at ~-80 dBm. (SleepMode doesn't exist in this firmware build.)
• WifiConfig 4 — smart reconnect.

Debugging

Where to look first

# Complete read-only snapshot: relay, cron, state, and durable recent events
./status.sh

# Recent watchdog decisions (last 30 lines) — start here for any "did it act?" question
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'logread -e ont-watchdog | tail -30'

# Live tail (Ctrl-C to exit)
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'logread -e ont-watchdog -f'

# Was cron even firing? Should show one line per minute.
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'logread | grep "ont-watchdog.sh" | tail -10'

# Current runtime state on the router
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'cat /tmp/ont-watchdog.state'

# Durable, event-only history (bounded to about 128 KiB including rotations)
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'tail -30 /root/ont-watchdog-events.log'

# Active config the router is using (rendered by last deploy)
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'cat /etc/ont-watchdog.conf'

Tasmota inspection

# Full status snapshot (all the JSON you'll ever want)
curl -s 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Status%200' | python3 -m json.tool

# Did Tasmota recently reboot? (BootCount climbing = a problem)
curl -s 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Status%201' | python3 -m json.tool \
  | grep -E 'Boot|Restart|Uptime|Save'

# WiFi signal & link state
curl -s 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Status%205' | python3 -m json.tool

# Current relay state
curl -s 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Power'

# Web UI: http://10.20.30.15  (Console tab shows live serial-style log)
# Direct log endpoint: http://10.20.30.15/lg

Reading the watchdog log

Each cron run produces zero or more ont-watchdog: lines tagged via logger. Patterns to recognise:

Log line	Meaning
(no line at all)	WAN was UP and fail_count was already 0 — nothing to log.
WAN recovered after N fail(s)	Was failing, just came back. Counter cleared.
WAN DOWN (fail=N/3)	Failure detected; not yet at the action threshold.
cooldown active, Xs remaining (attempt #N this hour)	Action threshold met but we already cycled recently. Working as intended.
rate-limit reached (N/h); standing down	Four cycles already in this hour. Likely an ISP outage; we stop poking.
Tasmota at IP unreachable; skipping toggle	Watchdog refused to toggle because Tasmota wouldn't respond. No deadlock.
power-cycling ONT via Tasmota ...	About to flip the relay.
power cycle complete; next attempt allowed in Xs	Done. State updated, cooldown armed.
runtime state missing; restored ... persistent backup	/tmp was cleared; action cooldown/backoff was safely restored.

State file format

/tmp/ont-watchdog.state is a shell-sourced file:

fail_count=2            # consecutive minute-runs that have failed since last success
last_action=1715690000  # unix ts of last power-cycle (0 = never)
attempt_count=1         # power-cycles inside the current 1-hour window
attempt_window_start=...# unix ts when this rolling-hour window opened

It is recreated after router reboot because /tmp is tmpfs. After every completed power cycle, the cooldown and hourly-attempt fields are also backed up to /root/ont-watchdog.action-state. This prevents a lost runtime state from bypassing backoff and causing an early repeat cycle.

To deliberately reset all watchdog state, remove both files:

ssh root@10.20.30.1 'rm -f /tmp/ont-watchdog.state /root/ont-watchdog.action-state'

Symptom → check

Symptom	First check
Internet is down, watchdog never acted	logread -e ont-watchdog — is it logging WAN DOWN? If not, the ping targets are reachable somehow (DNS-only failure?).
Watchdog acted but ONT didn't come back	Status 1 on Tasmota — did the relay actually flip? Check ONT mains LED.
ONT got toggled multiple times in quick succession	Check ./status.sh; it shows both the tmpfs state and persistent action backup.
Tasmota offline / unpingable	ping 10.20.30.15. If down, check the AP. RSSI -83 dBm is borderline — relocating helps more than software.
Tasmota BootCount climbing	The Tasmota itself is rebooting (power glitch from relay or weak WiFi). SetOption65 1 already protects WiFi creds, but the reboots themselves want a closer AP.
Cron not firing at all	`ps
./deploy.sh fails on scp	macOS scp needs -O against OpenWRT/dropbear (already set in deploy.sh).
./deploy.sh fails on Tasmota apply with timeout	Expected on first deploy if Sleep/WifiConfig need changing — the device drops WiFi for ~30s. The script waits and verifies. Re-runs are idempotent and silent.

Forcing scenarios for testing

# Manually power-cycle the ONT right now (bypasses all watchdog logic)
curl 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Power%20Off' && sleep 15 \
  && curl 'http://10.20.30.15/cm?cmnd=Power%20On'

# Reset watchdog state — clears fail count, cooldown, hourly attempt count
ssh root@10.20.30.1 'rm -f /tmp/ont-watchdog.state /root/ont-watchdog.action-state'

# Dry-run the watchdog once (without waiting for cron)
ssh root@10.20.30.1 '/root/ont-watchdog.sh'

# Simulate WAN-down + Tasmota-unreachable safely (no real toggle).
# Repeats `CONSECUTIVE_FAILS_REQUIRED` runs against blackholed targets, then
# restores real config. See deploy.sh history / commit log for the exact form.
ssh root@10.20.30.1 '
  cp /etc/ont-watchdog.conf /tmp/conf.bak
  printf "PING_TARGETS=\"192.0.2.1\"\nTASMOTA_IP=\"192.0.2.42\"\n" >> /etc/ont-watchdog.conf
  rm -f /tmp/ont-watchdog.state /root/ont-watchdog.action-state
  for i in 1 2 3; do /root/ont-watchdog.sh; done
  logread -e ont-watchdog | tail -5
  mv /tmp/conf.bak /etc/ont-watchdog.conf
  rm -f /tmp/ont-watchdog.state /root/ont-watchdog.action-state
'

Log retention

OpenWRT's logread is a 64 KiB ring buffer in RAM. It is overwritten as it fills and wiped by reboot; it is not persisted or traditionally rotated to disk. The watchdog now keeps its own durable, event-only audit log at /root/ont-watchdog-events.log, rotated at 32 KiB with three previous generations retained (about 128 KiB maximum). It records outage starts, power-cycle actions, recovery, and runtime-state restoration—not every cron run—so it remains useful without continuous flash writes.