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[Rob F]

Hi Jmcadsl, that is strange, it does sound like the RTC locks up in some form. I've been playing with mine and added some better troubleshooting code which I'm hoping verifies it's the RTC. Make the following changes to the controller sketch.

Go to line 1235 and you should see the following.

Code:

      Wire1.beginTransmission(80);
      error = Wire1.endTransmission();  
      if (error == 0) {}//Serial.println("found eeprom");   
      else i2cBusRecovery();      

Replace those 4 lines with the following 5 lines.

Code:

     Wire1.beginTransmission(104);
     error = Wire1.endTransmission();  
     if (error == 0) {Serial.println("found RTC");   }
     else if (error == 4) {Serial.println("found RTC but error reading");}
     else {Serial.println("RTC Missing"); i2cBusRecovery();}

With this change every 3 seconds it'll look for the RTC instead of eeprom, if it sees the RTC and no errors it'll print "found RTC" to serial monitor in Arduino IDE. If it finds it but doesn't get proper data it'll say "found RTC but error reading" and finally if it doesn't see the RTC it'll say "RTC missing" and will run the i2cBusRecovery function to try and fix the issue which obviously isn't working for you because the I2C bus is likely ok.

To test this open the serial monitor in Arduino IDE, once controller is running every 3 seconds you should see one of those lines above. I've been monitoring mine and noticed about every 20 to 30 tests it says "found RTC but error reading" but the next reading it'll go back to "found RTC" which is good. I'm wondering if yours will get stuck at "error reading" line which means the I2C bus still sees the RTC but it's not getting good data. If you unplug the RTC from controller you'll see it jumps to "RTC missing" and you'll get an email saying "I2C Recovery Ran". Plug it back in and it should go back to "found RTC" at least that's how its reacting for me.

Here's a change to make so you only get one email per controller restart, don't want to use up the quota from SMPT2GO so best to add this. 

Find line 2584 and you should see

Code:

void i2cBusRecovery()

just above that line add the following.

Code:

byte i2cEmailSent = 0;

Then find line 2609 and you should see

Code:

 i2cEmail();

replace that with the following.

Code:

 if (i2cEmailSent == 0) {i2cEmail(); i2cEmailSent = 1;}

Now you can upload changes and test it out.