Our broadband Internet router will occasionally drop off the Internet. This is easily solved by power cycling the router. This isn't really a big deal when we're at home but it has happened a few times now when we're away on holiday. Again, not usually a problem but we now have a few, ahem, "smart" plugs for turning lights on/off and some RING cameras - these all stop working.

This device is quite simple.

It utilises an ESP32-C3-Zero development board to connect to WiFi and periodically ping well-known/reliable DNS addresses. When pinging fails for several in a row it will disconnect the 12V power supply to the router for 30s via a relay, wait for it to reconnect and then resume its duties.

Our router is a Netcomm Wireless NF18ACV that runs on 12VDC. The board passes this through to the router via a normally-closed (NC) relay and powers the ESP32 via a 5V regulator.

The Arduino sketch can be programmed to the ESP32 using the Arduino IDE. It is quite customisable - you just need to enter your WiFi AP SSID & password. You can also customise the various timers and ping target IP addresses. Check my Github page for the latest version.

Example video

The status of the Router Rebooter can be checked via a HTTP status page.