# BlueROV2 continuously connecting/disconnecting in Cockpit while BlueOS has stable connection **URL:** \ **Category:** BlueROV2\ **Tags:** blueos, bluerov2, cockpit\ **Created:** [September 4, 2026, 7:43am UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548 "2026-09-04T07:43:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gusnobima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gusnobima](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/gusnobima)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2026, 7:43am UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/1 "2026-09-04T07:43:23Z")
Hi, I have been using BlueROV2 for the last 6 months and stored it for 2 months after working perfectly before that. Now I turned it on this week and the connection in Cockpit Lite (web page) was horrible. ROV keeps connecting/disconnecting until eventually the page becomes unresponsive. However, I can still see it being connected and responsive in BlueOS. I have updated the BlueOS and firmware to the newest versions. I checked the tether and did the diagnostic using the diagnostics tool, and it seems to be fine. I checked all the connectors inside the computer as well to see if something has come loose or coroded, but it has not. The LED lights on the Ports 1 and 5 are flashing green and 5V\_OK LED indicator on ethernet Switch shows stable green light. Also: I get the following errors in the notifications: ETHERNET\_AVAILABLE\_FETCH\_FAIL from Ethernet Manager and BACKEND\_OFFLINE from BlueOS Frontend. I am quite new in using the ROV so any advices would be highly appreciated. Update: I just found out that if I go to blueos-avahi.local instead of accessing it through 192.168.2.2, Cockpit seems to work normal, but I still get the ETHERNET\_AVAILABLE\_FETCH\_FAIL and INTERNET\_CHECK\_FAIL. My network speed test also gets interrupted and fails. What is the reason for this? And why does accessing BlueOS in two different ways makes such a difference? ---
**Author:** ![coax1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a4c791/32.png) [@coax1](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/coax1)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2026, 3:49pm UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/2 "2026-09-05T15:49:34Z")
Hi Martina, We have been having problems with disarming and heartbeat loss. With the help of Claude we used Wireshark to capture the actual raw stream from cockpit to ardusub down the tether. There were some steps we had to do which Claude iteratively guided us to to make sure that Wireshark captured all of the cockip output. The bottom line was that this was very diagnostic - we were running the blueROV2 from a cheap 8GB Windows PC. When everything is running smoothly, there should be one of these heartbeats every second, and gap of more than 2.5 seconds will cause Ardusub to disarm and send a heartbeat loss message. On our cheap laptop, the reality was that the cockpit to ardusub heartbeat was very variable, with many \>2.5sec gaps. Running the same test on a Macbook Pro, the heartbeat frequency was very stable, with very little variation, and no gaps \> 2.5 secs. We think the problem is that our Windows laptop is underpowered, perhaps 8 GB of `RAM is the issue. We have ordered a more powerful 32GB laptop and hopefully this will confirm the fix. We would certainly recommend anyone with unforced losses of heartbeat or unforced disarms to look directly at this tether internet traffic the way we did. ---
**Author:** ![rafael.lehmkuhl](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.bluerobotics.com/rafael.lehmkuhl/32/6630_2.png) [@rafael.lehmkuhl](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/rafael.lehmkuhl)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 12:56pm UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/3 "2026-09-07T12:56:33Z")
What @coax1 has commented is indeed something we have seen in other cases. 16GB and a CPU close to an i5 from the last 5 years is more or less a standard configuration that we recommend. We are currently conducting stress tests in Cockpit using a low-end device (J4125/Celeron from 2019 with 8GB) to find the main resource intensive operations and start reducing Cockpit’s footprint, trying to maximize its performance even on more constrained devices. This should start reflecting on cockpit’s codebase in a couple weeks. ---
**Author:** ![gusnobima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gusnobima](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/gusnobima)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 8:10am UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/4 "2026-09-09T08:10:44Z")
Hi both @coax1 and @rafael.lehmkuhl, thanks for your insights! I have been running BlueROV2 on two different laptops (both windows, both 16GB RAM) for the last 6 months and never had an issue like this before. I will definitely look into it more and try to use a computer with more RAM to see if it makes a difference in my case. I am still interested in why using blueos-avahi.local instead of accessing it through 192.168.2.2 makes such a difference? ---
**Author:** ![tony-white](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.bluerobotics.com/tony-white/32/18385_2.png) [@tony-white](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/tony-white)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 4:38pm UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/5 "2026-09-09T16:38:29Z")
Hi @gusnobima - Welcome to the forums! The .local address means that packets could be reaching your vehicle both via the tether interface IP, and if both vehicles are connected to the same WiFi network at the surface, via this WiFi connection as well. Using the IP directly in Cockpit ensures traffic flows only on that interface - perhaps your issue is related to traffic hopping between the routes? RAM limitations are typically not the issue with Cockpit, but the video processing capabilities of the main CPU. Can you share what processor the laptops you’re using have ? Those errors you see in BlueOS are a bit of abuisance, and can be ignored. They just indicate that the browser instance has lost connection to the vehicle - if the system is still starting up when you connect this is common to see. Generally, the standalone version of Cockpit is recommended over the browser based Cockpit lite! It does sound like you may be having connectivity issues- can you install the **tether diagnostic** extension and share a screenshot of its interface once loaded? It communicates with the fathom-x tether modules to indicate the health of the connection they’re making across the twisted pair from the surface to your vehicle. ---
**Author:** ![rafael.lehmkuhl](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.bluerobotics.com/rafael.lehmkuhl/32/6630_2.png) [@rafael.lehmkuhl](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/rafael.lehmkuhl)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2026, 8:09pm UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/6 "2026-09-09T20:09:41Z")
@gusnobima what you can also do that will help with performance is having a single view. By default Cockpit ships with a Sub profile that contains 3 view: the traditional video + virtual-horizon + compass one, a map one, and a third with video + HUDs. All the widgets from those 3 views keep running, even the ones not being shown. To disable their background run you can delete those unused views or click on the “hide” (eye) icon next to the view name in Edit Mode (/menu/edit-mode). If you still want to use multiple views, but you don’t need the Map view, for example, deleting it will already help a lot, since the Map widget is one of the hungriest resource-wise. We are in the process of adding [a new feature](https://github.com/bluerobotics/cockpit/pull/3037) to allow users on constrained machines to still have the views, but have the background widgets to stay unmounted while not being shown. ---
**Author:** ![gusnobima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gusnobima](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/gusnobima)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2026, 2:09pm UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/7 "2026-09-11T14:09:46Z")
Hi @tony-white , the processor we are using is the following: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i5-1145G7 @ 2.60GHz (2.61 GHz). That is our field laptop that we primarily use. I will try with the standalone version of Cockpit, we have just always used the browser base version which worked well before. I will send the screenshots in a day or two once I get my hands on the ROV again. (I did the tether diagnostic before and looked at the example of healthy tether connection - it looked alright, but I did not save the screens). Here are some pics of network tests I did recently that I have been worried about. Sorry for the quality. The download always has this drop at the beginning and always when I do the netrork test I get NETWORK\_SPEED\_TEST\_UPLOAD and NETWORK\_SPEED\_TEST\_DOWNLOAD Failed to do speed test: timeout of 20000ms exceeded. ![1000095714](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/bluerobotics/original/3X/b/1/b1bf46531985f6125397d2af67424de68eb433c0.jpeg) ![1000095680](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/bluerobotics/original/3X/7/d/7d13c5a921aa2c0a06f7bb783226e560e29b3671.jpeg) ![1000096171](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/bluerobotics/original/3X/b/3/b31dba805ffaaa8e83e1ec4551d1d2d4914b090b.jpeg) One different issue, or potentially connected, that I occasionally have is that ROV sometimes does not boot up correctly - 5V\_OK is ON, ports 1 & 5 are OFF and I have no access to BlueOS. This happens maybe every third time and I have to reboot the ROV at least twice to get it to work again. Once the LEDs on ports turn on and flash green, the .local BlueOS works fine. ---
**Author:** ![tony-white](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/discuss.bluerobotics.com/tony-white/32/18385_2.png) [@tony-white](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/tony-white)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2026, 10:22pm UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/8 "2026-09-11T22:22:05Z")
Hi @gusnobima - That processor is new enough that things should be ok? How long and what type of tether are you using? Is it old, and seen much usage? I’m wondering if any moisture could have gotten within the outer jacket of the cable… Are you running a standard Pi 4 in your vehicle? I’ve only seen Pi5 hardware have issues with not starting up ok, due to how sensitive it is to low supply voltage. If a Pi4, has the vehicle ever had a leak before? Finally, can you confirm what BlueOS version you’re using? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![gusnobima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gusnobima](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/gusnobima)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2026, 7:25am UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/9 "2026-09-14T07:25:57Z")
Hi @tony-white , the tether is 300m long and 3-4 years old. However, it has not seen much usage. It’s been mostly used in the last 6 months (before that it was stored for around 2 years). We are running a standard Pi 4, and from what we know, there was never a leak. We are using the 1.4.5 BlueOS version - I did the update a week ago. The only issue we had before this was with the camera 3 months ago, where the fault in it was causing connection issues, so we replaced it and everything worked well afterwards. The camera was sent to us with the ROV due to some issues with that specific batch. Here are the tether diagnostic results I promised: ![Skärmbild 2026-09-14 105809](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/bluerobotics/original/3X/6/f/6fba2eed956ddd182b365d57e355b818aa86c7fa.png) ![Skärmbild 2026-09-14 105838](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/uploads/bluerobotics/original/3X/b/b/bb9d962f9fa84a506441da09ddc3ffe531373677.png) ---
**Author:** ![gusnobima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@gusnobima](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/u/gusnobima)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2026, 9:18am UTC](https://discuss.bluerobotics.com/t/bluerov2-continuously-connecting-disconnecting-in-cockpit-while-blueos-has-stable-connection/23548/10 "2026-09-14T09:18:45Z")
Hi @tony-white, I just tried connecting my laptop and ROV on the same WiFi network and that seemed to solve the problem with connecting/disconnecting from Cockpit! Both .local and IP adresses work good now. 🙂 It looks like the traffic hopping was the issue here. Thanks for all the info and help with this! That is one problem less for me.