The Alert Station is your facility's central hub. It is designed for resilience, with cellular failover and internal battery backup. When something looks off, this article will help you diagnose and resolve it quickly.
Base Station is Offline in the dashboard
This is almost always a local network issue. Check the following in order:
- Power: Confirm the Ethernet port is supplying 30W of PoE. Standard Ethernet without PoE will not work.
- DHCP: Confirm the Base Station has a DHCP reservation for a consistent IP address.
- Port 443: Network traffic must be allowed over Port 443 via TLS 1.2.
- Domain whitelist: Confirm punchrescue.com, rescuealert.io, and particle.io are whitelisted.
If the above requirements are confirmed and the Base Station is still offline, use the following steps to isolate whether the issue is with your internal network or the device itself.
Try a different Ethernet port
Connect the Base Station to a different Ethernet port you know to be active and PoE-capable at 30W. If the Base Station comes online on the new port, the original port is the issue — contact your IT team to investigate it.
Move it outdoors temporarily
Unplug the Base Station and bring it outside the building. This removes your internal network from the equation entirely. If the Base Station comes online outdoors, the issue is with your internal network configuration — a firewall rule, a blocked domain, or a port restriction — rather than the device itself. Bring your IT team back to the network requirements above.
Power cycle the device
If moving the device outdoors is not practical, perform a full power cycle. Unplug the Ethernet cable and allow the device to fully power down — this can take up to 8 hours as the internal battery drains completely. Once the device is fully off, plug it back in and give it a few minutes to reconnect. A full power cycle clears any temporary state that may be preventing the device from coming online.
Base Station alarm won't stop
If alarms continue after the emergency has been resolved, the Base Station likely missed the reset signal due to a brief network interruption. Go to Devices > gear icon on the Base Station > Test Alert section > Reset Alert.
Base Station is showing "Non Ethernet"
If you have confirmed no changes or disruptions have been made to your Ethernet connection, reset your Base Station: go to Devices > gear icon on the Base Station > click the green Reset Device button.
Configuring alarm behavior
From the Alert Station's device settings panel in the dashboard, administrators can adjust:
- Alert volume — sliding scale from low to high
- Sound duration — how many seconds the audible alarm plays (1–60 seconds)
- Light duration — how long strobe lights flash (1–10,800 seconds)
Always click Save after making any changes before closing the panel.
Multiple Alert Stations
If your facility has more than one Alert Station, each appears separately on the Devices page and can be configured independently. Test Mode can be activated per device or organization-wide from the Test Mode sidebar page.