david chan's blog

It has been an obssession of mine to reboot routers on a routine basis.  I’m not sure why I do it, but it makes me believe that the router is kept “fresh” and will continue to perform optimally.  Maybe I am just used to running Windows (where you will need to reboot the machine every once in a while).

Anyways, I wrote hacked together a simple AppleScript (note: this is my first AppleScript ever written) which simulates menu clicks in the AirPort Utility to restart my Time Capsule.  The script doesn’t choose which Apple wireless device to restart, as I only have one – the Time Capsule.  If you want to use the script and you have multiple wireless base stations (eg. an AirPort Express), you may have to modify the script to choose which one to manipulate.

Here is the simple AppleScript:

tell application "AirPort Utility"
	activate
end tell
 
tell application "System Events"
	delay 10
	click menu item "Manual Setup" of menu "Base Station" of menu bar 1 of process "AirPort Utility"
	delay 5
	click menu item 6 of menu "Base Station" of menu bar 1 of process "AirPort Utility"
	delay 5
	click menu item "Close" of menu "File" of menu bar 1 of process "AirPort Utility"
end tell

With this script saved, I scheduled it to run automatically every week. Of course you can use cron and set this script as a scheduled job, but why do that when you can use iCal?  Here’s a thousand words on how to set the script to run automatically:

You may never have a need to restart your Time Capsule automatically, but if you do, this should give you a starting point on how to go about doing that.