Perhaps related: Battery required to keep my FreedomBox running - #3 by hfelton
In the past two days my FreedomBox Pioneer Edition has become inaccessible twice (no local access, no ssh, ping did not work). To get it back online, both times I unplugged my FreedomBox, let the battery power run out, and then plugged it back in. (I was too lazy to open the box to manually to unplug the battery, and I was unsure how to use the hardware reboot/shutdown buttons.)