Balok

Thanks. My brother got your email, and we made the change. It's working now. For anyone else: I had the port for both http: and https: set to the same value. The ISY allows this, but it does not work. Choose two different values. (I changed them from the default values for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that my ISP wants extra money if you host a website, so they block incoming traffic on 80 and 443 unless you have a "business" account.)

Hi. My brother runs Mobilinc on an Android phone. He cannot connect to my ISY-994i using my wireless LAN. He can still connect using via the Internet, so his credentials are okay. The local IP address is correct, as is the port number (which is not the http:// default of 80, but the http:// port configured on the phone and via the ISY admin console match). I am running firmware v4.2.30 on my ISY. At one time he was able to connect. I advised him to contact the Mobilinc manufacturer, but I thought I'd see if anyone else here had used the Mobilinc software and experienced this problem. If so, how did you solve it? Thanks.

EDIT: Never mind. Apparently what goes in Enter URL is "https://octet1.octet2.octet3.octet4:port".Note the "s" for secure. That's what finally found it. I assumed, incorrectly, that because the Administrative console and the ISY were both behind the firewall/router that it would use "http:".

My brother's Android phone using Mobilinc developed a problem connecting over the WiFi (it has done so successfully in the past, but that app seems... unreliable). In an attempt to fix it, I changed the local port from 80 to another number in the phone and the ISY-994i - you try things to see if one of them will work. This was apparently a Very Bad Idea, as now I cannot now get the Admin console to work. As far as I can tell the ISY is working (I'd have to wait until a timed event actually occurs later today to be sure), but clicking the Admin console icon brings up the ISY Finder, which has no entries in its list. I tried disconnecting the power to the ISY, no dice. I tried Refresh several times. I tried Add and then typing the URL (which I verified by checking my router's configuration page). I tried it with just the four octets (in my case, 192.168.1.16) and with the four octets, a colon, and the port number (as you'd do in a web browser). All it tells me is "Invalid URL". I'm not sure what goes in "Enter URL" if it's not an IP address. Has anyone else make this mistake, and do you know how to fix it?

This is the solution I eventually implemented. Because of the router I chose, DynDNS was my only choice, but their service has been working well for me so far. It costs around $25/year, or you can buy a multi-year deal at a discount. However, it is not the only choice. Many DNS services make available a small program. This program resides on some machine, somewhere (it could be the Raspberry PI you mentioned, but doesn't have to be). Periodically, it checks the IP assigned to your router by your ISP, and when it detects a change, it signals the DNS service, which updates the relevant records. You can read more about the DynDNS solution here; other vendors offer similar solutions. Ideally, this machine runs often or continuously, but most ISPs do not change the IP assigned to you very often - every few days is typical. By default HTTPS traffic is on, I think, port 443. Some ISPs do not want you hosting webpages (for this discussion the ISY is a webserver), so they block traffic on that port. However, you can change that port using the ISY console (Configuration Tab, Network Settings Box, Https Port item). There are threads on this elsewhere on this site. Many routers support Universal Plug N Play; if yours does, then the ISY can automatically set up port forwarding, and will do so when you selecting File -> Enable Internet Access from the Console. Otherwise you will need to consult your router's manual for how to set up port forwarding manually. If you use a port other than 443, then you need to include it in your URL, like this: https:// : - you follow the URL with a colon, and then the port number you chose. To minimize the chance of collisions, chose a port number between 2000 and 65530 (it is a 16-bit integer, but I think some of the ones at the top might have dedicated uses, and most of the ones < 2000 do).

As an added (although admittedly weak) security measure, I recommend keeping the server name you choose when you subscribe to the dynamic DNS service and the port numbers you assign to yourself. In short, there's nothing about your access that needs to be public. The ISY uses secure sockets and if you select your username and password wisely, you're unlikely to be hacked. But I still prefer to keep things to myself.

Yeah, mine seems to but it looks like it is only a client for DynDNS.com (that specific service). It's not the newest router and it may not have the newest firmware; I have a support ticket open asking some questions.

I saw that the domain names expire every month if you pick the free option. That's better than the four day or so leases my IP seems willing to grant, but only by degree... It sounds like you use a paid version of the service. Do you leave a computer on always to handle the updates? Or did you dedicate a low power computer to that task?

The cert configuration is not in the Admin console. It's found in the dashboard. http://isy.universal-devices.com/994i/4.1.2/dashboard.jnlp I believe enrolling for certs is supported in the base version but not the enhanced encryption. Thank you.

Has anyone had a particularly good, or bad, experience? It seems that many people provide this service and it looks like basic capability is around $20 - $30 per year. The free services all seem to have various limitations, such as expiring domain names. The router I use supports DynDNS.com, only (i.e. the domain name is selectable from a dropdown and that's the only entry in it). But other services have small programs that can run on a networked computer.

This only works in the PRO version, correct? I'm not seeing the same interface in my Admin console. I have an ISY-994, but it is not PRO.

Something to try: some ISPs do not allow residential users to serve webpages. They enforce this by blocking inbound traffic on ports 80 (http:) and 443 (https:). Have you tried changing to another port? To avoid colliding with other applications, choose a number greater than 2000; the maximum allowed port number is 65536 (it's an unsigned two byte quantity).

This was apparently the issue; thanks for the tip. If there is a way to disable this disagreeable behavior in my router, I can't find it. UD might consider warning people about this in their documentation. Not everyone is a network guru.

I can try that tomorrow; I'd have to leave the house with a laptop to do it. That was a typo. I was using https://xx.xx.xx.xx:port. My understanding is that specifying a port number in the address overrides the default for the protocol regardless of the protocol (http: or https:).

I'm clearly not understanding something. I'm using an ISY-994. I 'Enabled Internet Access' from the File menu. I checked my router's UPnP page and sure enough, the local IP address assigned to the ISY had an entry for the port, 443. Should sending my browser to http://octet1.octet2.octet3.octet4/ have produced some kind of display? All I get is that my browser can't establish a connection. The octets are those of my external IP address, assigned automatically by my ISP. Not the internal address assigned to the ISY by my router, which begins with 192.168 My ISP does not permit residential users to host webservers. Therefore it occurred to me that they might block inbound traffic on port 443. So, using the ISY's administrative console, I changed the port number to one that was greater than 2000. I checked the UPnP again and the new port was listed. Then I tried browsing to the same external address, this time with :port_number on the end (substituting the correct port number, of course). I do understand that my ISP could reassign my IP address and that this is what dynamic DNS services help fix. But before I get into that, I figured I'd at least see if it was possible to see the device over the Internet. I did find a security manual, and since I'm not an internet security expert it was useless to me. As written, it presupposes a thorough understanding of Internet security rules. If I need to understand that to make your product work, shouldn't you help by writing a more detailed manual? I must say that the lack of step by step instructions (or, at least, the lack of easily discoverable instructions) in the Wiki and manuals disappointed me. There seems to be no clear set of instructions along the lines of "do this... see this... do this... see this" in the Wiki or the manuals. Quite frustrating for a novice. I like the ISY. It's easy to program and it makes using my INSTEON devices a snap compared to manual linking. But one feature I also wanted was control when I was away from home. What I have read tells me this can be done. But the documentation isn't helpful.