Venstar: Thermostat Identification (How?)

[jeffdoo]

After multiple attempts I finally have all four of our Venstar Thermostats active in Nodelink and ISY.  I cannot explain how I finally got them working as it was lots of adding/removing and restarting Nodelink/ISY.

How do I tell the difference between the four thermostats within ISY?  All four thermostats simply have "Venstar" and "Space Temp" but I don't know which is which.  Sure, there is "ven1-4" but when I am attempting to define a program I cannot tell the difference. 

Is it possible to provide a host name for the devices?  I have my own DNS server locally and would prefer called the isy, venstar, etc. by their host name rather than hard coded IP address.

Thanks!

- Jeff

[io_guy]

Why don't you just rename the stats in the ISY?

No plan to support hostnames for devices.

[jeffdoo]

On 2/25/2018 at 7:56 PM, io_guy said:

Why don't you just rename the stats in the ISY?

Well that would apparently be because I was stupid and didn't think to right click and rename them, sorry for that dumb (yes, dumb) question.

 

No plan to support hostnames for devices.

I have to ask, is this a language or architecture limitation or simply a design decision?  My thermostats are configured for DHCP but the server uses the MAC address and the DNS server to assign the address, to me it's cleaner and I can move things around on the network without too much worry.  Any other software I use I just supply the short (local) host name without the FQDN and things work fine.

   Thanks!

   - Jeff

 

[io_guy]

Design decision purely on me.  NodeLink can do DNS lookup, since "ISY" is an acceptable address for the ISY.  However you'd be shocked by the number of problems local DNS causes on various OS'.  It's not worth the headache.