WebControl: $35 Web- and email-enabled data acquisition and control

WebControl by CAI Networks is a $35 TCP/IP-based (web) device that I've used for about a year and can recommend.

Provides eight digital (TTL) in, eight TTL out, three general purpose 0-10vdc analog in, eight 1-wire temperature inputs, and a dedicated HIH-xxx humidity sensor input.

One can create rules using Boolean AND/OR logic with the various inputs including TTL-level logic, 0-10vdc analog, temperature, Relative Humidity, and Date+Time and delay timers to control the TTL outputs.

The built-in Real Time clock (RTC) can be kept accurate by Network Time Protocol (NTP).

Supports email notification upon state change.

The WebControl PCB has circuitry for RS-232 and RS-485 I/O that is not populated with ICs and are still unsupported by the firmware. I had a useful conversation with the manufacturer about the potential to support BACnet. They are up against memory constraints in the microcontroller.

I also tested various 1-wire temperature devices for them and based on that they added the more accurate DS18B20 1-wire device than the "econo" DS1822 device which was the only device they previously supported.

http://www.cainetworks.com/manuals/webcont...uide2-03-00.pdf

http://www.cainetworks.com/manuals/webcont...rWebControl.pdf

Find available suppliers through Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Webcontrol-Universal...7812&sr=1-1

Also eBay (currently more expensive. but may include the case which is steel, compact and of good quality)

IMO, quite the bargain at $34.99 + $4.49 shipping to US = $39.48 delivered.

HTH ... Marc

That's awesome, I have been looking at these type of devices. Good price point also, I just ordered two, one for the greenhouse, one for the washer/dryer. For a while I've thought about taking this type of device and assigning one per room in the house - sort of a distributed monitor and control device for all windows/doors/temp/humidity for each room... Fun stuff.

Terry

Very cool device,thanks for sharing!

Very interesting device. Based on your experience, does it work as per its documentation or are there any surprises?

It appears to be a good starting point for a home-brew IP-based thermostat/humidistat. Add one or more 1-Wire temperature sensors, Honeywell humidity sensor, and some relays ... an HA program could use it to control an HVAC system.

123 said:

Very interesting device. Based on your experience, does it work as per its documentation or are there any surprises?

It appears to be a good starting point for a home-brew IP-based thermostat/humidistat. Add one or more 1-Wire temperature sensors, Honeywell humidity sensor, and some relays ... an HA program could use it to control an HVAC system.

Click to expand...

-- When I got the first one, it only supported the DS1822 "Econo" device with its +/- 4F accuracy. They added DS18B20 support which makes the temperature sensors much more useful. (I confess to not being a fan of 1-wire owing in part to getting burned early on in a variety of ways including known bugs that were not acknowledged and devices critical to project design being dropped by Dalsemi.)

-- If you refresh web page too often, too fast ( eg several times a second) it will occasional spit out digital garbage.

-- No < and > support, relying instead on one lower and one upper threshold per input. For analog inputs, this can be mitigated with external hardware such as an OP-amp buffer with differential input, but not for 1-wire temperature. Also for analog input, one can hardwire two or three inputs to one source creating 4 or 6 thresholds for a given input at the cost of fewer number of different inputs.

-- No arithmetic ( eg Temp1 +2 ) so adding deadband and hysteresis is a problem. It does support timers which can help.

But for the price and within its capabilities, it's great. I am using it to replace Elk MM440 Magic Modules and what I've dubbed THOL(Temperature Humidity Occupancy Light) modules. The email function is particularly useful ( Warning: Leak in basement; Reminder: Water filter needs changing; Update: Mail delivered ; Update: Drapery closed; Update: HVAC now using fresh air intake; Update: Router successfully rebooted; etc )

... Marc

How many different emails can you send? Can you have a different email for each input?

ASIHome said:

How many different emails can you send? Can you have a different email for each input?

Click to expand...

What I wrote was confusing, wasn't it ;-)

Only a single constant To:, From: , and Subject: per WebControl device.

But the *message* sent (96 characters max) can be diiferent for each of the eight TTL *outputs*

Each email output can be independently controlled -- one message per TTL output -- with AND-OR logic strings based on timers (momentary delay , date, time) and humidity, temperature and analog thresholds/triggers, or other TTL input status.

In other words, it can send up to eight different messages based on rules, but each message will have the same To:, From: and Subject and only one message per TTL output.

Clear as mud? ... Marc

Can you provide a few examples of URLs that can be used to query the WebControl device and acquire temperature, the state of a digital input, the level of an analog input, and set a digital output?

Can its CGI variables, representing temperature level, digital output state, etc, be used within an email message? In other words, when an event occurs (or a timer expires) can the device email the state of specific inputs and outputs?

Mine arrived today - pretty fast shipping from Cali. to Alabama for under 5 bucks. Sadly I can't play with it for a few days but when I do I'll report back here. I'll be writing a driver for Housebot for it when I do get a little free time.
Terry

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123 said:

Can you provide a few examples of URLs that can be used to query the WebControl device and acquire temperature, the state of a digital input, the level of an analog input, and set a digital output?

Click to expand...

For ON-OFF using browser

1) Make sure that "Web Login Enabled" is disabled and that "Browser Control" is enabled on (eg) TTL1 output setup page.

2) Where xx is address ( default =15 if not dhcp'd)

To turn ON TTL1 'browse' to http://192.168.1.xx/setoutps.cgi?0000W11=TTL1+ON
To turn OFF TTL1 'browse' to http://192.168.1.xx/setoutps.cgi?0000W11=TTL1+OFF

Trying to post instructions on how to use the utility w g e t (one word) values returns a 404 error when I try to preview or submit post. I will add to subsequent post after I figger a way around this forum bug.

123 said:

Can its CGI variables, representing temperature level, digital output state, etc, be used within an email message? In other words, when an event occurs (or a timer expires) can the device email the state of specific inputs and outputs?

Click to expand...

No. The message is specified text up to 96 characters upon change of state. But of course the email message, once received, could in turn
evoke a query to get the information.

HTH ... Marc

hult said:

Trying to post instructions on how to use the utility w g e t (one word) values returns a 404 error when I try to preview or submit post. I will add to subsequent post after I figger a way around this forum bug.

Click to expand...

FIX: type w g e t as one word everywhere below. (Weird, huh ? ;-)

To obtain analog or temperature data you can use w g e t.exe.

1) Windows version here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/w g e t.htm

2) Once w g e t.exe is installed, enter from command line:

w g e t http://192.168.1.xx/gett1.cgi
This returns the value of the temperature t1 ( eg: 21.0 ) in a text file named gett1.cgi in the directory from which w g e t.exe was evoked.

w g e t http://192.168.1.xx/geti1.cgi
This returns the value of TTL-IN ti1 ( eg: 0) in file geti1.cgi

W g e t has oodles of options. Type w g e t --help at the command prompt. Visit its wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W g e t

See page 6 of the manual for more .cgi commands for the WebControl:
http://www.cainetworks.com/manuals/webcont...uide2-03-00.pdf

More information on I/O at http://www.cainetworks.com/products/webcon...ontrol-faq.html

HTH ... Marc

Thanks for the examples.

FWIW, an alternate to "w g e t" is to us XMLHTTP:

123 said:

Thanks for the examples.

FWIW, an alternate to "w g e t" is to us XMLHTTP:

Click to expand...

Another good alternative. Thanks!

It might also be useful to point out that the WebControl has a complete web interface. It is not fancy, but ABIK, all the published device features can be accessed through it including current values of the inputs. No coding of any sort necessary. Just enter the IP address ( default with dhcp disabled is 192.168.1.15) into your browser and click away.

Here's the Status (home) page:





Here's what the Current Input States page looks like:





'Scraping' this page yields: (One way to manually 'scrape' data using only default windoze tools and also capturing the page as viewed 1) Save web page using browser Save As abcd.mht, 2) open saved file with browser, 3) ctrl-A to Select All, 4)ctrl-C to Copy , 5) open new file in notepad, 6) ctrl-V to paste 7) alt-F-A to Save As abcd.txt )



WebControlâ„¢ Current Input States

Board Name: NetDev1

Goto Home

Time = 11/20/2009 13:56:51 Humidity = 42 %

Temperature Sensors
ROM Code Temperature
000022339C22 21.3
0000224B5322 22.5
000000000000 0.0
000000000000 0.0
000000000000 0.0
000000000000 0.0
000000000000 0.0
000000000000 0.0
Digital Inputs
IP STATE
I1 0
I2 0
I3 0
I4 0
I5 0
I6 0
I7 0
I8 0
Analog Inputs
IP Value
A1 0
A2 0
A3 0


Copyright© 2008, 2009 CAI Networks, Inc.


To determine the url to access any given page, all one needs to do is use a web browser to navigate/click to the page of interest using the links from the home page and record the url displayed in the browser.

http://192.168.1.xx/netcfg.cgi
http://192.168.1.xx/ipsstate.cgi
http://192.168.1.xx/opscfg.cgi

To logon with default user = admin password = password, send/browse to:

http:// 192.168.1xx/login.cgi?0000E=admin&0001E=password&Login=Login

HTH ... Marc

With the .cgi pages setup like that, integration with Homeseer using hs.GetURL should be pretty easy. So, who is writing the plugin?

I confess I've only skimmed the documentation but, correct me if I'm wrong, WebControl allows you to create custom web-pages. If this is the case, there is an opportunity to improve the integration between WebControl and an HA application.

The default HTML pages are designed to be viewed by an end-user and not parsed by an application. A custom web-page could generate XML-formatted data as opposed to HTML-formatted data. The resulting XML data would be far easier to parse. Plus an XML parser is more resilient to minor changes in the source-data's formatting.

XMLHTTP can be used to acquire the XML data and then you can easily walk the nodes and extract the individual parameters.

Addendum
OK, it is possible to generate a whole new GUI but it involves generating new firmware and overwriting the old one. The doc describes how to do it but warns that screw-ups will render the device inoperative and void the warranty. For a fee they will restore the device. It sounds daunting and that's unfortunate because a single XML-formatted CGI page, containing the current state of all all parameters, would be very handy. Maybe they can incorporate that feature in a future release of the firmware ...