ISY99

[Guy669]

Hi everybody,

A month or so ago I installed my ELK M1 system. I programmed rules and they work great. I also have an ISY99 installed with some lighting rules and they also work great. I encountered a few speed bumps I don't know how to solve for now.

1. I have rules programmed in my ELK to call my cell when certain criteria's are met. Im having issue adding emails to my rules. Can ELK notify me by phone & email/text?

2. I tried to have emails set up with the ISY99 but also having issues yet when I hit the test button I get the email. Did I miss something?

3. I downloaded the eKeypad pro app on my Iphone. I can control my insteon light but only from home. If I leave my house I cant operate them. What is the issue.

Did I do something wrong with the IP address? Not sure if it helps but my internet provider is Videotron.

 

[apostolakisl]

1) In short, yes. However, Elk does not support SSL email and this is likely where you are having issue. Can't say for sure not knowing anything more. But you probably are going to need a non-ssl email provider which gmail and the other common free ones are not.
2) So you get the email when you hit test but not when initiated from a program? Check your ISY program summary page and see if the program that you expected to send an email actually ran and whether it ran true or false. Could be your program never ran because you set your "if" up wrong or it ran false instead of true of vice versa, again because of an error in your "if" logic.
3) I don't have ekeypad (I have Android). Odds are you don't have your IP set properly. I would assume ekeypad runs over port 2601 (Elk's secure port). So you need to forward that port to Elk. You would also need to setup ekeypad with your router's WAN IP address.

 

[wuench]

You can also try to use stunnel to encrypt your elk email and send it to an SSL email provider like gmail. Stunnel will need to run on an outside server, I have mine running on my DDWRT router.

 

[Guy669]

Thank you trying to assist me. By going to my home computer start menu and ran dos and typed "ipconfig" I was able to find different IP address. Today I tried using the Ekeypad Pro app from a distance and again was not successful. I don’t understand what I'm doing wrong. The error message I get when loading the app is “Please verify that a working network connection is available and the network address setting is correct".

What confuses me is that if I run the app from home all works well, but when i away from my home I could not make a connection. I am experiencing the same issue when trying to access the ELK M1 from the eKeypad Pro app.

Any suggestions how to solve for this? What should I looks at, where can I find the information I need to solve my issue.

 

[wuench]

You have to do several things to get Ekeypad working remotely. You can't use the internal ip address of the elk when you are not on your network. The instructions for setting up remote access can be found here...
http://blog.ekeypad....-remote-access/

But in short you need to:

1.) Setup Dynamic DNS on your router (DynDNS.org) is a common provider.
2.) Setup port forwarding on your router to forward TCP port 2601 to the Elk
3.) Configure EKeypad with the DNS name from step 1.)
4.) Open ElkRP, Select Globals, G29-G42 Special, Make sure all the "Serial Port 0 Transmit Options" are checked

 

[apostolakisl]

I think you need a primer on IP networks, which is a bit more than can be done here.

But basically
1) Your IP address that you see when you do "ipconfig" on your computer is a local address on your local area network (LAN). This is not your address from outside of your network. This address system is determined by your router and can be changed by you. LAN addresses are almost always 192.168.xxx.xxx .. . most routers default to 192.168.1.xxx. It is like an room number in a company building. You can use your company "mail boy" to deliver stuff inside your company with just this address. But you can't drop a letter in a US post box with that address and expect it to arrive.
2) Your external address is unique to you and is on what is called the wide area network (WAN). This is like the address of your company building .. . .123 Main St, Your city, Your State, USA. This address is not controlled by you, it is provided to you by your ISP. Unless you pay extra for a static IP, this number may change from time to time. Companies like dyndns.com provide services to keep track of any changes. They allow you to have a url (name like joeblow.dyndns.biz) that then gets delivered to whatever your current IP address. You can find your WAN address by looking at the status screen on your router or just googling "what is my ip"

When you are outside your home network, you need to address first to your home network, then you need your home network to use its internal "mail boy" to forward the traffic to the correct "office". This is where ports are used. Ports are like someones name at your office. Port 2601 is the port used by Elk for secure traffic. So when you are outside of your network, you set your communications to go to your WAN IP address, and include the port number. The "mail boy" (your router) has a directory. It sees port 2601 and knows that is "Mr Elk" and that Mr. Elk is in a certain room (LAN IP address).

Your job is to create the directory. You need to go into Elk setup and give Elk a permanent address. By default it uses DHCP which is a dynamic system whereby your router assigns Elk a local address, but it is not necessarily permanent. If you restart your Elk or your router, the address could change. This is fine for most computers, because most things don't receive unsolicited "mail" from outside the network. But you are using ekeypad to send unsolicited requests to Elk so it needs a permanent home office. So go into your Elk xep setup and give it a permanent address. This address needs to be in the range of your router subnet. . (192.168.1.xxx). It also needs to be outside of your DHCP address pool so you don't get something else assigned the same address. This info will be in your router setup. Usually routers default to using 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.150. So pick something else, like 192.168.1.10.

Then you need to tell your router that anything that shows up for 2601 (Elk), needs to delivered to 192.168.1.10. This is called a port forward. Port forward is setup in your router.

 

[Guy669]

Is dyndns.com the same thing as owing my own domain?

 

[wuench]

Not quite, dyndns is a Dynamic DNS service that will assign a name to your router's IP. It is only needed if you have a dynamic IP on your router. If you have a static IP that doesn't change then you can just use that and if you have your own domain you can assign a name to that static IP.

 

[Guy669]

How can I know for sure if I have a static IP address? Do I get the info by running ipconfg/all? I searched on google "what's my IP address" as per the above note but I'm not sure if its static

 

[apostolakisl]

How can I know for sure if I have a static IP address? Do I get the info by running ipconfg/all? I searched on google "what's my IP address" as per the above note but I'm not sure if its static

You would know it if you had it. 99.9% you don't. It costs extra and is pretty much only part of "business" type offerings. There is nothing you are going to type into your computer that will tell you. It would be on your statement from your ISP. But trust me, you don't even need to look. . . you don't have it.

dyndns.com owns the domain, they are providing you with a sub-domain. It is under their domain. "joeblow.dyndns.biz". You notice the joeblow part would be you, the dyndns.biz directs the traffic to them and then they re-direct to you. You can pay extra and get your own domain "joeblow.com" and still use dyndns to keep track of your ip so that it always get pointed to your current ip (assuming you don't have a static ip). In that case, "joeblow.com" points to dyndns.com's ip address and then they redirect it. There is no need for you to do that.

 

[tmbrown97]

If this is getting beyond your comfort level, you might be able to get someone who's a little better with computers and networking to give a hand. I'd even be willing to help remotely if you need it.

 

[wuench]

To determine your public IP open a browser to http://whatismyip.com. To determine if you have a dynamic or static IP, just look at that page, then reboot your router and check that page again. If the ip address changed, it is not static it is dynamic.

 

[apostolakisl]

To determine your public IP open a browser to http://whatismyip.com. To determine if you have a dynamic or static IP, just look at that page, then reboot your router and check that page again. If the ip address changed, it is not static it is dynamic.

This really won't work. Most ISP's assign the same address to the same modem/gateway/whatever they call it over and over again through reboots of any and every part of the stuff in your house (modem/routers/computers). Some ISP's will hold an address constant for a year or more, others will change it every few weeks. I used to have road runner and in 4 years I think it might have changed 2 or 3 times.

Currently I have u-verse. They installed it and for a month the ip stayed the same. But then they had some issues with the signal and swapped out my gateway. That changed the ip. Then they changed it out again a day later, it changed again. It would appear that with u-verse, the router they use assigns and holds your ip based on the mac address of the gateway. For all I know this is the same as road runner, but in 4 years I never changed it so I wouldn't know.

 

[wuench]

Well, I guess we should say it might work. Some ISP's work that way and some don't. It's not absolutely a way to tell if it doesn't change, but if you do see it change then you know it is dynamic and you need DynDNS.

Really if you didn't pay for a static you should assume you don't have one. And setting up a DynDNS account should work even if it is static.

 

[Guy669]

You have to do several things to get Ekeypad working remotely. You can't use the internal ip address of the elk when you are not on your network. The instructions for setting up remote access can be found here...
http://blog.ekeypad....-remote-access/

But in short you need to:

1.) Setup Dynamic DNS on your router (DynDNS.org) is a common provider.
2.) Setup port forwarding on your router to forward TCP port 2601 to the Elk
3.) Configure EKeypad with the DNS name from step 1.)
4.) Open ElkRP, Select Globals, G29-G42 Special, Make sure all the "Serial Port 0 Transmit Options" are checked

First let me say thank you for everyone's help. I opened a DynDns.org account. Hope I choose the right option. I selected the 30$ per year subscription.


Now I've being trying to set up the above but no succeeds. First my DNS tells me my delegations are not done. Looked at the explanations and how to solve that not very user friendly. Maybe I'm stupid but I really don't get it. Tried multiple times.

The above step are ok for me to follow exept 1 and 3. Anybody willing to make it more simple for me please. I tried to set it up again this evening but no success. All works fine with WiFi but not from a distance. Please help. I feel lost and not sure how to solve this now