Config Assist Program Routing

[tooms]

Hi,


I would like to make a suggestion though with the Advatek Assistant application, it would awesome if you could manually specify the IP address for the board as well, I ask this because I use a rasberry PI to drive my lights but I have 2 ethernet interfaces on the pi to segregate my home LAN from the lights LAN, I note the controller does accept data from outside it's subnet, but the assistant application cant connect to it unless it's on the same subnet.


Once again, just a suggestion, thanks for a great controller.


Regards,


Daniel

 

[ltay13]

Hi Daniel,


In the more recent version of the Advatek Assistant software it does automatically discover controllers outside the computer's subnet, as you've probably seen. This is designed primarily to help people who haven't configured their computer or controller's IP settings correctly.


It does show an error message and allow the user to remotely reconfigure the controller's network settings (so it's inside the same subnet as the PC), allowing the user to easily recover and connect to the controller.


Technically this discovery protocol could be extended further to allow full configuration from a remote subnet (as opposed to remote network setting only). However - we are unlikely to do this. This is because 99% of the time having the controller in a different subnet is a mistake and can stop the controller receiving the lighting data it needs from the PC. *Your situation is obviously a little different, because you're never sending lighting data off your PC's subnet*


The error message currently shown makes it immediately obvious to the end user that there is an issue with their IP settings somewhere. We've seen support requests in this area drop significantly since adding the remote detection/network settings update so will probably keep it how it is for simplicity.


Thanks for your feedback though!

 

[damona]

I suppose that a lighting network could be on a different network to the work station which is used to configure it.

e.g. Raspberry Pi could be on the same network as the lighting devices, but the person setting up your h/w could be on a different network.

 

[battle79]

Hi Fellow Clappers,


I am having the same issue with my setup. I have my home router at 192.168.0.1, connected to a RasPi3 via wifi on 192.168.0.169. My show network is 192.168.1.xxx, and I have setup a static route for all 192.168.1.xxx traffic to go via 192.168.0.169.


I can get to all devices on the show network with pings and via web interfaces (other brands, don't tell on me ), but the assistant can't find any of the Advatek controllers.


I'm having to lug the laptop out the front and open control boxes each time I need to change a setting. Any ideas on ways to make the software find controllers beyond the RasPi?


Regards,
Rowan

 

[ltay13]

Hi Rowan,


The simplest way would be to make a connection to the wired side of your lighting network directly with a second network card on your PC or with a proper WiFi access point instead of trying to route through the R PI.


If you wish to keep your current route path though, you would probably need to:


1. Allow broadcast traffic to pass through the raspberry Pi and back again. I.E. your PC needs to be able to broadcast to 255.255.255.255 to search for controllers and then get responses back. This would need to get routed through your R Pi. Currently I would guess your R Pi gets the message, ignores it and doesn't pass it onto the rest of the wired LAN side.


2. If you get point 1 working, then assign your PC and controllers to be on the same subnet. Even if there is a static route setup, the Assistant software wouldn't know about that and it will be confused and think you have a configuration problem. You could achieve this by making the subnet mask on your PC and controllers 255.255.254.0 instead of what I would guess is currently 255.255.255.0.