ACP Web Utility for Controlling Observatory Power Strip over the Internet
Hi Everyone:
Now that my Digital-Loggers power strip is operational, I thought it would be neat to create a little utility to access the power strip through the ACP web browser so that I could log into the PowerStrip over the Internet. The utility provides two ways to log in, through the LAN using the local IP address (192.xxx.xxx.xxx), and over the Internet using http://observatory.my-sky.com:nnn, where nnn is an external port assigned to the power strip and "observatory" is the name of your my-sky observatory. The benefit of using my-sky is that the apparatus is already in place to manage a dynamic IP address through the NoIPDUC application. So if your ISP provider doesn’t assign you a unique IP address, your my-sky account already solves that problem.
This posting provides a screen shot of the utility along with instructions for setting it up.
1) I decided to leave the power strip on the original port. That means that my startup and shutdown scripts can be left alone. The default for the power strip is to listen on port 80. If you change your default port, you have to remember to change your startup and shutdown scripts.
2) When you log into the Digital Loggers web application, go to “Setup”, then “Network” and uncheck the box “Same Subnet Access Only.” You will now want to access the Digital Loggers power strip from any subnet.
3) Remember, if you get hung up and make a change and can no longer log into the power strip, you can push a little button on the left side of the device next to the LCD window, and that will reset the device to factory defaults, but will preserve the name of all of your devices. When you press the reset button, the username and password are restored to the original default, so always remember to reset your username and password, and to match that with the username and password in your Startup and Shutdown scripts.
4) The next step is to set up Port Forwarding in your router. You want to set it up so that the power strip listens on port 80 on the LAN, but listens on another port from the Internet (or WAN). The Digital Logger user’s guide suggests using port 366 (which we’ll call nnn), but you can choose your own port. To set up Port Forwarding, you’ll have to go into your router and play with the settings. On my router, the IP address is the address for the power strip (192.xxx.xxx.xxx). The LAN port, in the example above is 80, and your router might provide for a Start and an End, but you can use the same port for both. The Protocol is TCP. The remote port is where you define the port that the device will listen for on the WAN, nnn. On my router, the Destination Port and the Starting Port were both set to nnn. There was also an opportunity to set the Remote IP address, which I left blank.
5) The next step is to create a new tiddler to set up the utility, which I named “Observatory Power Strip”. Here’s the example:
Click here to access the login for the observatory power strip:
6) If you want to display this utility as a startup item, be sure to add it to the “StartupItems” tiddler.
Below, please find a screen shot of the utility. (You may have to click on it to enlarge it.) With this little utility, you can now access your Digital-Loggers power strip from anywhere in the world.
Rob Capon
(Self-appointed) "Executive Director"
Stillhouse Mountain Observatory
Charlottesville, VA
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