ACP Web Utility for Controlling Observatory Power Strip over the Internet

[Robert Capon]

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:

[[From inside the local area network|http://192.xxx.xxx.xxx]]

[[From outside the network over the Internet|http://observatoryname.my-sky.com:nnn]]

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.

Best,

Rob

Attachment 4899

[Dick Berg]

Hi Rob, Neato! Did you know that you can test which address (LAN or WAN) your connection comes from? With that information you can then direct the correct type of command to give the power switch. I do this for myself for looking at the observatory webcam. If I'm remote from somewhere else on Earth, it uses the my-sky form of the request; if I'm on the LAN, is uses the ....192 form. I don't have the code in hand right now, but I'll post it here when I get home later this afternoon. This code, a little more complicated than what you devised, would all go in the tiddler. Then you only need ONE "click here" instead of two.

[Robert Capon]

Hi Dick:

That's a neat variation. When you post the code, I'll give it a try. Yes, the power strip utility is the same idea as using a web cam. One can imagine situations where you might like to access these resources over the Internet, and the my-sky solution gives you a great platform for doing so!

Best,

Rob

[Jeff Lewis]

There is an ASCOM driver for the Digital Loggers Switch that greatly simplifies controlling the power strip in ACP. If interested I can post the code I wrote for using the driver.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Robert Capon]

Jeff-

That would be great. Could you also describe the advantages of using the ASCOM driver? As I understand it, if you use the driver you no longer need the ECP2.exe program. Is that correct?

At present, I have the switch working with my startup and shutdown scripts, so I'm in the mode "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But I'd definitely like to learn more.

Thanks,

Rob

[Jeff Lewis]

I will post the code tonight when I get home. As to advantages, no ECP2 program, no need for network port forwarding ( up side is you don't expose your power control directly to the internet), allows for reading outlet state data (on/off), provides discovery ( read the names of your outlets and the number of outlets). It is more reliable, since you don't have to rely on the successful running of another program. You can easily write code to monitor the state of individual outlets and me notified if something goes offline. Less support code, easier to maintain, you can actually handle exceptions should they be thrown, with ECP2 you have little information on what might have gone wrong.
Easily incorporated in to user actions, for example I power up my mirror cover and close it before dark frames, open afterward and then power off again. Faster running, more responsive weather safety scripts, you can verify that anything that gets turned off or on is actually off or on. If using scheduler startup and shutdown scripts are much much cleaner,. I could go on but you get the idea, anytime you can remove an external run process from the equation the better.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Dick Berg]

Hi Rob,

Here's my tiddler for a webcam interface. It's the REMOTE_ADDR and SERVER_NAME variable that reads the "source" location. So I have three paths through the code. One is for the NAT (192...), the second for the local observatory, and the third for the my-sky route. You will get the idea and modify your own code appropriately:

<html>
<div align="left">
<% if(Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR").substr(0 , 3) == "192") { %>
   <iframe src="http://192.168.1.194:port/img/snapshot.cgi?size=2&quality=1" frameborder="0"
      width="340" height="260"></iframe>
<% } else if(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME").substr(0 , 5) == "local") { %>
   <iframe src="http://192.168.1.194:port/img/snapshot.cgi?size=2&quality=1" frameborder="0"
      width="340" height="260"></iframe>
<% } else { %>
   <iframe src="http://ObservatoryId.my-sky.com:port/img/snapshot.cgi?size=2&quality=1" frameborder="0"
      width="340" height="260"></iframe>
<% } %>
</div>
</html>
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[Robert Capon]

Dick-

Thanks for posting the code.

best,

Rob

[Bob Denny]

Wouldn't you know it... Chris Rowland (one of the ASCOM developers and the father of the Switch interface standard) released this thing just weeks after I worked with you on your start/shut script??? I'm going to change the sample scripts for Scheduler 3.7 to show using the driver.

[Bob Denny]

Very helpful!! I noted that 'port' appears in place of a numerical port number. I assume that is to keep people from knowing how to get to your camera, ha ha.