Posted: January 02 2003 at 22:02 | IP Logged

Ron,

Once connected to the internet via your dial-up, you should be able get your current IP a couple of different ways.  The way I prefer is to open up a command prompt and type 'ipconfig' and press enter.  This should give you your current IP configuration. 

Now the problem that you'll have is how to access PowerHome remotely since you'll get a different IP each time you dial-up.  Im not sure how you're going to be handling your dial-up connection.  You might be planning to have PowerHome connect to the internet at preset times or perhaps you're planning on just staying connected continuously.  There are a number of dynamic IP services such as TZO.COM and DYNDNS.COM which will post your dynamic IP for automatically.  PowerHome also provides a system variable named [DIALUPIP] which contains the your current dialup IP address.  If you are having PowerHome dialup to the internet at preset times for you, you could have PowerHome send you an email with the [DIALUPIP] in the body each time you connect.  Most dial-up accounts also provide a user with a small amount of space for their own web pages.  These webpages are usually accessed by a URL of something like: http://www.yourisp.com/~username or something similar.  I haven't actually looked, but I would be surprised if there aren't any freeware utilities that will automatically upload your current IP to your personal webpage for you.

Having dial-up and a dynamic IP does not make home automation the easiest to do, but it can be done.  When I had dial-up, my ISP charged for connect time so I could not stay connected constantly and had PowerHome dial at preset times and email the IP to me.  I even played with TZO.COM and it worked quite well, but was an extra cost nicety.  I'll do a little more research and post back with what I find.

Dave.

Posted: January 03 2003 at 00:34 | IP Logged

I also found a program that may do the trick...

color=#0000cc http://www.algenta.com/software/winip/

Tony

Posted: January 03 2003 at 03:20 | IP Logged

Hi Dave/Tony

Thanks to BT (British Telecom) - I cannot get broadband (ASDL) as I live more than 5.5km from my local telephone exchange! This means I am stuck with dial-up at present!

My ISP does provide free web space, and I am familiar with using it (years ago I uploaded some test websites via FTP etc)

Could you possibly provide me with exact details as to how I can get my IP address emailed to me automatically when I connect? I like the sound of that to try.

One thing worries me though - I found out my IP address yesterday in testing (when I was connected to the internet) but when I typed it in the browser, I never managed to display the PowerHome page (it timed out). I had PowerHome set in 'allow guest' mode. Each time I tried this, it was as if the browser could not resolve/connect to the dynamic IP address...

Related question - with dial-up, should I start PowerHome (and hence the web server) before I connect to the internet, or after? Or does it not make a difference.

I will also investigate Tony's suggestion (next post)

My main concern though, is that I found my IP address when connected to the internet, but the browser could not connect successfully to the PowerHome web page (that I saw when using 127.0.0.1)

Are there any settings I am missing?

Thanks for your help

Ron

Posted: January 03 2003 at 16:14 | IP Logged

SUCCESS!

I downloaded WINIP (thanks for suggesting it Tony - it works a treat!) and after registering etc, can now access my PowerHome web server/web page via dynamic IP using a static 'hostname' (I set one up at ods.org). The icing on the cake was that all this stuff (WINIP etc) is Free!

I am seriously pleased!

Thanks again to you both for responding so quickly to my original post

Dave: because of the above, I don't really need help with how to get PowerHome to email me my IP address automatically - but if you have the information to hand I would like to have it anyway.

I'm sure I'll have some more questions for you soon - but from what I have seen of the PowerHome software so far, I reckon it will be a definite purchase in the near future :-)

Thanks

Ron

Posted: January 03 2003 at 22:26 | IP Logged

Glad I could help! There is also a site that lists dozens of dynamic DNS services...  www.technopagan.org/dynamic

Tony

Posted: January 05 2003 at 19:19 | IP Logged

Ron,

Glad it worked for you.  Concerning your earlier post...you should start PowerHome first and then have PowerHome launch the web connection.  Otherwise the [DIALUPIP] system var won't have the correct IP.  If you're using a third party dynamic IP service, then it should'nt matter.

Concerning emailing your IP.  What I had done was created a macro which first connected to the internet, and then sent an email.  The body of the email contained the [DIALUPIP] system var.  I then created timed events which would launch the macro several times a day rather than stay connected as my ISP at the time charged me for connect time.  It's been a while since I've had dialup, but the macro outlined below should be pretty close.

10 Set System [DIALUPUSER]  "yourdialupusername"
20 Set System [DIALUPPASSWORD] "yourdialuppassword"
30 Dialup Connect Wait   "Your Dialup Connection"
40 Set System [EMAILNAME]  "yourname@yourisp.com"
50 Set System [EMAILSUBJECT]  "Current Dialup IP"
60 Send Email    "The IP is: [DIALUPIP]"

When using the dialup control from within PowerHome, you must still provide your username and password even if it is saved within your connection.  On line 30 with the dialup connect command, use Wait so that the rest of the macro will wait until the connection is established.  The "Your Dialup Connection" should be the exact name of the dialup connection that you've previously defined within Windows.  The rest should be self-explanatory.

I also want to thank Tony for taking the time to find the free dynamic IP service .  I'll be sure and bookmark it for later reference.

Thanks,

Dave.

Posted: January 05 2003 at 19:38 | IP Logged

No prob guys. I looked into it becasue my current ISP is going under, and, I'm ending up with a dynamic IP from Earthlink myself!  I'll try WINIP, then, if it ends up being too big of a hassle, I can pop for the extra $15/month for a static IP.

Tony

Posted: January 20 2003 at 08:48 | IP Logged

Well, WinIP does work fine! So much for the down side of a dynamic IP!

I'll be trying to find out if WinIP can auto-start, though (you have to hit the Start button when it launches). If not, I'll add another sendkeys call to hit the button, but, that sometimes does not work. Dave, any pointers here?

Tony

Posted: January 20 2003 at 09:55 | IP Logged

Tony,

I haven't had a chance to look at the WinIP program yet so do not know if it is capable of autostarting or not.  From Ron's message, it would appear that it is not capable.

I've had very good luck with the Send Keys functions to control other applications.  Sometimes it takes a little while to find just the right key combination to do what I want...a lot of {tab}, {downarrow}, and {rightarrow} when the application does not have a hot key .  This is the way I have to setup my webcam, since the software does not store the tuner channel on my ATI card and always defaults to channel 2.  Now in a cold startup situation...I never know which app is going to start first or how long it will take to be stable, so what I have done in PowerHome is have the STARTUP macro create a timed event for 1 minute in the future to launch a different macro which then goes through all the contortions of getting my webcam set to the proper channel.

Ron,

That is an interesting way to do your control...I had never dreamed that anyone would not run their automation PC continuously.  Is their a particular reason why?

Just curious,

Dave.

Posted: January 20 2003 at 13:42 | IP Logged

Ron,

It wasn't Tony, it was me asking.

Towards the end of your post is exactly what I was going to suggest.  Basically rename your STARTUP macro to something else and call the new macro whenever you want to connect.  Use the SC2800 to send an on or off command to an address different from the module controlling your PC (you wouldn't even have to have an actual device at that address).  Then create a trigger on incoming X-10 for that new address.  The action for that trigger would be to run the new dialup macro.  This way, you could leave PowerHome running.  If there was ever a condition or problem where PowerHome was "locked up", you could still use the SC2800 to power-off and back on the PowerHome PC.  Then when you wanted to have PowerHome connect to the internet, dialup the SC2800 and send the on or off command to the bogus X-10 address.  The PowerHome trigger will see the command and execute the dialup macro.  You can then disconnect while you are online, or create another trigger to watch say the "Off" command for the previous bogus address and that action will call the disconnect macro.

If any of the above is not clear or you need help, just let me know.

Dave.

Posted: January 20 2003 at 18:03 | IP Logged

Dave,

I did what you described - it works!! Now I can leave my PC/PowerHome always on. Excellent!

I already have a macro created to drop the dialup - so I'll just call that from the web server page.

Once the web server is up and running, I can use my Psion 5mx (with the Opera web browser) to view the PowerHome web server page, and control my X10s. Handy if I'm not at my desk at work, or at a customer site.

Psion 5mx: http://www.series5mx.com/welcome.html

Opera: http://www.opera.com/

I can see me spending many hours playing with Macro and Trigger combinations - lots of possibilities!

Thanks for the advice

Ron

Posted: January 20 2003 at 19:45 | IP Logged

Dave,

My experience has been that, sometimes, sendkeys does not work correctly, and worse, can crash (or just hang) PH. I'll have to pay attention and relay anything repeatable that I can find.

The latest scenario I have is starting my web server that does not auto start. I fire off a sendkeys call five minutes after the system should have rebooted in the morning (good old Win98). It never starts the server, but, triggering that same macro later works.

As an aside, my "dynamic" IP has been the same for 52 hours now!

Tony

Posted: January 20 2003 at 20:12 | IP Logged

Whoops... WinIP can be auto-started!

Tony

Posted: January 21 2003 at 09:22 | IP Logged

Ron,

Glad I could help.  Let me know of any other questions or problems.

Dave.

Posted: January 21 2003 at 09:34 | IP Logged

Tony,

Glad that WinIP can be auto-started .  That should solve a lot of problems.

Concerning send keys...Wow!! Please let me know if you can come up with anything repeatable.  Im not certain why it would not work on startup, yet will work when you manually trigger the macro.  One thing that I have found and can't explain why, is that I have better luck with the Send Keys and the Switch to App function if I do while PowerHome is the current application and full screen.  This was true with my web cam software.  I have PowerHome in the Start folder and set to launch minimized.  In this situation, the Send Keys would work fine, but the switching to the Webcam32 software would not be reliable.  So what I first had to do was switch to PowerHome, then switch to the WebCam32 program and its worked everytime since.  I'll poke around and look at the Switch to App function and see if there is something that can be improved.  Microsoft has tried to make it increasingly difficult to switch from one application to another programmatically and I might be able to make some improvement.

Dave.

Posted: January 21 2003 at 13:58 | IP Logged

Dave,

I'll try having PH active and maximized first.

Tony

Posted: January 28 2003 at 08:30 | IP Logged

Dave,

Here is a sendkeys macro that does not work as expected:

insert into macroheader values ('START SERVER','START SIMPLESERVER',1464,736,251,96,0,0,0,12632256,0,0,1,'MACROS');
insert into macrodetail values ('START SERVER',1,18,'',1,'" PowerHome"');
insert into macrodetail values ('START SERVER',2,7,'',NULL,'200');
insert into macrodetail values ('START SERVER',3,8,'',0,'"{alt} x"');
insert into macrodetail values ('START SERVER',4,18,'',1,'"AnalogX SimpleServer:WWW"');
insert into macrodetail values ('START SERVER',5,7,'',NULL,'450');
insert into macrodetail values ('START SERVER',6,8,'',0,'"{enter}"');

This should switch to PH and maximize it first, but, it does not! Any ideas?

Tony