Locally connecting to WeatherlinkIP?

[Morseman]

Thanks, Stu, I'll give that another try. 

In the meantime, I spoke with Davis Tech Support and they "clarified" that the WL for Mac software is only usable with the USB logger, not WeatherlinkIP.  Their FAQ ("I have a Mac. Can I use WeatherLinkIP?  Yes. ...) certainly seems misleading to me.

As long as the IP address of the WLIP logger stays constant, all works well - I'm having a lot of fun exploring the graphs and other capabilities of WC.

Cheers,
Bob

[elagache]

Hi Bob, Stu, and WeatherCat fans, 

A network scanner can be very handy to find out what's on your network - the manual mentions AutoScan network but this is currently broke on 10.7, another one is Angry IP Scanner (http://www.angryip.org/w/Download) which is less capable but works well enough.

Hey thanks Stu for the link!    It is a handy little tool and my home network has gotten complicated enough that having this around will be very helpful!

I have not yet received the Mac version of Weatherlink software and cannot configure the logger directly.  Stu had suggested I use my browser to connect to the logger and configure it to a static IP address outside of the DHCP IP address range of the router.  I can make my way though the router utility to see the DHCP range.  But how do I use the browser (Firefox) to get into the logger and set its IP address?  I tried merely entering the DHCP-assigned logger IP address into the address window of the browser, but that produced no result.

Did you use something like Stu's recommended scanner?  If you use Angry IP Scanner you'll get a list like this:



To access it, at least I always give it a full http address like this:

http://192.168.1.79/

That allowed me to connect to my laser printer - cool never done that before!! 

When you connect to your WeatherLink IP it should bring up the form that Stu posted earlier.  Here is it again for clarity:

The next step would seem to be to run the WL Windows software in the virtual machine under Parallels, and try to set the logger IP address that way.  However, I seem to recall reading somewhere that running WL software in a virtual machine leads to problems.

If you have to resort to that you might try CrossOver before going whole-hog and using Parallels (unless you've got Parallels installed and already running.)  Since CrossOver doesn't involve a virtual machine, it might avoid some of the problems you describe and you can download a free trial to find out one way or the other.

Hope this gives you some ways to get unstuck!

Cheers, Edouard 

[Morseman]

I wanted to provide a status update to you folks who have been helping me with my installation of WC with a WeatherlinkIP logger, VP2+ console and ISS in southeast Pennsylvania.  I really appreciate the assistance!

As I noted earlier, I had taken a guess at the logger IP address, based on the DHCP table in my router, entered it into the comm configuration of WC and was successful - data is flowing to the WL network AND to WC, so that is all good.  For various unrelated reasons, I had to re-boot my MacBook Pro a couple of times, and everything still works.  My station on the WL network is WO3E/3, in case anyone is interested.  The ?guessed? address I entered into WC was 192.168.1.105.

What I have not been able to do is to set up the logger with a static IP address in the router.  First of all, the Ethernet (MAC) address for the logger is not listed on the device ? there is a ?Device ID, a ?key,? and a third faintly labeled number which I think says ?Mfgr code?, but its value ?B120 508A327? does not appear to be a hex MAC address.

The WL software supplied by Davis to communicate with the WLIP logger is Windows-only, not available for OS X, and unfortunately that disk is in Maryland.  So for now, so I cannot even try to run it on the Windows 7 virtual machine via Parallels on my MacBook

I used the AngryIP network scanner and the router utility DHCP table.  The former outputs a table of IP addresses with indicators and values.  I assume the blue indicators in the AngryIP output table, which also have non-zero ping times, represent the active IP addresses that the scanner found on my network. 

The DHCP table from the router utility lists the MAC addresses of my network devices, associated with their DHCP IP addresses in the router.  As far as I have been able to tell from the router utility manual and some brief online research, my Linksys WRT54GS router does not have (or at least does not provide access to) an ARP table.  So I used information in those scanner and DHCP tables to try to correlate IP addresses with MAC addresses with my network devices.

Interesting to me was the fact that the two tables did not provide exactly consistent data.  One of the blue-indicated active IP addresses in the IP scanner table (192.168.1.100) was NOT listed in the router DHCP table, and one of the addresses paired with a MAC address in the DHCP table (192.168.1.102) was not listed as active in the IP scanner table. 

I was able to correlate all devices on my network with their MAC addresses, EXCEPT for the logger, and none of my network devices paired with the two ?inconsistent? IP addresses. Therefore, I assumed that the IP address of the logger is one of those two addresses.  I entered each of them into the address line of Firefox.  Neither of these was the ?guessed? address I had entered into WC several days ago.  That was dot 105, which now correlates to the MAC address for my wife?s MacBook.  ??

Unfortunately, neither of the ?inconsistent? addresses returned the WeatherlinkIP Configuration screen.  For the dot 100 address, Firefox tried to connect for a minute or two then returned a message: ?The connection was reset
The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading?.  For the dot 102 address, a similar long connection attempt, then a message: ?The connection has timed out ? the server at 192.168.1.102 is taking too long to respond.?

I tried to connect to both of these addresses multiple times, with the same result.

So for now, I?m stumped.  I may try to see if Davis can tell me the logger MAC address based on their DID and key numbers.

I was tempted to try ?Configure Station Comms? in WC, but thought that might break the link between the logger and WC, that seems to be working now.  I don?t understand WHY it is still working, since I would have thought that the router would have re-assigned DHCP addresses by now, but I?m not complaining.

So, I?m open to more suggestions.

Cheers,
Bob

[elagache]

Hi Bob and WeatherCat fans,

Others will have to chime-in because I don't have this setup so I can only offer "spectator guesses."  However, I'm confused by this comment:

I was tempted to try ?Configure Station Comms? in WC, but thought that might break the link between the logger and WC, that seems to be working now. 

When you have been trying to connect to the WeatherLink IP, had you quit WeatherCat first as Stu has suggested?

Note, the logger can really only manage to do one thing at a time, thus you'll need to quit WeatherCat before it'll respond to a browser request.

If you hadn't quit, that might explain what you saw here:

Unfortunately, neither of the ?inconsistent? addresses returned the WeatherlinkIP Configuration screen.  For the dot 100 address, Firefox tried to connect for a minute or two then returned a message: ?The connection was reset
The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading?.  For the dot 102 address, a similar long connection attempt, then a message: ?The connection has timed out ? the server at 192.168.1.102 is taking too long to respond.?

Hopefully Stu or someone else can explain if you can open up the Station Communications Setup without disturbing the settings.  I would expect that if you can open this display you could then read the IP address that the WeatherLinkIP is actually using and then quit WeatherCat and know which address to use with your browser.

I don?t understand WHY it is still working, since I would have thought that the router would have re-assigned DHCP addresses by now, but I?m not complaining.

Actually DHCP doesn't change the addresses unless something forces a change.  ISPs change addresses every now and then, but behind your home network the addresses assigned by DHCP will remain the same basically until you have a power outage.  There is no reason for the DHCP to do anything other than renew the "lease" associated with the same address.  We shouldn't be surprised . . . even computers can be lazy at times!! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[Morseman]

Well . . . I missed THAT one, didn't I!

I had NOT quit WC.  When I did - I got the WL Config screen.  Thank you!

I'll move forward report soon.

Cheers,
Bob

[WCDev]

Hopefully Stu or someone else can explain if you can open up the Station Communications Setup without disturbing the settings.  I would expect that if you can open this display you could then read the IP address that the WeatherLinkIP is actually using and then quit WeatherCat and know which address to use with your browser.

Yes, when you reset the comms from the Tools menu, the IP address last in use is not erased - it'll still be there when you next run Weathercat (which is very helpful sometimes when you can't remember where you put the note with the IP address on and you have to change hardware frequently because you're a weather software developer  Actually, it would be great if Davis made the logger Bonjour friendly...)

[elagache]

Howdy Bob, Stu, and WeatherCat fans,

  Actually, it would be great if Davis made the logger Bonjour friendly...)

Here, here!! 

Alas, . . . not this sort of thing to hold your breath over!   

Cheers, Edouard 

[drpaxis]

   We recently purchased a Vantage Pro2 with a WeatherLink IP logger. I was having a hard time figuring out how to find the IP address of the WeatherLinkIP. Folks mentioned the Angry IP Finder, which is a bit awkward from reading about. I searched the Apple App store for IP finders. There are several, but the "Pro" one costs $25 bucks for simple task, and the free one probably one work for most people because it only finds a few devices. Reading through, I found one that looked promising called LAN Scan. It cost 99?.  I worked brilliantly, all I had to do was click on the "unknown network" and then "scan." Within seconds, it found 10 devices, with their IP numbers and their name or manufacturer. The Davis Instrument device was there  as a plain as day. All I had to do was type in that number. Absolutely worth 99?.

I've attached two screen snapshots.  One shows the wind you get when starting up the app, like the name of my computer and the "unknown network" (yours might have a name).  Click on the "network" and then click on the "start scan" at the bottom. Then, you will get a list of devices. The list of the bottom, two I am showing here so that you can see what the Davis WeatherLinkIP device looked like.

This utility will have other purposes in our house

[drpaxis]

And here is the IP address list edited showing the Davis WeatherLinkIP

[WCDev]

Nice find - thanks for posting the link 

[Blicj11]

Just another thought, for anyone interested in the arcane. It is not necessary to assign an IP address outside the DHCP range to either the WeatherLinkIP data logger or the computer running WeatherCat. Instead, go to the AirPort Utility | Network tab and under DHCP Reservations, add the IP addresses you wish to reserve for the data logger and the computer on which WeatherCat is running. This reserves those IP address for the devices with matching MAC addresses. (You find the MAC address for your computer in the Network Utility and the MAC address for the data logger is printed on its label at the factory. Davis calls it the DID.) This ends up providing you with a static IP for the relevant devices.

[elagache]

Dear Blick and WeatherCat fans,

Just another thought, for anyone interested in the arcane. It is not necessary to assign an IP address outside the DHCP range to either the WeatherLinkIP data logger or the computer running WeatherCat. Instead, go to the AirPort Utility | Network tab and under DHCP Reservations, add the IP addresses you wish to reserve for the data logger and the computer on which WeatherCat is running.

Yes this is true and I believe this is reasonably common for most IP Network router boxes.  Also, if you are running NAT on a computer you can configure the DHCP server to only use a subset of the available addresses.  This is how I have my wireless access point and an old HP printer connected to our home network.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Cheers, Edouard