FAQs: Uniphy Remote Management Service What methods are available to remotely manage my thermostat? Managing your thermostat is done via existing Ethernet IP based networking technologies. The most common methods available are as follows: - Proliphix Remote Management Service (free public server)
- Proliphix UniVista Enterprise Management System
- Private routed network
- VPN
- Direct IP access
Back to top How can I access my thermostat via the Proliphix Remote Management Service? From an overview perspective, you need to do the following: - Manage the thermostat locally via the web pages
- Register for a remote management account at www.proliphix.com under the link Customer Login. After registering, we will provide you will your account login information as well as a unique customer ID.
- Create a Port Forward entry in your router to allow two way communications with your thermostat.
- Insert the customer ID on the Remote Access page of the thermostat.
- Click the Discover Now button on the Remote Access.
- Log into your server account and you should now have a clickable link to your thermostat.
See the following questions for more information on this subject. Back to top What is the Proliphix Remote Management Service? The Proliphix Remote Management Server is a server operated by Proliphix that allows you to securely manage your thermostats from anywhere you have a valid connection to the Internet. You can access your thermostat by using a unique login and password to view and manage your thermostats. You are not required to use the Proliphix Server, but it is provided as a free service as part of purchasing our product. You do not need to use the server if you are going to be managing your thermostats either locally, via a VPN or within a private network. Back to top How do I get a remote access account? You should go to www.proliphix.com and select the Customer Login option then click on the Register link. There you will fill out your contact information and a unique customer ID will be generated automatically and emailed to you. Back to top What is a Customer ID? The customer ID is a unique label assigned to a customer which allows the Proliphix Remote Management Server to group thermostats under one customer name. Back to top How do I setup my router to allow remote access to the thermostat? To allow your thermostat to communicate with the Proliphix Remote Management Server, you typically will have to enable the port forwarding option for your specific IP address and port that the thermostat is using. Please refer to your router documentation for specific information on configuring port forwarding. There is also a very good website with port forwarding information for a large number of routers at www.portforward.com . Back to top What is Port Forwarding? Port forwarding refers to configuring a router to let traffic sent to specific IP address and port to pass through to the destination. Think of a port as a specifically numbered door into your network. In this example of an IP address with a specified port (192.168.111.100:8081). 8081 is the port number. Your router’s job is to keep out unsolicited traffic from the Internet from reaching your network. To manage the Proliphix family of thermostat from the Proliphix Remote Management Server, the server is going to send ip packets to the thermostat. Typically theses packets would be stopped at the router and never passed on to the thermostat since the port used by the thermostat is closed. If you tell the router to allow ip packets through the router to the thermostat by configuring (opening) the ip address and port, then the thermostat can be successfully managed by the server. Opening a port in the router is known as port forwarding. There is a good resource for residential routers and how to configure port forward entries at www.portforward.com. Back to top How does the thermostat communicate to the Proliphix server? The thermostat will “call home” to the Proliphix server on a periodic basis as defined on the Remote Access page of the thermostat. That page also has the ip address and port of our server (207.58.145.109, port 80). When you click the Discover Now button, the thermostat will contact our server and identify itself. After a number of seconds, the server will try to contact the thermostat to verify that a two way path between the server and the thermostat is open. Back to top Why are there no thermostats listed under my account? Verify that the Customer ID has been entered correctly on the Remote Access page of the thermostat. This is the field that is used to associate your thermostat to your account. Also ensure that the remote access function is enabled and not disabled. Once you verify those items, click on the Discover Now button, wait about 30 seconds and then check on the remote server to see if your thermostat is now listed. Back to top Why is my thermostat link red? When your thermostat link is showing as red, the server has marked that entry as unreachable. This means that the server has not heard from the thermostat within the expected time frame. Back to top Why is my thermostat link orange? When your thermostat link is showing as orange, the server has marked that entry as firewalled. This means that traffic originated from the server is not reaching the thermostat and is being blocked by a firewall of some sort. Back to top How can I tell the status of the communication between the thermostat and the server? Once you log into the server, click on the stats icon on the right side of the web page for the statistics of the thermostat that you want to see. Back to top What is a private routed network? A private routed network is a number of separate networks that are able to function as a single larger network due to the use of routers. A router is a specialized device that knows where to forward traffic when the destination address is not on the same network. In this example, the thermostat has an address of 192.168.111.100 but your pc has an address of 192.168.55.100. When the pc tries to communicate with the thermostat, the router will forward traffic for devices not on the same network, in this case from the pc to the network where the thermostat resides. For the thermostat to accept the Ethernet packet from another subnet, you need to turn off the access filter function found on the Network Settings page by un-checking the “local subnet” checkbox. Back to top What is a VPN? VPN is an acronym for Virtual Private Network. It is a technology that allows you to connect to your destination from a remote site typically traveling across a public network (the Internet) using encryption and other security measure to ensure proper authorized access. The key difference with VPN’s is that your remote pc will look like it is residing on the same network as the device you are controlling. Back to top What is external direct IP access? You can access the thermostat directly if you know the WAN (Wide Area Network) address and port number of the thermostat, your firewall is properly configured and the access filter is turned off in the Network Settings page of the thermostat. Back to top Can I use your remote server if my Internet service is via a satellite provider? At this point we have seen Hughes user be able to connect only if the subscribe to an account with a static address. Hughes manipulates their traffic so the outbound traffic and the inbound traffic never user the same wan address. Due to that model, your thermostat will show up as firewalled because our server expects to use the same address it calls home with. To reach your thermostat you have to type in your static address supplied from Hughes along with the port number. We have had a customers connect with the default level of service from WildBlue. Overall, satellite is not the best choice, go with dsl, cable, fiber or even wireless based Internet providers if they are available over a satellite solution. Back to top What address format do I use to send text messages to my cell phone? This is a list of common cellular carries in the U.S. The 10digitphonenumber is your mobile phone number (for example: 8885551234@vtext.com).
| Verizon |
10digitphonenumber@vtext.com |
| Former AT&T customers |
10digitphonenumber@mmode.com |
| Sprint |
10digitphonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com |
| T-Mobile |
10digitphonenumber@tmomail.net |
| Nextel |
10digitphonenumber@messaging.nextel.com |
| Cingular |
10digitphonenumber@cingularme.com |
| Virgin Mobile |
10digitphonenumber@vmobl.com |
| Alltel |
10digitphonenumber@alltelmessage.com OR
10digitphonenumber@message.alltel.com |
| CellularOne |
10digitphonenumber@mobile.celloneusa.com |
| Omnipoint |
10digitphonenumber@omnipointpcs.com |
| Qwest |
10digitphonenumber@qwestmp.com | Back to top How do the network port settings on your thermostat work? There are two port entries on the Network Settings page of the thermostat. The first one listed is the Firewall Settings Inbound Port. This port is what the Proliphix Remote Management Server will use when trying to initiate contact with the thermostat. This port is also known as the public port in many routers port forwarding terminology. The second port listed is the Web Server HTTP port. This is the actual port that the web server is running on in the thermostat. This port is also known as the private port in port forwarding terminology. If you are on the same local network as the thermostat, use this port to contact the web server running on the thermostat. We default to port 80 as HTTP uses port 80 and it is assumed when typing in a standard web (url) address. If you change the Web Server HTTP port to something other then 80, you will need to specifiy that port as part of your web address. For example if you set the HTTP port to 8081 for a device at 192.168.1.50, then you would type 192.168.1.50:8081 Some routers do not have public and private ports as fields in the port forwarding tables (most Linksys routers for example), so you have to use the same port number on both the thermostat's Firewall Inbound Port and the HTTP Web Server Port. As a side note, we typically do not recommend using 80 as the public port as some ISP block incoming traffic on port 80 as their terms of agreement may not allow users to host their own web servers. For our thermostats typically this is easily addressed by using ports in the 80xx range (or any other range not blocked by your ISP). Back to top How do "Ports" work? Ports are used to identify unique sessions to a program or device. Here is a link with a nice explaination:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_port Back to top
|
