Accessing Wiser

More info...

Here's what happens when I try to transfer from PICED...

As you can see the transfer to unit dialog says no errors in the project.. It makes no difference whether I try the "local" or "remote" connection type, in either case the IP is pre-filled correctly from the project info, but as soon as I hit OK I see the warning "please check the IP address"... If I select the Auto-search option, I see the unit listed - does the red dot on it have any significance? - If I click on the unit I still get the warning "Unable to connect to wise at address 192.168.145.245"

Cheers.

Paul G.

 

I would set DNS 1 IP to be the same IP as the Gateway i.e. 192.168.145.254

 

Also in my config remote wiser IP/URL is blank

 

You mean like this?

 

I'll happily give that a go, - although both addresses *ARE* valid DNS servers, - 192.168.145.254 is my LAN/WAN router which does DNS proxying, and 192.168.145.1 is my windows 2008 domain controller which also has a DNS server running which has forwarders configured to my ISP DNS's (and root hints as well IIRC). So I honestly can't fathom if or how DNS would have any part to play in the functionality that I can't get to work; namely uploading a project from PICED... - but hey, I'm glad to try anything at this point just to get this to work...

Cheers.

Paul G.

 

Indeed, - and I'm getting less & less patient with things like this as I get older, - I believe I'm officially now a "grumpy old man".... (so SWMBO tells me)

It's frustrating, because just occasionally, one encounters the complete opposite, - something that is so beautifully designed that the user experience is an absolute joy... - I'm no fanboy, but I got my first Apple device for Christmas (Ipod Touch), and to this day I have yet to look at a single manual or instruction document, - everything about using it is completely intuitive, logical, and it "just works" all the time, every time.. - it's an absolute joy to own & use, and a sublime experience... Having tasted this, I find it doubly irritting to have to go back to an experience that frankly, I think couldn't have been made any more tortuous if an entire committee had sat down with the brief: "How can we make this the most frustrating and painful process we can possibly imagine?"....

OK, that probably wasn't the case, - but I sometimes feel like it!! (me being grumpy again...)

Thanks to all for all help so far, - now if only we can get this last part working I'll be a happy bunny again, - and so will my wife!

Paul G.

 

Blank for the URL/IP address in here.


I have a config that works so all I'm doing here is spotting the differences between my config and yours. I not trying so analyse the differences just observe what is different.

 

Paul,

I've gone through your IP settings line by line and they look correct. Then luckily, after staring blankly at your forum post, I finally saw it. I saw the screenshot you sent of your Wiser status page. It shows that the firmware version is 1.4.0 which is known to be excessively strict about project transfers! Ah, now I think we've found the root cause of all this trouble.

The last released firmware version is 1.15.0 which corresponds with PICED 4.8.0, downloadable from here http://www2.clipsal.com/cis/technical/downloads/piced. When doing the project transfer, the transfer client will ask you to upgrade the firmware.

I should explain why 1.4.0 didn't allow you to update your project. The root cause is that the Wiser firmware seeks to prevent unauthorized project uploads over the network. This means that it has to check whether a project update is being made from a local network or whether it was from a remote network (ie: testing together with the permission set to enable remote upgrades). Now, the way that Wiser firmware 1.4.0 did that was that it used the Wiser IP stored in the project rather than the IP that the Wiser is actually at. This is because the normal update sequence was update project, then update IP. What this meant for you is that your Wiser was under the impression that you were on the 192.168.2.x network because that would have been what was in your project at the time and thus when you moved the Wiser to the 192.168.145.x network, it thought that your PC was attempting to perform an unauthorized remote project update and thus it refused it. Subsequent Wiser firmware ever since version 1.7 fixed that by actually using the Wiser's current IP address for that local/remote test rather than the IP address stored in the project which is why a firmware update will fix this. Whew, I hope all of that explains what caused this issue.

This was basically my fault because I was responsible for that "feature" of excessively strict local/remote IP verification. I have been appropriately chastised for that. Please accept my apologies for the trouble.

Best regards,
jaya

 

WooHoo!

Thanks Jaya, that's great news, - at least I now know the cause, I understand it (good description), and I know (in theory at least) how to fix it...

I'll have a go at updating the firmware this evening when I get home - or perhaps earlier if I get a chance, - I should be able to do this remotely from the office if I VPN in my home LAN, then use my local VMware Infrastructure client to open the console of my internal machine running all my CBUS software...

This solution has *got* to be worthy of being put in a sticky surely!! - I know quite a few people have experienced the same issue, and those that haven't presumably got lucky because they did a different sequence of steps which just happened to entail updating the project and/or the firmware prior to changing IP's....

Am I correct in assuming that the security feature you've described that is currently stopping me from uploading a project won't also prevent the firmware update? - it wouldn't be a great leap of understanding to imagine that a firmware update might be similarly blocked by the same feature?...

Fingers crossed that I'll be up & running very soon...

Paul G.

 

BooHoo



Just as I'd alluded to, it seems that I can't do the firmware update either, because PICED can't connect to the Wiser to do it.. - I guess this is exactly the same mechanism at play that just isn't going to allow me to connect from what it *thinks* is a different subnet...

I can see no other possible course of action than to reset all the IP's back to their original defaults, and do the firmware upload like that... - a PITA of course because it won't be on my LAN, so I'll have to hook up a laptop locally to connect to it on IT's subnet, do the upload, then readdress the units & connect it all back to my LAN... - unless anyone else can suggest an alternative solution?

Doubly PITA because the need to connect locally to the wiser means I can't do it until I get home this evening, because I'm obviously not there to physically plug things in to the necessary places...

HARUMPH!

Paul G.

 

Jaya,

If the option 'Project Update Enabled' is enabled using the factory default web based Wiser configuration page 'Remote access' prior to the IP's being changed would that suffice to make this work ? (I also enabled Projector and Toolkit on this page).

I'm trying to understand how I managed to update my project as I too was on firmware 1.4 and I know I updated from a PICED app running on a 192.168.1.x address.

K

 

Paul,

Could you screenshot the transfer client error message. The firmware update is independent of the project authentication and I've just tested that on 1.4.0 it works even if the project on the unit had a 2.x IP address as long as the Wiser is on 145.x and the PC is also on 145.x. So I can't yet understand what is happening in your scenario.

Worst case, you can actually perform the upgrade manually (although there is risk of bricking the unit so please make sure you carefully don't poweroff/reboot during the upgrade, make sure you don't upgrade over WiFi) by going to:
http://192.168.145.245/AdminUpgrade.htm

and then browse to C:\Clipsal\PICED\Firmware\firmware_1_15_0.img

and then click start to upgrade. While it is upgrading, do not do anything else with the browser or with the Wiser, let it do its thing and when it is done it will automatically take you back to the main page.

 

Hi Kevin,

Yes, if Project Update Enabled was enabled either via the web UI or the PICED project details then that would have also made it work since the IPs would have been seen as valid IPs for a project update.

 

Getting somehwere...

OK, last night, I decided to have another crack at this... - sorry to say that was before I'd seen post #32, so I didn't get to try any of those suggestions...

In a nutshell, there was just no way anything I tried would result in anything other than a "please check IP address" message from the transfer dialog whilst the Wiser was on the modified IP address x.x.145.245. - That included trying to upload a firmware update via PICED.

The ONLY way I could get any improvement on that was to reset the wiser back to the x.x.2.1 IP, at which point a locally attached laptop (also reconfigured to x.x.2.3) could connect to it, and also could see the wiser UI. Once I had the wiser UI open I was able to reset the 3 options to enable project update, enable access and so on.

Whilst connected in this configuration I also installed latest versions of toolkit & PICED on that laptop (A PITA of a job as it was a netbook with *very* limited resources), following which I was successfully able to connect & upload both the latest firmware, and my test project with the modified settings I required.
Once the unit had rebooted I accessed the Wiser status page & could see the updated details now correctly showing the CNI IP address as x.x.145.246, and the updated firmware version.

Once done, I returned the wiser back to its intended x.x.145.245 IP, and reset it, connected it back to my LAN, and connected to it from a LAN PC. From a LAN PC I could then ping both the wiser and the CNI on their respective x.x.145.245 and x.x.145.246 addresses, and I could open the browser interface to the router admin pages...

I expected everything to have fallen into place at that point, but when I tried to open the wiser UI from the same browser, I *STILL* got the "unable to connect to wiser" message immediately after the "authenticating socket" message. I did test connecting to it via PICED at that point, and that was successfull (I uploaded the same test project once again).

As you can imagine, the air turned a deep shade of blue at that point, and I gave up for the evening, lest my anger made me do something I might later regret (the wiser is in a location where many of my tools are stored, so there were plenty of hammers & other dangerous implements easily at hand...)

Shortly after, I just happened to test access via the iPhone app, and much to my pleasant surprise, it connected and worked first time! - and I could indeed see the test project I uploaded shortly before...

Subsequent to that I haven't attempted to access the wiser UI from a PC browser again. - It definately didn't work immediately after I'd completed the firmware and project uploads... I'll VPN in to the LAN & give that another go shortly...

So:

Firmware update completed - check
PICED project uploaded - check
iPhone access working - check
browser access worksing - TBC - not looking good based on what I've seen so far..

Will report back with details of more browser access tests shortly...

Paul G.

 

At LAST!!!

Yup, I just VPN'd into my home LAN, RDP'd to my home desktop PC, and pointed a browser at the wiser, and almost instantly it came up with my test project UI...

Hallelujah!

That has been experience I never want to have the like again....

To spare the sanity of others that follow, PLEASE can CIS do either, (or preferably both) of the following:

Update the commisioning documentation to make sure that users make the requisite config changes BEFORE changing the IP's for the option B connection model, - because anything else seems to just involve a world of pain...

Sort this mess of configuration out!! - having to use 3 different tools to complete different parts of the commissioning process is a crock. - Don't any of you guys own Ipods?

Finally, I can calm down now... - although of course, I've yet to test toolkit access to the CNI *through* the wiser IP....

Paul G.

 

Curious?

I am curious about a couple of the things I can see on the wiser status page though...

In the bottom half of this screenie, I can see the DNS1 & DNS2 entries, which are as per what I configured in PICED... - but the default gateway setting isn't... - my PICED project definately also included a setting for the gateway address... so why isn't it showing there? - Is it actually a problem anyway, since in upper part the time source item appears to indicate it has accessed an NTP server does it not? - if that is the case then clearly the unit is able to get out via the gateway to the 'net...

Im guessing the IP address & netmask items in the bottom half refer to the WAN interface? - thus I'd expect them to be unset in the option B connection model...

anyone care to clarify *exactly* what each of these entries refer to?

TIA

Paul G.

 

Hi Paul,

You don't know how happy I am to hear that it is working.

Again, I'm terribly sorry about the whole configuration complexity issue. We're working flat out here and the issues are being rectified, much of this is a non trivial task, since we're pretty much adding major features to the software with every release. We do appreciate the feedback and the comments. The points you've raised will get worked into upcoming releases, especially low hanging fruit like documentation improvements, and the whole IP configuration, project transfer flow will get smoothed out.

Okay, I do want to explain why things were the way they were. The reason for the multiple apps is because the CNI can stand alone, and that means an integrator wouldn't want to run PICED just to control the CNI so that has its own simple setup application. PICED is the brains of the operation and supports CTCs, BNWCtouch, etc as well. Wiser has a web based control because it is descended from a web based router.

As you pointed out, the intention is to, and has to be to avoid future suffering, integrate as much of this as into a single smooth flow. And btw, yes, many Clipsal engineers do own Apple gear, and yes, we realize what we've built is uhm, well, not yet in the same league. I'm probably going to get smacked for saying that. But as you can see from iTouch/iPhone work, there are active steps and significant amounts of capital being invested into getting there.

Thanks,
jaya

 

Hi Paul,

Yes, they refer to the WAN interface. Yes, they ought to be ignored when in LAN mode and probably best for the firmware to hide those values rather than showing 0.0.0.0.

Thanks,
jaya

 

I'm not trying to anger or upset anyone here, so please don't take any offence here Paul, it is merely an observation.

The Wiser, as originally released, was intended to be initally programmed and commisioned by PointOne integrators, who were expected to understand the process required to complete the set up of the devices. They were not intended to be initally set up by end users. However, there was an outcry from power users about not being able to buy the Wiser units other than through PointOne integrators.

However, as you can see, CIS staff are working their backsides off to make the entire process simpler and easier for "Power Users" to do their own comissioning of the units, and although you've been through hell trying to get yours to work, CIS can not really be blamed for the problems you've had.

Yes, there may have been some mistakes made in the beginning, but these were not due to any malice or lack of thought.

That said, I'm sure everyone following this thread is very relieved to hear that you have finally had success in getting your Wiser to an operational point.

 

Thanks Jaya

Thanks for the help in getting this going... - I *do* apreciate it, even if it might not sound like it at times.. - I find I just have so little patience with things these days, - I've got sufficiently little of my time on earth left (mid-life crisis alert??) that I really don't want to be spending any of it "tinkering" - that's a young man's game ...

For the most part, I expect - especially with something that costs (relatively) a lot of money, that it should just work out of the box...

WRT to the biggest major issue as I see it so far, - bearing in mind my very limited experience of actually using the product, - I think you have to look at moving all configuration activity into one place, - be that the browser admin interface, or the CBUS IP utility... - it shouldn't be necessary to run up PICED as well to upate settings that ought to be configurable from one or other of those tools... that would go a long way to improving the experience...

Certainly I was somewhat surprised when I first ran the browser admin interface to find that across all the sections I could change any of the settings UNTIL I got to the wiser page where I was looking for, and frantically clicking around on the two headings that show to the left, to find "where do I click to change these settings that I can clearly see are wrong?".... I thought it extremely counter intuitive that the only clickable object on that page was the "user interface" heading at the top to take you into the wiser UI... - I REALLY expected all the necessary items on that page to be clickable and editable, just as all other sections of the router admin pages are....

I can live with a seperate IP config tool for the CNI, since you're absolutely right it's a seperate product & I can understand that it would probably be quite tricky to integrate the config of that device into the browser UI for the main wiser unit... - I also understand, (and it's clear to see) that the wiser product is descended from a standard router, which I guess you've bought in & extended to add on the "wiser" bits...

It's early days yet, so it's good to know that things will only get better. *other than* the setup headaches, what I've seen so far of the actual wiser functionality both via iPod & browser has me fairly excited and impressed...

Still, its working now, so I have a whole new avenue of discovery to explore...

Paul G.