detect_device.php isn't changing my IP

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Good day,

I am a proud new own of a Vera lite device. I bought it because I am a developer for Media Browser Media Management system.

I was asked by a group of their users to develop a plugin for Media Browser that could control z wave devices in their home using Vera.

Pretty much they wanted to press play on a movie, and the lights would dim automatically.

Sure! No problem. That’s simple stuff actually.

But, I have hit some road blocks:

For instance, ‘quickly’ locating the Vera lite IP address on my network.

I would have though you guys would have put a UDP call and answer system in place.

That is what Media Browser does, and it is so fast to locate the Server.

Instead I resorted to read through the source code on “MiOS.com”, to try and figure out how you were locating my device.

Okay, so you’ve written a PHP file which locates the device! (not sure if you are reverse locating my Vera lite based on my IP… maybe you have a database of all your users??..cleaver in any case)

Great! I will piggy back on your PHP then! Testing was going very well, I was almost ready to release the application plugin when… Oh no! The power went out in my area of the city I live in.

When the power came back on I went back to work on my plugin, but only to find that the IP address for the Vera Lite device had changed during the power outtage! and you know what?!?

The detect_device.PHP wasn’t detecting my device at all. “MiOS.com” hadn’t updated it’s information about my Vera lite.

So, at this point I am unable to connect to my device remotely using “MiOS.com”, and I am slightly confused as to how you want people to detect the Vera Device on their network without having to ping every Subnet address, and trying to request “Alive” JSON responses until the IP is found.

I would LOVE to speak with any developer here who might shed some light on my situation.

Or perhaps one of the Vera Team Devs could answer some questions regarding the “detect_device.php”, how it works, and weather I can expect it to update my information.

Thanks so much,

Ben

2

I’ve never looked at the detection method, so I can’t tell you how it works. I can tell you that, for teh most part, it works very well.

I suspect that you issue is simple that the Vera came up before you internet connection was properly initialized. I suspect that if you power cycle your Vera and clear your browser’s cache, you’ll have no trouble finding Vera again.

3

You can use this url:
https://vera-us-oem-authd12.mios.com/locator/locator/locator
This shows all the Vera units in the same local network as your computer/phone.

Vera reports its status (including the local IP and external IP) to our servers when it starts up, or every 24 hours if there is no reboot/power cycle during that time. When you call that URL, our server checks if there are any Veras with the same external IP as the one the request came from, and it returns all the Veras that match your computer’s external IP.

4

Wonderful!

Thank you both for the prompt replies.

As soon as possible I will attempt to use your URL to detect Vera devices instead of the php file.

I was wondering if the php was using a reverse look-up on the IP.

Have you guys ever thought about using UDP broadcasts to locate the device internally?

Thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions.

Just as an fyi, there is quite a substantial community of Vera users over at Mediabrowser.

We are currently build a plugin (like I mentioned above) which will integrate them together.