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[K9AQ]

I use Team Viewer to remotely access the PC that is controlling my station, and I use Skype for audio.  My rig control program is Win4K3Suite, which does not support a remote PTT footswitch.  For a couple of years I have been using RemAud for this purpose but I have found that it is not very stable.

I am looking for a better solution.  All I want to do is be able to have a PTT footswitch at my operating position and have it key my K3 at the station location.

There has to be away to do this and I would appreciate any suggestions.

73,

Don
K9AQ

[K0UA]

Let me google up a few things here.

https://www.perle.com/products/ethernet-io-device-server.shtml

http://dataprobe.com/ipio-ethernet-io/

https://www.controlbyweb.com/webrelay/index2.html?utm_expid=41838773-5.4bcuOtuwTIa6Ja3e6As6JQ.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2F

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=remote+relay+over+IP&_sacat=0


And probably many many more.

[K9AQ]

THANKS!  I have tried Googling but I was looking for "PTT" devices.  I needed to think out of the box for an internet relay switch.  I started building my own using two Arduino's but I never quite got it working right.

73,

Don
K9AQ

[K9AQ]

I ran into a big problem with these devices.  It looks like they require a fixed IP address.  I have a dynamic IP address and I use a dynamic DNS service (No-IP).  I will have to look real carefully at these devices to see if I can find one that will work with a DDNS IP URL.  I don't want to pay the additional cost to my Internet service provider for a fixed IP address.  I have multiple other devices connected over the Internet that use a DDNS.

Don
K9AQ

[W9IQ]

That seems odd, Don. A switch at the remote shack would have a fixed local IP address and external (web) traffic would be routed to it via port mapping in your firewall/router. So if your firewall/router can support a DDNS service, then it should be a workable solution.

Where you can run into issues is if your remote shack has multiple devices that have web servers on port 80. If you cannot alter their port assignments, you may have unresolvable conflicts.

- Glenn W9IQ

[K9AQ]

Glenn,

Maybe I am missing something.  Currently with other TCP devices, I connect to something like myremote.ddns.net  no-ip converts that to the IP address that my router has.  With these devices, at least the ones that I could get a manual for, you had to configure it with an actual ip adrress: 999.99.9999 and a port number.  The router would then port forward to attached device on my LAN.  I would connect that web relay to my PTT input.

I know that I could use this by changing the assigned IP address when ever the service provider changes my IP address, but I was hoping for something that would use DDNS.

Don
K9AQ

[W9IQ]

On the private side of your firewall/router, all of your connected devices have a locally assigned (by your router through DHCP) IP address. This should normally be a non-routable address such as 192.168.x.x. Your firewall/router is the only device that also has a public IP address. This address is assigned by your ISP through their DHCP and, as you know, can change periodically. One of the functions of your router is to convert traffic from private IP addresses to the public IP address and vise versa.

The DDNS service normally has a client that runs on your router or a computer on your private network that monitors your public facing IP address and when it changes, it notifies the DDNS provider. The DDNS provider then updates their DNS server with the new public IP address that matches your chosen URL.

Now when you remotely access your shack using your public URL your browser will convert the URL to your current public IP address of your remote shack through a DNS lookup. Your remote firewall/router will see this incoming packet and look at the port/service number that is part of that packet. It then looks up that port number in its local routing table to determine to which private IP address it should route the packet.

Because of the port number to local IP address routing method, most home type routers can not accomodate incoming initiating packets for more than one device with the same port number on the same local network. So if you have two devices on your local network, such as two Ethernet switches, that are acting as web servers, they cannot both be on port 80. Typically, the second one would be configured for port 8080, for example. In this case, the remote web browser must also be told to use port 8080 instead of its default 80 by appending a ':8080' to the URL.

Does this description help?

- Glenn W9IQ

[K9AQ]

Glenn,

I totally understand what you are saying but the problem is the web relay devices can not be configured with a DDNS, like remoteradio.ddns.net  From what I read you have to input an actual numeric IP address.  If I can find one that will accept the ddns it should work great.  When I was experimenting with 2 Arduinos connected to the Internet, I was able to get this to work (sort of).  I ran into problems with Arduino Ethernet consistently making the connection, so I put in on the shelf and started looking for a commercial solution.

RemAud works with my no.ip address but it hangs up after some amount of time and holds the PTT energized.  When that happens I have to go in to task manager and kill it.  Since this is no support, or forums for RemAud I have not found out how to fix this.

Don
K9AQ

[W9IQ]

Don,

The web relay device should not have anything to do with being configured for DDNS. It only needs a private IP address on your remote network.

You can get a sense of this simply with your computer that you are using to read this post. In your web browser, Google "what is my IP address". It will come back with your public IP address such as 185.37.136.66. But now go to your local network settings on your computer and you will find that your PC's network address is something like 172.20.2.130. This second address is called a non-routable or private address because you cannot ever directly reach it from an external Internet connection. The address ranges that are reserved for private networks are 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 and 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255.

It is the job of your router to convert this private address to the public IP address (such as 185.37.136.66) whenever your computer needs to access something on the Internet. The router also keeps track of traffic coming back for your PC and converts the public IP address back to your PC's private IP address so that your PC gets the message or packet. This all happens transparently and without any need to configure your local router to perform this task. This function is commonly called NAT (Network Address Translation).

Now with regard to your web relay device, it will normally not initiate connections to the external Internet. Rather, you will want to remotely initiate a session with the web relay via the Internet. Because your router at your remote shack will see this message or packet, it needs to know that this type of request should be directed to the private address of your web relay device. This is usually done by manually configuring a port mapping table (commonly called a port forwarding table) in your router to tell the router that if any port 80 packets come in, forward them to the web relay device via its private address. Port 80 is the common port for a device that has a built-in web server but check the documentation as it may be on a different port.

I hope you can see from this description, that the DDNS function is completely separate from the web relay device and so the device needs no knowledge of your public IP address, of your URL that maps to that public IP address, or even the fact that you are using a DDNS. You only need to have one DDNS client running somewhere on your remote network - either within the router itself or on a connected computer that is always on. This little client simply monitors the public IP address of your router (the functional equivalent of Googling "what is my IP address") and when it sees that it has changed, the DDNS client sends a message to your DDNS provider (such as no-ip or DynDNS) that your public IP address has changed. Then when you use the URL for your remote site in your web browser (such as http://remoteradio.ddns.net), this automatically gets changed behind the scenes to your latest public IP address (such as 185.37.136.66) to properly route the message to your remote shack router. The router looks up port 80 in its mapping table and sends the message onto your web relay device via its private IP address (such as 172.20.2.130).


- Glenn W9IQ