Connecting

The power of RemoteSign is its ability to be, well, remote, from the computer that controls it.

To see this in action you will need two computers that can find each other over a network. They use the Internet TCPIP protocol for communicating. This means that any two computers on a local area network (LAN) or even any two connected to the Internet will be able to communicate with each other. These two computers could be a Windows machine running RemoteSign and a second Windows machine running RemoteSign, or, the second computer can be a RemoteSign ESP module.

If one of the RemoteSign devices is a RemoteSign ESP, once it gets onto the network via Wifi, it display its IP address and unique name. In this example, the IP address is 192.168.86.172 and the name is remotesignc6cf88

In order to connect to the RemoteSign ESP...

1. On the Windows computer, start RemoteSign and then press 'C' to display the Connection screen.
2. Click on 'Connect to"
3. Enter the name of the other computer or enter its IP address
4. Click 'Connect'

If you are connecting two Windows RemoteSign machines on a LAN....

1. Install a copy of RemoteSign on each computer.
2. On the computer that is to be the 'remote sign' start RemoteSign.
3. Press W to make it Wait for a connection
4. Note the machine name
5. On the second computer, start RemoteSign and then press 'C' to display the Connection screen.
6. Click on 'Connect to"
7. Enter the name of the other computer or enter its IP address
8. Click 'Connect'

Here is an example of the machine name and IP address from the Connection screen

RemoteSign will remember the name of the computer you entered for the next time. If you would like the program to automatically try to connect to the same computer each time it is started, check the box 'Auto connect on starting'

The computers should connect. Once connected the top status light on the sign will turn green. And the details of the other machine should be displayed

Connection failures

If you get connection failures (red status light) try switching both machines to local mode and then try again. If that does not help, restart the programs on both machines.

Sometimes the network router uses a slightly different name to the host name. If trying a host name fails, try adding .local or .lan to the end of the hostname. Failing that:

 from a command prompt, enter the command:
nslookup 192.168.1.xx 
 (where 192.168.1.xx is the IP address of the machine you are trying to reach)
and it should tell you the name of the host you should use. Enter the name exactly and with same casing.

(The DNS setting of your computer should be set to automatic, not to a direct external DNS server)

Connecting to a computer that is behind a firewall or router

By default, RemoteSign uses TCPIP port 50601. When you try to connect or wait for a connection on a machine that is running firewall software you may get a pop up asking permission for RemoteSign to act as a server (waiting for a connection) or to access the network (connecting to another machine). RemoteSign will not work unless you allow these operations.

If your RemoteSign that is waiting for a connection is on a network that has a router between the network and the rest of the internet you may have to open port 50601 to allow traffic through. You may also have to forward incoming requests on that port to the machine that is waiting for a connection. For example, on a LinkSys router the forwarding screen looks like this:

Incoming requests on port 50601 will go to the machine on the local network with the IP address 192.168.1.23. Note that if you want outside machines to be able to connect to that same machine it is advisable to allocate a static IP address to that machine.

See note on differing screen aspect ratios












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