Community,
A team of friends just built, with an Arduino UNO, a system where one can open a door lock from the internet. The Arduino UNO has an Ethernet Module (ENC28J60). When the command prompts, the Arduino will let a solenoid receive 5v, which will open it and, therefore, open the door.
The novel thing is, this door-opening-arduino connects via the Internet to a central server, a webpage that 'centralizes' the door-opening process. So, in a certain URL, we'll get a screen which goes:
All these doors are in remote locations, connected to very different routers. Some of these routers will go 192.168.1.1, whereas others will go with the 0.1 ending.
So far, my friend has hard-coded the internal IP address 192.168.1.143 for identifying the Arduino, so, he's given up on DHCP. Afterwards, he's chosen port 6560 to be the open port and connect the door to the Internet. (VPN is not a option).
So the public IP address and port 6560 are our way in into the door. This info is shared with his webpage, where commands can be given: 'open it'.
But with these hard-coding of the 1.143 IP and the router's different default addresses, we've had trouble. You know what I mean: sometimes, the whole code must be changed for our Arduino to connect to the router. Not even close to 'plug-n-play'.
My questions seems natural: how can we ensure the Arduino connects each time to the router, without any problems? Most devices just connect: an IP camera in these routers will connect, and will never care which IP address the router has given it. If the router resets, things will be fine, and connection will restart.
So, why not DHCP? As far as my understanding goes, a problem my friend mentioned that would happen if he chose to use DHCP would be the communication between his Arduino and his online server: 'how can I know which IP I should speak with in order to open the door? By choosing the .143, I know which would should be'. Another problem comes in with port forwarding. Apparently, by choosing the .143 and then using port 6560, we ensure that we can access via the Internet, because there's a standarized procedure: 'please open port 6560 for this IP'.
This is a bit cumbersome. Most devices just don't work this way. We want to be able to just plug it in, let our Arduino and the router get any IP, and by just opening port 6560, we're in. Pretty simple.
How can we ensure that:
- Our Arduino just connects to the router, and
- that communication between our Arduino and the centralized server just flows?
Another friend suggested configuring each router so that a device with a certain MAC address (our Arduino) gets this IP* and this port forwarding. But what if the default address is 192.168.0.1 (instead of 1.1), for example? wouldn't we be facing a problem?
We're seeking a kind of plug-n-play thing, like most access control systems work. Hardware's ok, it's connection the thing that bugs us.
Any suggestions, advice, or plain responses are really welcome. I think we're just a step away from our commit, which is creating a reliable connection for these doors. It may be just a line of code, or a config trick. Thank you for your time.
(you'll soon notice we're not that savvy on routing and switching, so If we got our premises completely wrong, don't hesitate to correct us)