Dear Networking Friends
A number of the newest pieces of equipment used for stove testing are Ethernet enable, meaning you can connect them directly to a network and get the data from them easily without running back and forth with USB drives or having to laboriously copy printed outputs into your spreadsheet. Devices include data loggers, printers, particulate measuring devices, combustion analysers, COM Port adaptors and scales. Having to work in what one could call technology deprived surroundings I have to face the low end of the market from time to time. This weekend I was the happy recipient of a lot of sensible advice from Jeremy and will share the most useful parts of it. Many new devices are web enabled which means you can see and control it from within an Internet Explorer page. It is the future as they say. The problem faced was connecting equipment to the computer in a way that we could still see everything else including the internet. The plan is to have an internet connection for live webcasts of tests and training, not to mention keeping up with events. The only hardware available is a switch - a D-Link DGS-1005D. It does not have a DHCP server in it, is not a router and can't give out IP addresses. Presently connected to it are a particle counter, a gas analyser and a data logger. The trick is to get two different IP addresses working on the computer at the same time, connected to the same hub, with the equipment on the same group. As the internet connection has a dynamic IP address and the instruments are unable to get a new one from the mindless switch, the solution lies in using the following configuration settings. Click, in sequence (Windows 7): Control Panel Network and Sharing Centre Change adaptor settings Local area connection Properties TCP/IP v4 Properties Leave the General settings alone which are usually "Obtain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server settings automatically" Then click the Alternate Configuration Tab Select "User configured" Enter there something ordinary as the IP address for your local equipment network: IP Address 192.168.1.100 (for the computer) Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0 On each piece of equipment, disable the DHCP capability if it has it. On each machine set the IP addresses to 192.168.1.xxx where xxx is unique for each machine and excluding .100. The result is that when you plug in the LAN connecting wire intended for the computer into the hub, it will correctly assign a valid IP address to allow a working internet connection. It will also allow the equipment to simultaneously communicate with the computer on the alternate LAN settings. There is some pretty nice free software called Benchlink Data Logger 3 for controlling such equipment at: http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/redirector.jspx?action=obs <http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/redirector.jspx?action=obs&nid=-35191.0 .00&lc=eng&cc=SG&ckey=860194<ype=External+URL+Link&ctype=AGILENT_EDITORIAL > &nid=-35191.0.00&lc=eng&cc=SG&ckey=860194<ype=External+URL+Link&ctype=AGILEN T_EDITORIAL Regards Crispin
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