I am an IP network engineer and I struggled to get this to work. It seems that the ComWifi will not exchange MAC address with some routers. Mine is a SKY router and it would not work. This makes DHCP not possible. So I had to set it with a static IP address. Remember to make sure that the static addres is outside of your routers DHCP address pool or you will get a clash at some point in the future.
Also the dynamic update of IP address is very intermittent so the mobile phone app will often fail when trying to connect remotely. I created two sites in the app for my site. One with the local LAN IP address of the Comwifi and did not tick the Update IP box. I use this when on the local home wifi.
The other with a dynamic DNS hostname (instead of an IP address) which I use when accessing remotely. Again make sure that the Update IP box is not ticked. This works perfectly every time.
One thing to watch out for.
It is best to configure your comwifi via the panel rather than the web interface. The reason for this is that when your router talks to it it will screw up it's ARP cache. I am not sure why. Maybe it learns the MAC address of the wrong interface from the comwifi. This is evidenced by not being able to communicate with the comwifi when connecting to your home wifi.
To test this you can add a static IP Address into your local arp cache to prove that this is the issue. e.g. on a windows machine open a CMD prompt and
ping IPADDRESS
where IPADDRESS is the address of your comwifi
if you get a reponse then your comwifi is working OK.
If you do not then you may have the MAC/ARP issue.
type:
arp -a
If you have the issue you will not see an entry with the IP address of your comwifi.
Then to temporarily fix/prove the issue add a static ARP cache entry you can type
arp -s IPADDRESS MACADDRESS
replace with the IP address and MAC address of your comwifi.
type arp -a again and you will see your comwifi address in the list.
You should now be able to ping it.
remove the entry from your arp cache by typing
arp -d IPADDRESS
then type arp -a to check that it is no longer listed.
ping will not work again.
This is not a fix! just a test to prove that the issue is with the comwifi and your local network ARP cache updates.
If you are confident that your Comwifi is configured correctly then you need to reset the comwifi so that your local network router can refresh it's MAC table correctly. Use the panel to remove and add the COMIP module from whatever COM port you have it assigned to. This will reset it and your router should then learn the correct MAC address and resolve it's IP address for your other devices on the wifi network.
You should be able to ping it from your command prompt.
DO NOT connect to the Comwifi local wifi network. This will screw up the ARP cache again. You will lose local connectivity and will have to do the a above procedure again..
Hopes this helps somebody.
