Managing two locations?

Posted on
Sat Dec 11, 2021 11:56 am
kadluvu offline
Posts: 6
Joined: Mar 18, 2016
Location: Portland, OR

Managing two locations?

I've had Indigo in my home for years and just recently purchased a building about a mile away. Both sites have GigE Fiber. I'm trying to decide how I want to integrate the two locations. My thoughts are:
1) Create a PtP VPN Tunnel between the two locations. I'm guessing I will have very little latency since they are so close electronically (and physically) and if the internet was down at either location, the other options wouldn't work either.

2) Purchase another license and server and use e-mail as a communications method between the two systems

3). Same as #2, but use iMessage plugin

4) Something I'm not thinking of right now?

Posted on
Sat Dec 11, 2021 1:59 pm
Dual offline
Posts: 254
Joined: Feb 05, 2019

Re: Managing two locations?

What are you trying to achieve? I have two licenses. Two homes. Two systems. Both alert me through email and Pushover. Both are controlled through Indigo Touch. Both have VPNs so I can access them remotely. Both will automatically restart the modem and router in the event the internet goes down. Both Macs can be power cycled remotely if they freeze up. So far so good. Homes are monitored for temperature. Water leaks (though main water valves are automatically turned off when home is vacated). Security. Fridge and freezer temperatures. Electricity consumption. Water consumption. Some lighting. Door locks. Cameras.


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Posted on
Sat Dec 11, 2021 3:33 pm
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1072
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: Managing two locations?

It sounds like OP would like to find a way for the 2 houses to communicate with each other as well as controlling them both like you are @Dual. Am I right @kadluvu ?

Posted on
Sun Dec 12, 2021 4:42 am
mclass offline
Posts: 312
Joined: May 13, 2015
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Managing two locations?

Until recently I have had three properties, each with its own Indigo license. Each property was operated as separate residences, so that I found no need to integrate all three.

I too managed these using Indigo Touch. allowing access to each property. I accessed the systems using VPN or Screens for Mac, and found this a satisfactory solution.

The big benefit is that following the recent sale of one of the properties, I was able to simply leave the purchaser withIndigo operating and am able to transfer the license to thrm

Unless there's a pressing need to integrate both properties, I suggest you go the multiple license route.

mclass

Posted on
Sun Dec 12, 2021 9:22 am
kadluvu offline
Posts: 6
Joined: Mar 18, 2016
Location: Portland, OR

Re: Managing two locations?

Here is the data i left out. The other site is a building i bought for my business and woodshop. Some of the automation i would like:

If there is a security trigger at one location, actions are taken at both (this is the main need - which can be accomplished with email or messaging between them.)

One screen to see the lock/open/close status of all doors (for an ipad that is primarily a control panel screen) - this type of thing would be difficult to manage dependably IMHO

None of this is “i can’t live without”, but i thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else had experience with this.

BTW: i was not talking about VPN into the site to control it, i was thinking about creating an ipSEC tunnel so, in effect, the two buildings would be on the same local network.

Posted on
Sun Dec 12, 2021 10:27 am
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1072
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: Managing two locations?

From the networking perspective, I think you can achieve 2 houses operating on the same local LAN through your VPN solution. You'll need to designate a subnet range in one house , say 192.1.68.0.1/100 and then designate another range for the other house, say 192.168.0.101/200 .

This will seemingly give you the desired effect of having 2 branches of a small business operating on the same network from different locations. It would probably be helpful to have static IPs on both sides, but I'm sure you can work around that.

Where I think we'd need Matt or Jay to weigh in would be how the Indigo server software, reflectors , Mac Mini's and Interfaces would need to be configured.

Posted on
Sun Dec 12, 2021 11:30 am
FlyingDiver offline
User avatar
Posts: 7184
Joined: Jun 07, 2014
Location: Southwest Florida, USA

Re: Managing two locations?

I think a more robust solution would be to use MQTT to send device states and status reports between the sites, using the MQTT connector and (possibly) the Shims plugin. That would require a cloud based MQTT server, but it would not require any sort of running VPN, You could do the same with email, but sending complex data via email would be more challenging to create/parse.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Sun Dec 12, 2021 2:28 pm
neilk offline
Posts: 713
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: Managing two locations?

Would the Rest API not be a simple solution.

For the security triggers you can call an action. Group on the remote machine when the trigger fires, and you can use variables to represent the device states you want to show on the control oages, with triggers set to make the rest call to set the variable when the states change

That way you don’t need to do anything too exotic and you should be able to cover your use case.

Neil

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