Remote Access into Heating Control

Our village hall has got to the commissioning stage of their new heating control.
I received a query from one of the engineers today regarding the hall's internet.
We have a BT Business ADSL service with a Business Smart Hub and a static IP address.
The engineer from his office cannot ping the BT hub and nor can I from home. Looking on-line it seems that BT have not enabled ping and there does not seem to be a way to enable? However, my concern is not whether the hub is "pingable", but whether there will be problems trying to set up the remote access.

Thinking about it, there must be many, many BT residential customers who use a Hive or similar central heating thermostat with remote access. However I believe Hive works via a central system, in a similar many to virtual meeting software.

To put it another way, if you wanted, from a smart phone to access your pc, what would you need to do on a BT Hub?

Thanks.

Cheers!

NOTHING !


Previously I have had various BT Business Smart Hubs - on FTTC and then on FTTP always with static IP. They are fine without any additional set up - TBBs BQM works fine, my alarm is fully accessible and controlable, lights, and my network gateway.

Have you tried running BQM to see what happens there? Both IP4 and IP6.

As MHC as said nothing.

All the things you have mentioned apart from being able to ping the router connect out to a server to establish whatever remote access is needed.

Thanks
Dan

As said many, if not most mainstream “home automation” apps and devices are designed out of box to not require any user (re)configuration of their network for normal operation and remote access.

This is because they are designed as “cloud aware” infrastructure from the outset - they typically create their own seamless secure tunnels for comms back to their remote servers and for your remote access, usually overcoming network obstacles and obstructions like for example of your were using wireless 3G/4G/5G broadband then the carrier grade NAT malarkey that comes with that territory.

Therefore, as said, there should be nothing you need to specifically change for this to work . Although I don’t run Hive for CH and HW - I use Nest (historically) and now a mix of Tado and Viesmann ViCare, all of them work in the same seamless manner.

Remote access to your own network and devices including laptops and PCs is an altogether different affair, but I won’t confuse matters more by delving onto that now! 😀

I see a number of people have said there is nothing to do but I don't think you actually said what heating control system it is. If it connects to a central service then the others are likely correct. If the heating control is on the local network and requires remote devices to connect to it directly then it would need appropriate port forwarding to be configured on the router.

Believe it’s Hive as noted in Mariners opening post. I recall he’s posted about the same topic in the past.

I’m not a hive user, but it is known to work with 4G based broadband solutions, so will have no issues with regular DSL or FTTC based connections either. No need for any fixed IP or any port forwarding etc for remote access.

They just work (as long as the internet connection is OK)

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 15-Jun-21 17:54:39)

It wasn't clear from the OP as Hive was being used as an example but using it as an example may mean it is the system in use.

I know our system at work (somewhat larger sites) is a proprietary building management system that is on the internal network and does not talk to any external cloud services.

In reply to a post by ian72:

It wasn't clear from the OP as Hive was being used as an example but using it as an example may mean it is the system in use.

I know our system at work (somewhat larger sites) is a proprietary building management system that is on the internal network and does not talk to any external cloud services.

There will doubtless be special ‘gateways’ and similar that the commercial systems will use to justify additional system cost for remote monitoring or cloud operation dare I say.

Mass market / resi / consumer grade systems have been tending towards having this capability rolled into the base product now for quite a few years. I know my old Nest system was doing this back in 2013 so yeah quite a while.

Hi Ian
Looking at my OP I can see that I did not make it very clear what the hall has.
It is a Building Management System based on a Siemens PXC4 Controller and a PXM30 Display.

It resides on the halls network connected to a port on the BT Hub. besides the PXM30 display, it can also be controlled by the Office PC.

The aim is for "trusted" users to have external access such as myself and the Manager.

In this respect, the BT Hub is not user friendly. From Google the Hub cannot be set for pinging and surprisingly(?) ThinkBroadband's BQM has the BT Home Hub& Smart Hub as being unsupported.

I am guessing/assuming that the ability to accept and reply to a Ping Request is not in itself a requirement (I hope not) in order for an external device to be able to access the Siemens kit. At least I have a static IP address, so I hope that this will enable me to have access from home. Not so sure about our manager, since she may rely on a smart phone...

When I was thinking about Hive etc (I don't have one or similar) I had not initially realised that you communicate through a "central office" I had been wondering since a friend of mind has either Hive or Nest and is with BT Internet.

Initially the system provider just needed a static IP address, which we have, so any pointers as to suggestions in our case would be appreciated.

Cheers!

To be blunt, the provider should be telling you exactly what they need fit internet connectivity and especially for remote access.

Unless you happen across a Siemens PXC4 bms guru in the wild here, we’ll all be stabbing in the dark somewhat.

For example they may simply use their own cloud connectivity, as explained above - in which case nothing really for you to do, other than provide a working internet connection.

Otherwise if they’re doing it the traditional / old fashioned way, you may need to open ports on the firewall in the SH and redirect traffic to either the Siemens controller or the host PC you mentioned. In which case any remote access would be via the static IP address of the BT connection. Or actually a remote VPN in this situation would be a more preferable, secure method of remote access - but I digress - see opening statement above about network requirements from the heating bms installer.

Edited by Pheasant (Tue 15-Jun-21 22:42:28)