[SOLVED] Openhabian Remote Access configuration for windows machine on different network

Hi all,

I am running openhabian on a raspberry pi and wondering about the best approach for remote access. I need to access the raspberry pi from a windows machine which is located on a different network. The IP address of the raspberry pi will not be static. I have seen that there is a cloud service for openHAB https://github.com/openhab/openhab-cloud/blob/master/README.md but is this for more front end controlling the lights when someone is not home etc?

The ideal situation would be to provide all the functionality and accessibility SSH provides when the window machine is on the same network.

Thank You

Can you be more clear about “different network” is it over the internet or just another subnet?

Lastly, unless you have a full dns setup so everything can be done by hostname the pi really needs a static ip. This is to avoid future problems when yo u add a feature like mqtt broker to you pi.

2 Likes

It would be over the internet so if the raspberry pi was located in a home X km away I could access it from anywhere through a windows machine as if I was on the same network.

I am hesitant to give the raspberry pi a static IP as I am looking for a solution which does not rely on me knowing the IP address at all times. A cloud service possibly that could allow me to interface with the raspberry pi but giving full access to all the features on the raspberry pi.

In this type of example your best approach would be setting up a VPN service between the two locations so both networks appear local to each other.

There are also lots of remote access services a quick google search away. But none of this is really openHAB specific so you will probably find better over all support searching Google. Though the topic comes up here on the forum often so there might be some useful information for you through a search of this forum.

So having the RPi change it’s IP address periodically forcing you to look it up every time you want to connect to it is better? The only difference between a static IP address and a dynamic IP address is the static IP address never changes. This is a really good thing when you are dealing with running services that need to be accessed from outside the machine itself.

Configure your gateway to assign the same IP address to the RPi every time it boots. On your local network you can access it using raspberrypi if running stock Raspbian or openhabian if running openHABian. That’s what hostnames are for, to give you a name you can remember.

2 Likes

Thanks for the feedback,

So if I set up a vpn to the network the raspberry pi was on and kept the raspberry pi at a static IP on the network, I should be able to use ssh to connect to the raspberry pi through putty or another terminal?

Yes.

1 Like

Thanks Rich :+1: