iPad app

[ChrisOlson]

The only internet we have is cellular so we use iPad Air tablets for most things. After all these years, is there a Local Status Panel app for the iPad? I can create a local network with my iPhone and connect to my Classic with my Mac mini. But I'd like to use the iPad, if it's possible.

Thanks!

[ClassicCrazy]

Do you just want to monitor the Classic , or be able to change settings too ?
I believe Midnite gave up on working with the Adobe Air platform which is what the Local Status app uses. The intitial idea was I think that Adobe Air would work with anything.
But if you just want to be able to monitor - there is a side shoot of Classic Monitoring app for apple . I don't know how far that got in development but here it is if you want to investigate.
https://github.com/ClassicDIY/ClassicMonitor-iOS

Larry 

[ChrisOlson]

I just want to be able to monitor it. It looks like those two developers jumped thru a bunch of hoops to use Test Flight. I'll just clone the git repo on my Mac and build it with Xcode for the iPad to try it out.

Thanks!

[ChrisOlson]

I did not realize that Midnite stopped development of the Local Status Panel. On their website there is another third party app, but it's for Windows. Nobody uses Windows anymore, that we know of. And then they have the My Midnite cloud service. But many off-grid people are not going to have the type of internet connection required to use that. We have controllers out in the utility room and we just want to be able to look at what they are doing from the house so it's more convenient.

Thanks for pointing out the monitoring app for iOS/iPadOS. Once I get it built and loaded on the iPad I believe this will meet the needs of what I was looking for.

[boB]

Hey Chris !!  Long time no hear !!

If you can add Adobe AIR on the Ipod, then you should be able to use the local app.

Adobe AIR was/is a multi OS platform for running the same software on those systems.

It was really Adobe that stopped updating AIR and so we didn't continue.  Besides, the engineer that wrote the "Local App" retired except for basic questions once in a while.

AIR seemed like the almost perfect platform for this kind of stuff.  However there is Java in its different forms that would work.  Wish there were engineers out there that knew all of the different ins and outs of these systems including embedded design, but they are far and few between.  At least they aren't out of work anyway.

Give it a try.  Adobe AIR that is.  I don't think that Adobe has pulled it ?  They just aren't supporting it anymore.

boB

[ClassicCrazy]

The company Harman has taken over keeping Adobe Air going
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2019/05/30/the-future-of-adobe-air

[ClassicCrazy]

I just want to be able to monitor it. It looks like those two developers jumped thru a bunch of hoops to use Test Flight. I'll just clone the git repo on my Mac and build it with Xcode for the iPad to try it out.

Thanks!

Graham helps with his apps when he can , so ask him if you run into any issues .
Larry

[ChrisOlson]

Hey Chris !!  Long time no hear !!

If you can add Adobe AIR on the Ipod, then you should be able to use the local app.

Hi boB! Yeah, I guess since we retired we haven't been on the internet very much.

Adobe Air for iOS is built into an application image and bundled with it as a runtime library instead of being a standalone runtime library like it is on desktop applications.

I cloned the Classic Monitor code from github and tried to build it. Got a couple errors from the compiler because I'm using a newer version of Xcode than that project was built on. I'll either update the code so it will build on Xcode 14 with Swift 5.5 or download the older version of Xcode that project was built on and build it with that. It looks like the project was abandoned at a working beta version 1.0, which will be plenty fine for what I need.

[ChrisOlson]

I built the Classic Monitor that Graham Ross wrote for my iPhone SE 3rd gen. This is AFTER I straightened out the problem with the signing certificates in the Xcode project. Anyway, I got it to build, set my iPhone up in developer mode and loaded it, it works great. The app is fairly simplistic and probably better suited to iPhone than the iPad's larger screen. But it does what I was hoping it would do.

Thanks again!

[ClassicCrazy]

I built the Classic Monitor that Graham Ross wrote for my iPhone SE 3rd gen. This is AFTER I straightened out the problem with the signing certificates in the Xcode project. Anyway, I got it to build, set my iPhone up in developer mode and loaded it, it works great. The app is fairly simplistic and probably better suited to iPhone than the iPad's larger screen. But it does what I was hoping it would do.

Thanks again!

Glad you got it working.
The other approach is to get an inexpensive ( or free) android phone or tablet and use it just for monitoring.
There are so many unwanted phones out there that would work just fine for that- no phone service needed just wifi.
Larry

[ChrisOlson]

Glad you got it working.
The other approach is to get an inexpensive ( or free) android phone or tablet and use it just for monitoring.
There are so many unwanted phones out there that would work just fine for that- no phone service needed just wifi.

Well, kind of the problem with that is that we don't have wifi here. The Classics are hooked to an old wifi router that's set up as a wifi client. We used to have a Schneider Combox hooked to that too, but that Combox quit years ago. So the wifi is created by an iPhone or iPad becoming a router and DHCP server and we suddenly have a LAN for things that need it. Our Apple devices don't need a LAN otherwise. They can print to our AirPrint printer, share files with AirDrop, even our AppleTV 4K can just use AirPlay and connect thru one of our iPhones or iPads to get TV.

The only time we need a LAN is to use our Mac mini or access things like the Classics that still use IP networking.

When Schneider quit making and supporting the Combox, they went to a new gateway device with "cloud" data. Absolutely fabulous idea except it assumes people that live off-grid have the same broadband internet as people that live in the big city. Except we don't. And don't even mention StarLink - been there, done that, tried it, it was an expensive joke.

[ralph day]

Hi Chris
Good to see you posting again.
I keep getting Starlink ads and info because I espressed an interest years ago.  Not any more.   Ma Bell has been installed an functioning very well.  27Mbps download speeds, no interruptions, generally great service compared to what I''ve put up with before.

Xplornet (the other big player in my area) would upgrade/build a tower, things would be great until they oversubscribed it and service would tank.  Seems to be their business model.  Internet via space polluting billionaire product doesn't appeal to me.  Did you have lousy service or what?

Ralph

[ChrisOlson]

Hi Ralph,

We got it, it worked for two months and then quit working. That's when we found out there is no customer service. There's no email address, no phone number, the only way to contact them is to submit a support ticket on their phone app. A year later they still haven't responded to that and the only way to stop them from charging us the monthly charge was to put a stop payment on the credit card.

So it did not work for us and we have $600 worth of equipment we bought that is totally useless. Meanwhile, Verizon did some upgrades to the tower at Birchwood, which is about 20 miles away, and we get 2 bars of signal in the house on our iPhones or iPads. Which gives us about 24 Mbps, but that's plenty fast enough if we want to watch Discovery+ or something on the TV. My FlexRadio does not work from remote on cellular because of too much latency. But I connect the Flex-6300 to the Mac with a Cat5 cable, the Mac connects to my iPad with wifi and I can still use the Flex from the iPad anywhere in the house, or run digital modes on the Flex with the Mac. Marcus, DL8MRE, wrote a quite nice SDR client for the FlexRadio on the iPad



This is the main reason I wanted StarLink - I thought it would be possible to use the ham radio from the iPad if we're out in the boat or something. Or if I go on a field day with the club I can use my iPad from remote and connect to the Flex at home where I got the big antennas. And it DID work when StarLink worked because StarLink had very low latency, even though part of the connection to the remote iPad was over cellular. But with cellular for both the uplink and downlink, I get a lot of drop-outs on the audio from the Flex.

If I create a wifi network with my iPhone and place it by the sliding glass doors that go out to the patio, then we can get up to 54 Mbps on the cellular. So it works fine for us and maybe costs a bit more than StarLink for four devices with unlimited data plans, but we would have those anyway even if our StarLink would've stayed working.

[boB]

I just found that Star Link is one of those  GC-NAT ISPs that does not allow port forwarding if you needed that.

There are ways around this evidently so we will have to figure that out for our in-progress com box that can serve up web pages.

IPV6 needs to come of age I guess.

Did someone say  HF net ?  Maybe 20 meters some day ?  I have working ham radio in Arizona when I am here.

boB

[ChrisOlson]

I just found that Star Link is one of those  GC-NAT ISPs that does not allow port forwarding if you needed that

That's because StarLink controls the router and NAT is done on their end, not at your router. You need to make your own VPN server with a Mac or Linux computer behind the router to access your network with VPN. This is not ideal because, once again, the latency is 300+ ms.