Connecting the Gateway to your home network

After you connected the Gateway to your boiler and the LED blinks slowly (preferably 2 flashes), you need to integrate the Gateway into your home network. To setup the Gateway you need a laptop or other computer with a web browser (or your smartphone).

Accessing the web interface of the Gateway

You need to change several setting in the web interface of the Gateway for it to connect to your home network. In order to do so, you need to access the web interface.

Item	Default value
Wi-Fi network name	ems-esp
Wi-Fi network password	ems-esp-neo
Default user	admin
User password	admin

When you get it delivered, the Gateway is in its factory condition. At boot the Gateway will create a wifi network called ‘ems-esp’ and the default password is ‘ems-esp-neo’.

Connect to this network with a laptop or smartphone. (Keep in mind as soon as you are connected to the ems-esp network, you cannot access the internet with the laptop.) Open a web browser and go to IP address http://192.168.4.1 (or try the host name http://ems-esp or http://ems-esp.local).

You will be asked for a user name and password. The default user name and password are both ‘admin’.

You will now see a screen that resembles the following one:

The main dashboard will give you an overview of what the Gateway has detected on the bus. If it has found a boiler, a thermostat and/or a mixer module etc it will show its main parameters.

Note

If your boiler/heatpump or other EMS device is not recognized on the bus we may need to add the ID to the database, please go to the Help page in the web interface and open an issue on the firmware repository from there.

The status tab should show a green icon and saying ‘Connected’. If it’s a red icon try reinserting the cable. If that did not help, just continue with the setup below, you might need to change the TX mode later on.

Making the appropriate settings

There are a lot of setting which are covered in the next chapters, but the first thing you want to do now is to set the Wi-Fi SSID and Wi-Fi password of your own home network. Click on ‘WiFi Connection’ and go to the menu item ‘Scan Networks’.

Click on ‘Scan’. You will get a list of all available Wi-Fi networks. Select the correct one or enter the details of your home network yourself. Click on ‘Save’. Now reboot the Gateway by going to ‘System’ and clicking on ‘Reboot System’.

The Gateway will now try to connect to your home network. If successfull, you need to figure out the IP address it got from your home router. If unsuccesfull, the Gateway will return to AP mode after some time.

Note

If you are using a mesh network, it is advised to fix the Gateway to a specific mesh node or access point via the BSSID option. BSSID is the ID of the network node. If you click on a network the BSSID will be filled in. This will prevent some WiFi instabilities that may occur when using a mesh network.

Finding the IP address of the Gateway

Now disconnect from the ems-esp network if you have not already done to and connect to your home network again.

Either log in to your router and look up the IP address of the Gateway or use f.i. the app ‘Fing’ on an Android phone to find the Gateway in your network. If you use Fing, the device will show as an ‘Espressif’ device with host name ‘ems-esp’. When you found the IP address of the Gateway you can open a browser and use that IP address to access the web interface.

Setting a fixed IP address

Set a fixed or static IP address for the Gateway in your router. Sometimes this is also called a DHCP reservation. This is necessary later on so that the home automation system will always be able to find the Gateway in your network.

Consult the manual of your router for instructions how to set a static IP address. Although not recommended, it is also possible to set a fixed IP address in the Gateway settings itself.