Controlling LED Signs Over Local Network Or Public Internet    
  

There are two basic ways to control Asayo LED signs over a network, either within a local private network, or over the public Internet.
 

Local Network LED Signs

An LED sign that is connected to a local network, is only accessible to people that are connected to the same local network.

If your local network consists of a single network switch, then controlling LED signs via your network is simple; you just need to determine the local IP address that is assigned to the Ethernet-to-Serial adapter that connects each LED sign to your local network.  If your PC and your LED signs are not connected to the same network switch, then talk to your network administration, as the setup issues may be more complicated.   Below we show how LED signs can be connected to a local network switch.

Each LED sign has it's own local IP address, 192.168.0.6 and 192.168.0.7 in this example. The 6001 number is the port number that the adapter listens to.  The Ethernet-to-Serial adapter can use any port from 1000 - 9999, and here have selected to use port 6001.  You can change the 6001 port to another number in the Ethernet-to-Serial adapter, but whatever port number you use, you should use the same number for each LED sign, to make remembering the port number easier for the users.

In the above example, the each PC user can communicate with one LED sign by using IP address 192.168.0.6:6001 and can communicate with the other LED sign by using IP address 192.168.0.7:6001.
 

Public Internet LED Signs

With a public network setup, your LED signs will be accessible via a public IP address.  This means that anyone connected to the Internet, who knows your LED sign's public IP address, and who knows the port number, and the LED sign protocol, can send messages to your LED sign.  To prevent unauthorized persons from sending messages, you can give each LED sign a password.

With a public network setup, you would connect your LED signs the same way as in the local network setup above.  The difference is that the local network switch near the LED signs, does not have to be the same network switch that the PC user is connected to.

The illustration below shows how LED signs can be hooked up to local network switches, which are then connected to the Internet via fixed public IP addresses.  For your particular network configuration, you will need to talk to your network administrator on how to set up your LED signs so they can be accessed via a public IP address.

In order for this public setup to work, the network switches have to have a fixed public IP address when they connect to the Internet, so the address does not change each time you access the Internet.

The network switches also have to be configured to forward data coming in on port 6001 to the LED sign with a particular local IP address.  For example the network switch in Miami with the public IP address of 24.3.97.98 needs to be configured to forward data coming in for the public IP address of 24.3.97.98:6001 to the local IP address of 192.168.0.3:6001.  The network switch in Seattle needs to be configured to forward data coming in for the public IP address of 44.7.15.22:6001 to the local IP address of 192.168.0.5:6001.

Once the proper port forwarding is set up (different switches may have other names for this capability), the user only needs to know the public address and port number for each sign, namely 24.3.97.98:6001 for the Miami sign, and 44.7.15.22:6001 for the Seattle sign.

By default both LED signs are also available to anyone on the local networks, if they use the local IP addresses, namely 192.168.0.3:6001 in Miami, and 192.168.0.5:6001 in Seattle.
 

Sending Messages To Network Signs Using Asayo LED Sign Software XL

Our LED Sign Software XL is setup to handle LED signs connected to a local network, and signs connected to the Internet.  You can specify in the XL software, via the program's preferences, that the Default Send To location is an IP address rather than a serial COM port.  For example…

Default Send To      192.168.0.3:6001      (a local network IP address)

Default Send To      24.3.97.98:6001        (a public Internet IP address)

At the beginning of your messages, you can also specify the Send To location as an IP address in the {sendto:...} command.  Here are the same examples using this method…

{sendto:192.168.0.3:6001}

{sendto:24.3.97.98:6001}

Using the XL software's shortcut definition feature you can give your LED signs regular names, such as Detroit, or sales.  Then, when you want to send messages to the sign in Detroit, just place {detroit} at the beginning of your messages, or {sales} at the beginning to send your messages to the sign in sales.

 
Software Developers

We now provide two ways to integrate LED signs into your own software . . .

 
 
 
 
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