Vonets Wireless Bridge and Innuos

No Ethernet in the living room and not practical on the short term, but, good wi-fi. Acquired an Innuos Zenith and to get up and running I was recommended the above device. A Vonets VAP11N-300.

Instructions are useless as is the video. Several things I’m not clear about. Video says you can configure it via laptop or smart phone. Suggests you need to plug the Ethernet into the laptop to configure but isn’t clear whether that’s for configuration or just because afterwards that’s the device you’re going to use it on. Ditto with smart phone set up. Appears to set up a new hot spot but it’s not clear whether that’s just to give you a choice using the phone or whether that then means the wi-fi to Ethernet has been set up so it can be used on any device. Also I’ve a laptop with wi-fi but no Ethernet connection and a home PC with Ethernet but no wireless card.

Having got it to set up a wi-fi hot spot last night we reset it as it wasn’t obvious what to do next. It’s supposed to be fully functioning from a reboot but the web page froze and as I say, what the heck next?

I don’t want to unbox the Innuos and DAC; plug in and find that I’ve no network connection.

I came across this page at How to Set Up the Vonets Wifi Bridge which suggested I could unplug the ethernet on my home PC and plug in the Vonets Ethernet And configure from there. I plugged it and booted it up. Browser wouldn’t go to 192.168.254.254 which is the pre config page nor the Vonets.CFS page which is post configure. Bizarrely it then let me onto the internet. I’ve no idea how. There’s no wireless network card in the home PC and the normal Ethernet cable from the router was unplugged as there’s only one Ethernet connection and the supposedly reset and unconfigured Vonets was using it.

It‘s now flashing blue and fast which suggests it’s a hot spot but my iPad can’t see it nor can my sons iPhone. No idea what to do next and I just want to get the Innuos up and running for Christmas. Is it meant to be a hot spot? What the heck is going on.

Mike

As delivered it would appear that the bridge is setup as a wireless hotspot with it’s own SSID and password. You can use this to access the device to do it’s initial configuration.

Once connected it seems that you should be able to access the configuration pages and then join the bridge to your existing wireless network. i.e. the Vonets SSID is only used to access during configuration.

If you can access in this way and setup then perhaps you could unplug the ethernet connection on your desktop and replace with the bridge to verify it’s working before unboxing the exciting stuff.

Thanks. That’s the bit I’m not getting. You login to 192.168.254.254 and find the Vonets device. Having done that you go to Vonets.cfg and find your home network and login to that like you would for any other device you want to add to your network. After a reboot that should be it.

We couldn’t see anything new happening beyond the creation of a 2.4Ghz hot spot named as an amended version of our home network and in retrospect there probably wouldn’t be until tested on the home PC or the Innuos. Doh.

The hot spot was working as my wife was able to switch her iPhone to it and browse as per normal but obviously we don’t want an extra hot spot. We just want to bridge. So, we made the hot spot invisible in the settings and then in frustration attempted what we assumed was a successful hard reset so we could just start again.

Since then the hot spot has disappeared from all devices as you might expect but equally I’d have expected to be able to get back in to the config to change from the default password. I can’t get the site to open on any device.

So, when I removed the router connected ethernet cable from my home PC and plugged the Vonets in it was in expectation that I’d successfully reset the device and was going to reconfigure from scratch. A little bit surprised then that I once again couldn’t get into any config pages but a PC with no ethernet connection to the router and no wireless network card was suddenly online. If it’s working then brilliant but I’d still want to get in and change the default password and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why not.

If turning off the visibility of the hot spot has messed anything up it doesn’t seem to have prevented the PC connecting but you would think there would be a way to get back to the configuration of turning the visibility off was an error on my part.

Having just fed my stressed little face and probably made the bad decision to have some coffee I think I’m going to see if I can replicate the PC behaviour. Logically if I can then I may as well unbox everything; plug it in and see if it behaves the same and when attached to the Innuos and gets it online and visible in iPeng and MyInnuos.

If it doesn’t… running 50 to 60 foot of Cat 5 isn’t an option at present so I may have to look at a different bridge.

Am I making any sense here? Off to try and replicate the PC connection which suggested it is working as a bridge.

Does it have a hard reset button so you can start again?
You would only connect to it temporarily on your phone when its a hotspot so you can teach it your own wifi settings, after that it should be happy to connect itself to the internet.

It does @robert_h. Hold it down for 30 seconds and you should be back to default settings. Despite doing that at least twice it has managed to connect the home PC to the internet without any further configuration. No longer sure what is going on.

If your laptop can use it to get to the internet then it should be working ok. In bridge mode, it will effectively give wifi access via its short attached lan cable to a device that doesn’t itself have wifi connectivity, and isn’t connected to the lan network either.
So plugged into the innuous would give internet access to the innuos.
Because it acts as a repeater as well when it is doing bridge mode, your phones will see it as another available wifi connection, but just ignore it.

I saw one review which said that it’s setup as a bridge by default, can’t find the review now!

I think the hard reset hasn’t worked and you actually have got it working OK.

The IP address for the config page will change once it’s on your own network. The 192.168.254.254 address is a temporary address just for initial config as there will be a default address in the bridge and an internal DHCP server running so the device you are using to configure it will get an IP address on the same subnet as the bridge.

Once the bridge is setup and on your network it will get an IP address from your DHCP server, likely to be your router. This will almost certainly be on a different subnet to the original address.

With the bridge switched on as it is now you should be able to scan your network for the bridge. Use a tool like Advanced IP Scanner which you don’t even need to install and see if it finds it. Once you know its address you can connect using a browser with the new address and change the password.

1 Like

Thank you both. Attached to the PC a second time and it’s connected without hesitation a second time. So, off to do some unboxing.

@robert_h we can no longer see it as a hot spot as we turned that optyon off. I thought that may have complicated things with the bridge side of things but apparently not.

Whilst you’re here I don’t suppose you know of any issues running 3.5V into a 202 from a Hugo TT 2 when in DAC mode. I can (hopefully) figure out how to put it in Amp mode and then lower the voltage if needs be. It was suggested on the “End of my tether”thread that it ran hot for one users taste and didn’t give a sufficiently wide range when adjusting volume but are there are technical reasons why it might be an issue?

@trickydickie yes of course it should now have a new IP and I shall go find that forthwith and report back once I’ve tried to login.

2 Likes

Do you have a legit link for this as a search is suggesting only downloads?

It’s here https://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/

Download it and then run setup, you can then choose to install or run standalone without installing it.

Once running it should find your subnet, just click on the green Scan button and it will search your network for all connected devices.

1 Like

Yup, that did it. Found it; logged in; confirmed it is working in bridge mode and then changed the password. PC off and I am off to unbox and connect “stuff”.

I owe you one.

3 Likes

That’s great news. Hope all goes well.

2 Likes

I now have to sit tight and wait for a 15 year old to finish watching the ever so cheerful “Outbreak” and then the living room is mine. Fingers crossed.

I’m sure he has some studying to do!

Sadly this is wind down time after his 4 hours of revision :slight_smile:

I need to make sure that progresses to 8 or 9 hours.

Our daughter was at the same stage last year and worked like a demon over the Christmas holidays, unlike some of her friends.

The mocks went very well and were key to her teacher assessed grades for the ‘real’ GCSE’s in the summer. She ended up with one 5, two 6’s, five 7’s and two 8’s. We suspect she would have pushed the 5’s and 6’s up a grade or 2 if she had taken the real exams but given the circumstances we were all delighted.

It was hard work for her but she is so please she worked so hard as at the time there was no indication of how things would turn out.

Given the current uncertainty I’d recommend the same for your son, we could again see teacher assessments being used.

It’s a little on the high side but not excessively so, you’ll just get ‘loud’ sooner on the volume control. If you have the option to lower it, it would be advantageous but it wont be broken if not.

1 Like

Thanks @robert_h.

School have said he needs to be doing 4 hours per day. I think that’s a minimum but I’ve been tuned out. He’s on for 7 to 9s all round if he does the work but he’s still not accepting that the mocks are likely to be the only exams he does this year.

He was very lucky as school were already set up for remote lessons many years ago so he just came home in March and did Zoom lessons alongside my wife and I in the study. He probably wasn’t best pleased about it but it was one less thing to worry about from our perspective. He’s back in a socially distanced classroom at present and the positive impact on his mental health has been huge.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.