Owner's Manual (Complete)

Chapter 24—Client Server

The Home Control Assistant

 System Tray on startup

You can direct the HCA Server to minimize itself to the system tray upon startup. This is

similar to the system tray option in stand-alone HCA on the startup tab.

The last section of the client-server tab has to do with the HCA Security model. When you select

Home – Properties from the HCA menu, on the security tab you can assign several different

passwords. The one password important for this discussion is the Remote Access Password. This

password is checked each time a remote access client attempts to connect to the server. This

password is requested by a HCA Client, the Web Component, and by

HCA for Android.

In order to make it simpler for you on an internal network – your house-side of the firewall – you

can assign a password to your design but configure the server to not request the password from

some computers – identified by a range of IP addresses. You should, of course, only use this

password suppression on internal IP addresses.

You can start the HCA server from the Windows Start button. Once started its main window

appears:

This the whole interface for the HCA Server! We did say it has a very minimal user interface!

The status bar shows the port it is using as well as the number of currently connected clients. The

title bar shows the filename of the loaded design file. The menu selections are:

 File – Open

Open a selected file

 File – Minimize to system tray

Store HCA Server as an icon in the system tray. This is different than using the minimize box

in the title bar which minimizes the application to the task bar.

 Tools – Remote Access Viewer

This opens a window where the various messages that flow between the client and the server

display. This is largely for diagnostic purposes of technical support. Also displayed in this

viewer are any log entries generated by the server in a compressed form. You can use this

dialog if you want to be reassured that the server is doing something.

 Tools – Show Connected Clients

Opens a dialog that shows the IP address of all connected clients

Once the design is loaded by the server, it is operational. Schedules run, triggers are responded to,

weather observations taken, etc.