How to send RCI requests to connectport x4 in local application?

Python
1

I’m trying to querying the device states by sending RCI requests such as ‘channel_dump’, ‘channel_get’, ‘channel_set’, which is provided in RCI_handler presentation.
Since I’m not quite familiar with web programing [:(] , I wander:

  1. Am I supposed to usd http POST to send my RCI requests?
  2. Is it should be sent to the IP address of the connect port as ‘192.168.1.xxx’?
    Maybe a simple example will help me to solve these all, but I couldn’t find any on the website. (I read in some documentation that there do exists some examples in java and python, which I didn’t find)
    So please help!

wenshan

2

Hello,

I think there is an rci module you can import from Python to perform rci requests against the device itself.

Try to import rci and check available functions, I think the one you are looking for is ‘process_request’, where you have to pass the rci request you want the answer for.

For example:


import rci

answer = rci.process_request("""\

    
""")

Kind regards.

3

First step - I would look at this page:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/developer/index.php/RCI_Request

It includes RCI over HTTP, sent to (for example) http://192.168.1.1/UE/rci as a POST. This is talking to the X4, not Dia. Note that there is a ‘target’=‘zigbee’ which actually allows you to talk remotely to XBee nodes … but that’s another story for another day!

To talk to the Dia ‘rci_handler’, you need to use the ‘target’ attribute to ‘route’ your request. This page walks into that:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/developer/index.php/Simple_RCI_by_HTTP

(Note that the author of that page renamed the rci_handler to ‘dia_rci’, when it defaults to ‘idigi_dia’! Why would that idiot do that!!! … err, wait, I wrote that! Nevermind :slight_smile: )

4

Thank you, lynnl! It works now! [:))]

5

Hello, I hope this thread is relevant for this: what would be the RCI command to set time?
I have successfully used digicli, but that will not work on all devices (namely, it does not on X3’s).
Thanks in advance,
Christophe

6

SIGH there is no RCI command to read or set time. Sad? Silly? yah, I am not sure why!

So as you mention, the digicli is your only hope … but the X3 doesn’t support CLI. Problem, yes, but not because of the lack of CLI. The X3 ALWAYS sync’s its clock to the cell network. So if the cell network assigns the wrong time, you are stuck. Even if you could manually set time, the X3 would change it to match what the cell tower supplies. [:-/]

Can cell tower time be wrong? Sadly, yes. I’ve had big customers who had to stop using cell-tower time (on GSM) because they’d see the wrong date and/or time on from 3-4% of their sites.

7

Thanks Lynn. As you say, sigh :slight_smile: