password protection Linkmeter Configuration

Hi. I am new to this forum but have read just about every post in here over the last 6 months.

I have a heatermeter latest version and the RD3 on my UDS. I ran it this weekend and it performed awesome.

Now I want to set it up to port forward so I can control or at least view the data while at work away from my home network. I have tried the steps listed in various posts and can't get it to work.

In the Configuration Screen it says I need to set up a password as shown by the text below.

No password set!
There is no password set on this router. Please configure a root password to protect the web interface and enable SSH.
Go to password configuration...

I am assuming that may be part of my problem with the port forwarding, maybe not. I dont know anything about this type of thing. however when I have entered a password and selected Save and Apply, it spins as in other attempts during set up but never really applies. It keeps giving me this No password set!

Am i wrong in my attempt to start setting up the port forwarding that I need to set up a password to limit access to the device?

Thanks for any help.

Sounds to me like you are asking about a router issue, yet you have not told us what router you are working with nor how you are using it? Or are you referring to the HM Config telling you there is no password set?

In general routers and the HM should have passwords saved, yes. If for some reason you can not save a password then you have some issue to troubleshoot on that device.

"The no password set" is on the heatermeter config screen not my Netgear router. I'll upload photos tomorrow.

If you can't set a password, your SD card is probably corrupt and mounted in read-only mode, meaning you can't make changes. Go through the process again of writing the image to the SD card.

OK, well then I have two comments then.

First off, port forwarding is configured in the ROUTER, the Heater Meter has absolutely nothing to do with port forwarding configuration. You login to your router via browser window, enter the port number (default being 80) for inbound and outbound port and enter the IP address that is assigned to your Heater Meter. You never actually access, edit, save anything on the heater meter itself when configuring port forwarding on your router....

The HM not saving password, even when you enter a password and tell it to save, that is an issue but not a port forwarding related issue... The HM should save your password, if it will not then it might not be able to write to the SD card, not every SD card works properly on the rPi. So that would be something to look into, trying a sdcard that is guaranteed compatible with the rPi. For instance, the card reader on your PC might read and write the card fine, so linkmeter goes down fine.... but then when you start changing settings, saving passwords etc through the rPi it doesn't save them, 'cause the rPi doesnt like your card... Or you could have bad communication between the HM and the rPi, cold solder joints on the rPi header on the HM, or the ATMega socket etc...

One easy thing you can do is reseat everything. Remove the SD Card, pull the rPi from the HM board, remove the ATMEGA from its socket. Then put everything back together. Sometimes this will clear up those kind of issues... Otherwise like I said, try another SD Card, perhaps reflow solder on the above mentioned sockets....

Setting a password on the webui is all part of LinkMeter and has nothing to do with the data stored on the atmega chip, so I would avoid pulling the atmega chip with regards to trying to solve this problem. In fact, you don't even need the raspi connected to the heatermeter board to set a password.

When communication between the rPi and the HM is spotty I've seen the system do all sorts of strange things, that's why I suggested reseating everything. Though as I said, I would suspect an SD Card issue is the humbug here...

Yes, I understand port forwarding is through my Netgear router and all setting changes take place there. I have gone through the process of setting up port forwarding already as described on the site. However I was not able to access the heatermeter. That brought up the question as to whether heatermeter was expecting a password to be set before it allows forwarding into the device. Again, I do not understand how this all works so I posed the question in an effort to learn.

I will try a new SD card tonite however I have been able to save and apply other changes to the heatermeter with no problem.

Thanks for the help.

Your ISP might have port 80 blocked, in the router setting use a different port like 8080 for the incoming then have the router forward 8080 to the HM ip address port 80. I find it works best for me if I give the HM a static IP address on the router so it does not change the IP address every time the HM connects to your network. Have you set-up a an account on no-ip.org to keep track of your public internet IP address?

If you cannot save a password on your HM then you do have some sort of problem, most likely a problem writing to the SD Card.

If you can access the HM from a computer on your network then the above problem has nothing to do with your port forwarding issue. Unless your IP address assigned to your HM is changing (which is not common, generally routers will "lease" an IP to a device and continue to assign the same IP to that device) the port forwarding should work. If the HM IP that works on your local network is the same IP that is entered in your port forwarding rule you should be able to connect to your HM from outside your network using your Internet IP.

If the above are true and it still does not work then most likely either your router or your ISP is blocking the use of Port 80. In that case what you need to do is add another listening port to the HM and then forward that port instead. Here is a link to a tread I started that explains how to do this:
http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?571...r-Meter-is-listening-on&highlight=change+port

Tonight I reflashed the sd card and plugged it in and was able to change the password! thanks for your help and patience everyone!