Hello,
I am looking to use a few RIO deceives as remote I/O cards on a PR1. What is the best way to set this up? The two RIO’s will be on separate networks from each other and the PR1. I have added them to the Codsys project and see they talk over Port 2001. I have tried forwarding this port but with no luck.
Thank you,
Can you provide a network architecture, so I can better understand your approach here.
Also, I would recommend, as a best practice with Codesys, that you place the devices under their appropriate ethernet adapters:
The EPIC rack should always be configured to lo(localhost/127.0.0.1), and any external devices under their appropriate adapter(eth0,eth1,wlan0,tun0…).
Make sure when configuring these you use the ellipsis (. . . ) and select the appropriate adapter.
I wanted to add in what has been said before, that THIS IS NOT THE BEST PRACTICE METHOD FOR CONNECTIVITY. You are opening a lot of security risks by doing this. I would recommend using a VPN, and with the groov EPIC and RIO, an OpenVPN Client is already onboard.
OpenVPN now has a very slick OpenVPN Cloud Solution
Thanks! One thing I thought of, is to verify that the firewall rules on the RIO allow access on 2001 for the appropriate port.
Public service announcement:
From a security standpoint, this is not a good practice - as in this is a very bad practice.
Please look into setting up a VPN between these sites. The RIO and EPIC PR1 have an OpenVPN client built-in; you would need to provide a server (perhaps if you have shell access on the PR1, you could configure it as an OpenVPN server). I would normally recommend setting up a certificate authority and issue certificates to devices, but using a shared key (randomly generated preferred) would be easier in this case and infinitely better than what you are doing now.
Let us know if you need guidance or help with any of that, as OpenVPN can be challenging to setup the first time.
Seconded! I got a huge shock once when a customer sent me a groov View project to troubleshoot, I loaded it up on my workstation, and it immediately connected to their devices on the other side of the world. 
To Phillips point, setting up the free, open-source OpenVPN Server on any server is indeed challenging. The open-source OpenVPN Server doesn’t include a GUI or helpful tools to get started easily and quickly.
However, OpenVPN has recently introduced OpenVPN Cloud, a paid-for commercial VPN-as-a-Service offer that makes it dramatically simpler to configure a VPN for you (Users), your PC clients (Devices under Users), and all groov EPICs and groov RIOs (Hosts).
Best news? The OpenVPN Cloud service is free to sign up for, and allows for 3 free clients.
Stay posted for a video tutorial coming soon! In the meantime, reach out to me, Garrick, Terry, or Ben for steps on how to get started with this very cool service.
-Benson
Thank you for the advice on OpenVPN. I will try and push the client in that direction. Sadly, I don’t have a lot of say at this customer’s site as they have a 3rd party that manages the network. I have used OpenVPN in the past on an AWS server and I remember the setup being a little cumbersome so I am happy to hear it has been improved.
