Hey Phillip,
or maybe the connection was not made. Either the Onefinity Controller did not boot up correctly.
Are the lights directly on connector on both Ethernet ends on and/or blinking? Like this:
Especially when you plug in the Ethernet cable on every end?
And can you hear the fan of the Onefinity Controller running?
Hey I am so sorry about not responding to you. I was told since I was a newby I only had like 20 posts and they cut me off.could you give me your email? I understand if youâre hesitant. I just donât want to miss any of your suggestions in the future. Anyway, yes to your last post. All lights are blinking. I made a decision this morning rather than make this harder on myself and others trying to help me, that I would just purchase the tablet sold by 1F. Already purchased it and should be her in a couple days. I tried like crazy to find other ways to contact you but all I could find is youâre from Germany. So cool. Been there three times and would love to return once all this chaos in the world settles down.
Hey Phillip,
by coincidence I had the feeling to have a last look into here before going to bed and just read your posting.
The restrictions quickly go away if you continue to use the forum.
As for the display, it is not mandatory to use a Touch Display. You can use a mouse and a keyboard instead, combined with any old HDMI (or DVI-D or DVI-I which is compatible to HDMI) computer monitor, even an old TV that has HDMI would work, connected to the Onefinity Controller. Using a Touch display on a CNC Router comes from the desire to have a display directly at the machine where there could be wood dust which normal keyboards and mice donât like.
Unfortunately I cannot test something since at the moment I donât have the machine here. I just have the image of the Onefinity operating system loop-mounted so I could look at its default network settings.
Got to go to bed but I will send you a message
Thanks so much. Be safe.
I am both a fellow newbie (i.e., I feel your pain) and a hardware computer type. If I can help, please let me know - I donât want to but into middle of this but happy to assist if needed.
One quick thought, if you have wifi in your garage, you presumably also have a wifi router there. Most of these have Ethernet ports on them for local devices (like printers). You could try plugging your laptop â USBc â Ether Adapter cabling directly into the router. If all is good with this cabling arrangement, the laptop Ethernet port should get an IP address from the router and the router should see the laptop.
Hello John and thank you. My router is about 25â or so from my garage. I did it want to have to add another router in the garage to run an Ethernet. My wife signal is pretty strong. I think Iâll just purchase the monitor and hardware from 1F and be done with it. Too chaotic for me. Im ready to get busy with this monster in my garage.
Phillip - Totally understand. Out of curiosity, what model HP laptop do you have?
So out of curiosity⌠What is driving the desire to connect directly from laptop to controller instead of getting them both onto your wireless network? Is the controller not able to connect to your wireless because of weak signal?
It may be easier to get a wifi booster closer to the controller than to deal with flipping your settings around on your laptop when you want to use it in the shop vs house. For instance I had one of these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N8ROH7G?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share a few feet from my controller as it could connect well to my home wireless when the controller could not and then it presented the network to the controller.
Just wanted to be sure we were helping fully and not focused soley on the question as presented.
HP. Fairly new one I picked up at a pawnshop.
Hey Phillip,
it was only little later that I realized what I did not think of! Sometimes you simply donât see the obvious, even if you have done it a thousand times.
It was totally clear that you perfectly can connect the Onefinity Controller and a Laptop directly and many people prefer this (instead of the Touchdisplay offered) in order to see the camotics simulation.
The only thing is, you can do this over a router or you can do this directly. If you connect the Onefinity Controller and your Laptop directly, you have two machines that are both configured as DHCP clients which means they are both waiting for a DHCP server to assign them the IP address. The reason that I did not think of it in the first place is that I have my work machine always configured as DHCP server because when I am somewhere and quickly set up a network on the fly for document scanners, partner machine, NAS etc. I use my work machine as LTE router â and as DHCP server. And at home I have of course a machine that is configured as WAN router that does the DHCP service.
And in the Onefinity video linked abobe, they connect the Ethernet cable to a router, not to a laptop directly â and a WAN router is usually configured as DHCP server, so it works this way then.
But it would be overkill to get an additional router if you simply want to connect the CNC Controller to your laptop with an Ethernet cable.
Either the Laptop or the Onefinity would need to be set up as DHCP server. The latter is easy if you know how to do it, but the first is possible too. I donât know what your operating system is on your HP laptop (by statistics it should be Micro$oft Windoze) but anyway there are DHCP servers for every OS available.
Of course you could do a manual IP configuration without DHCP, but the situation you have here is that you cannot alter the Onefinity Controllerâs configuration before having access to it! And just want out-of-the box access to it with your Ethernet cable. In that case the Onefinity is simply a DHCP client waiting for its address to be assigned. As already said, the Onefinity Controller could easily be set up to act as DHCP server, telling your laptop its IP address for the new subnet (that consists of your Ethernet cable), but you will need to have access to its system configuration first.
Anyway since you ordered the Touch Display, you will be able to alter the configuration of the Onefinity Controller directly. One possibility would be to let it act as DHCP server so that connecting your laptop will work automatically when you connect it to the Onefinity, without having the need to install a DHCP server under Windows.
Iâm in a hurry and have no time, will write again later!
The controller and the laptop (assuming Win XP or later 
) will both bind a APIPA 169.254.x.x address without the presence of a DHCP server.
I tested this with a cable between the Onefinity controller and a laptop - can connect without any DHCP server involved.
Agree, Iâve had my pc connected directly from ethernet to ethernet for 2 years now⌠works flawlessly then I use Wi-Fi on the laptop to get online.
-Alex
You are a world of information and I think I know what youâre saying. No, I donât want to add a router to my garage. I want to run it off Wi-Fi. I think what youâre saying is the controller and laptop are computers and I have to set the laptop up as a DHCP server to have access to ip information on the controller. I would like very much to do that if you could perhaps walk me through that? And yes the HP operates off windows.
Hey Derek, hey Alex @MindOfMcClure,
ah okay, but Phillip still has âunconfigured networkâ on its Ethernet adpater on the Laptop when connected to the Onefinity Controller. This should not be the case then.
So Iâm not that computer savvy. Is there a video or something that walks me through this so I can operate off Wi-Fi while running an Ethernet to the controller and the HP laptop?
Not OF specific but overall idea is here:
This should help, but you are going to use your PC IP address not the internet in the URL of your browser.
The âunconfigured networkâ or âno network availableâ is a result of Windows attempting to use DNS resolve IP addresses on the internet as a connection test, if it can not it assumes the connection is not valid and displays an error. If you enter the address on the Onefinity controller (169.254.x.x) it works connects.
With the Wifi enabled on my laptop and a Ethernet cable between the laptop and the Onefinity controller I am able to connect by IP address (169.254.x.x):
The challenge is figuring out what address the controller has bound if you donât have a display, it could be anything in the 169.254.0.1 - 169.254.255.254 range (65k addresses)
Hey Derek,
ah okay.
Phillip has no display on the Onefinity so cannot see the address assigned, and Onefinity got rid of the little display on the case that Buildbotics has. I do not work with Windows, how can he see the address with his Windows Laptop?
No guarantee this will work but it did for me so something to tryâŚ
Click on the start menu > then type in cmd and hit enter - this should open a command prompt
Type in the command âarp -aâ without the quotes and you should see an output like this:
You are looking for the one that says âdynamicâ - it should be the Onefinity controller. This address may change every time you reboot the controller.