Ok, that helps me answer your question. First, what you want to do is possible. But let me give a little background first.
VirtualVP itself isn’t a driver and doesn’t include any drivers. But, it relies on drivers to do what it does. To allow other weather programs to connect to VirtualVP via serial communications (COM ports) requires a virtual serial port driver like N8VB_vCOM. This driver makes connected pairs of serial ports. VirtualVP connects to one end of the pair, the weather program connects to the other end of the pair, and voila, VirtualVP and the program can talk to each other. This type of connection only works with programs that are running on the same computer.
TCP/IP communications is handled by something called WinSock, and that is just part of windows. It’s not a driver you need to install. So VirtualVP can communicate via TCP/IP without anything else needing to be installed. TCP/IP supports communications within the same computer (using “localhost” as the host name), or between two different computers through a nettwork. Now, for another program to be able to talk to VirtualVP using TCP/IP, that program must support TCP/IP communications. Right now, the only weather program that can do that is VPLive. BUT, there are drivers available that can connect to a TCP/IP source (such as VirtualVP) and convert that into serial communications, creating a virtual com port for use by a program that expects a serial connection. So, you could have PC1 running VirtualVP, and then on PC2 you could have Redirector configured to connect to one of VirtualVP’s TCP/IP ports, and create a virtual com port (COM6 for example). Then you could run WeatherDisplay on PC2, configure it to connect to the COM6 port that Redirector made, and then WeatherDisplay on PC2 can communicate with VirtualVP on PC1.
This is how you’d run what you described:
** Weather PC **
Install the N8VB_vCOM driver with its default configuration
Run VirtualVP with all serial and TCP/IP ports enabled
Run WD connected to COM6
Run WeatherLink connected to COM7
Run VPLive connected to COM8
configure StartWatch to monitor Port 5514 (one of VirtualVP’s ports), have it start VirtualVP first, and then have it start the other weather programs when the VirtualVP port becomes responsive (this is the sure way to have the weather programs start after VirtualVP is all done initializing and is ready to serve out the data)
** Laptop on LAN **
Install Lantronix Redirector driver - configure it to connect to WeatherPC port 5511 and map it to COM6 (whicch Redirector will create as a virtual com port)
run WD connected to COM6
run VPLive connected to WeatherPC port 5512
** remote laptop **
Assumes you’ve set up port forwarding in your router at home so that port 5513 is forwarded to the weatherPC, and that you understand the security vulnerabilities this can present. Also strongly suggest you configure VirtualVP with console protection on this port so other people can’t send any commands to your console that change data in the console.
run VPLive connected to your home IP address (the one your ISP assigned to you), port 5513
I don’t recommend the remote scenario unless you understand the security ramnifications, and how to protect against them. Anytime you open any ports up into your LAN for any reason it opens a potential avenue for exploitation. There are other ways to achieve this that are much more secure, although not as “realtime”.
Steve