Tag Archive: beacon

When using the JNIOR Supporter, you may notice that not all the information from the Beacon tab can be displayed at once. To make specific JNIOR data easier to view, you can modify the Beacon tab to change the order and width each column has, or remove columns all together. When on the Beacon tab of the JNIOR Supporter, while clicking and holding on the left or right border of a column header, you can drag how much or how little each columns width is. If you hold down on the middle of the column header, you can drag where you want the column to be between the other columns. If you don’t want a column displayed, under the Beacon tab is the ‘Select Columns’ option. Unchecking a columns checkbox and selecting OK removes the column from Beacon. Any changes made to Beacon are persistent, so you don’t need to reset them every time you launch the JNIOR supporter.

The Beacon tab shows you information about the JNIORs that were found.  The Beacon technology uses UDP over port 4444.  A UDP broadcast is used when discovering JNIORs on the network.  UDP broadcasts are usually blocked by routers therefore restricting the UDP broadcast to the local segment of the network.

Beacon Tab of the JNIOR Supporter

Right-click for options

Right-clicking presents you with actions that can be taken for the selected JNIOR.

  • Query All – Broadcasts the Query message to the Network to ask JNIORs to report back
  • Query – Broadcasts a query message to only the selected JNIOR on the network.
  • Identify – This will flash the amber status LED on the selected JNIOR for a few seconds. 
  • Set Hostname – A prompt will be presented asking for the new Hostname.  The current Hostname will be pre-filled.
  • Enable DHCP – Enables Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Rather then manually setting the IP of the JNIOR, if the network the JNIOR is connected to has DHCP enabled, it scans the network for valid IP addresses that aren’t already taken and assigns one to the JNIOR.
  • Configuration – The Network Configuration dialog will be displayed.  The choice between DHCP and static addressing.  If a static IP Address is chosen then you will have the ability to enter IP Address, Subnet Mask, Gateway Address and DNS Servers.
  • Reset Attention Flag – Attention flags are messages that are displayed in the Message column of Beacon. Selecting this will clear all messages in the Message column of Beacon. (If errors are being thrown they will re-populate until they are dealt handled.)
  • Reboot – This will reboot the JNIOR. Rebooting will make the JNIOR disappear from Beacon for a brief moment.
  • Launch WebUI- This will launch the main web user interface for monitoring and controlling the I/O as well as general JNIOR configuration.
  • Open Telnet – Opens a telnet session for console level access. Here is a link to different telnet commands a JNIOR can be given.
  • Task a Snapshot – Initiates the Snapshot process. A snapshot is a copy of a JNIOR configuration, downloaded as a Zip File. These can be used to move configuration from one JNIOR to another, or to debug/troubleshoot JNIORs.
  • Show jniorsys.log – Loads the jniorsys.log.bak and jniorsys.log files into a dialog for real-time viewing.
  • Show/Remove errors.log – With these options you can either load the errors.log.bak and errors.log files into a dialog for real-time viewing, or remove them from the JNIOR.  This option is only enabled if the Attention flag indicates that there is an errors file.
  • Show/Remove dump.log – With these options you can either load the dump.log.bak and dump.log files into a dialog for real-time viewing, or remove them from the JNIOR.  This option is only enabled if the Attention flag indicates that there is a dump file.
  • Copy Field – Copies the data inside the field that is selected in Beacon. This is to easily grab values from the Beacon tab if needed.

Some Series 3 are not up to date enough to appear in beacon, which can make it very confusing to update to a new version in the Support Tool. Here is how to update a JNIOR that isn’t showing in the Support Tool.

The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure that you have the support tool downloaded from INTEG’s website. Here is the link to download the support tool. You’ll also want the newest all-in-one update project for the Series 3, which will include the newest version of the OS inside of it. The Series 3 all-in-one is located here.

Once you have both of those downloaded, you’ll want to open the support tool and go to the update tab.

Update tab for the JNIOR Support Tool

Once you are at the update tab, you want’ll to click the open project button and select the series 3 all-in-one update project you downloaded earlier and open it in the update tab.

All-in-one Update Project

Now that the all-in-one is uploaded to the update tab, we want to publish it to the JNIOR. Click the Publish button and a dialog will appear to select JNIOR’s from Beacon to update. The issue here would be that the JNIOR you need to update won’t appear since its version doesn’t have beacon. What to do instead is to type the IP of the JNIOR in the space provided.

Custom IP field for JNIOR update selection

Once you have typed the JNIOR’s IP into the IP space provided, click OK and the JNIOR should begin to update. Afterwards, it should now appear in beacon.