Step 4 · Gateways

Tell Harmony about the units on the network that reach your hardware.

A gateway is the box on the network that Harmony talks to in order to reach the hardware in a room. Nothing in the building can be read or switched until its gateway is here and online.

Go to Gateways.

The three kinds

BUS

An iNELS BUS central unit (CU3) — the usual backbone of a wired hotel installation. Lighting, heating, door and window contacts and service buttons all hang off it.

Needs: IP address and port.

eLAN

An iNELS eLAN unit, bridging wireless RF devices onto the network. Common in retrofits where running cable is not an option.

Needs: IP address and port.

API

Any third-party device or service reachable over REST — an energy meter, a bespoke controller.

Needs: IP address, port, and usually a username and password.

Add one gateway

1

Click Add gateway

2

Type

BUS, eLAN or API. This cannot be changed afterwards — delete and re-add if you pick wrong.

3

Name

Something a human will recognise a year from now. BUS first floor beats CU3-2. If one unit serves one room, name it after the room.

4

IP address and port

The unit's address on the hotel network, and the port from the unit's own configuration. It must be reachable from the Harmony server.

5

Username and password

Required for API gateways and any unit that is password-protected. Leave blank if the unit does not use them.

6

Save

The gateway appears in the table and Harmony starts trying to reach it.

Reading the gateway table

Column	Meaning
Gateway	Type: BUS, eLAN or API
Name	The label you gave it
IP address / Port	Where Harmony looks for it
Status	A coloured dot. Green means Harmony is talking to the unit right now; red means it is not.
Last sync time	When the unit last answered. A timestamp that stops moving is the first sign of trouble.
Action	Edit, reload or delete

Add one gateway, then stop and check it goes green. If the first one cannot connect, the same problem — wrong subnet, firewall, wrong port — will affect all of them, and you will have typed twenty rows for nothing.

Adding many gateways at once

For a hotel with one unit per room, typing them in is painful. Use the bulk import panel on the same page.

1

Download a template

Template XLSX or Template CSV — same columns in both.

2

Fill it in

One row per gateway: type, name, IP address, port, credentials where needed. This is where the spreadsheet from Before you start earns its keep.

3

Choose the file and click Upload & import

Harmony processes rows one at a time and shows a live progress table: line number, type, IP, status and message.

4

Read the result table

Failed rows say why — duplicate IP, bad port, licence limit. Fix those rows and import again; rows that already succeeded are not duplicated.

Cancel job stops an import in progress. Gateways already added stay added.

A large import genuinely takes time. Harmony deliberately pauses between rows so it does not overwhelm the units. A hundred gateways can take several minutes — leave the page open.

Reload a gateway

The reload action asks the unit to send its configuration again. Use it after you change something on the unit itself.

Reload deletes that gateway's settings in Harmony and rebuilds them from the unit. Any device naming you did for it is lost. The confirmation says so plainly. Use it when you mean it, not as a general refresh.

When a gateway will not come online

Work through these in order

1. Ping it from the server. No reply means a network problem, not a Harmony problem.

2. Check the port. A right address with a wrong port looks exactly like a dead unit.

3. Check the credentials. API gateways fail silently with a wrong password.

4. Check the address has not moved. If the unit is on DHCP it may have been given a new one. Reserve it on the router.

5. Read the Logs for connection errors mentioning that IP.