Having trouble making my hass.io accessible to the internet

I’ve spent the last few days trying to configure hass.io to turn on my miilights.

I’ve decided to go the IFTTT route after giving up on the google assistant component configuration.

Anyway, I’ve got the IFTTT trigger service available, i’ve set up a recipe and an action to turn on my lights. But nothing works, I think the problem is my Ip address. I’ve forwarded port 8123 of my hass.io local ip address - but because like most people, my main pc is behind a VPN (PIA) - so I’m not really sure how to have IFTTT access my raspberry pi. I enter in my public ip in the web request applet section of IFTTT - but it doesn’t call the service through my main pc’s ip address.

Any ideas on what I’m doing wrong?

I doubt that is as common as you think.

Have you verified that the port is open on your router? You should be able to check with several different websites.

When I go to canyouseeme and type in the port - it just says connection refused. that’s probably because it’s my vpn ip address. (it won’t let me put in any other ip) any workarounds that you know of? thanks in advance

That’s why it won’t work.

well, i guess It’s time to just bite the bullet and buy some hue lights. i’ll turn the pi into an nintendo emulator like it was always destined to be.

Why?

Just use the right IP address. Disconnect from your VPN long enough to test the port forward.

sorry man, thought you were telling me there was no hope.

ok, i disconnected and checked the port on my normal IP address. canyouseeme says it’s open.

perfect.

Shouldn’t your IFTTT be pointed to your PI (public IP) and not your local desktop (VPN IP)?

that’s what I thought but every tutorial I’ve watched kind of glossed over this part and no one mentioned anything about being behind a VPN.

Is there an easy way to figure out my public PI address? I’ve used fing to figure out it’s local ip address - but I have no idea how I would get its public IP address. I’m obviously new to this, my apologies.

edit: duh, it’s the same one. i’'ll edit the recipe and report back

because that is not a common configuration at all.

your internal IP and external IP are different.

sorry i meant my non-vpn public external ip address would be the same across all my devices.

ok new problem but it feels like I’m making progress:

on the hass.io home page I get invalid authentication login errors from random ip addresses every time i check the applet or run the recipe. i’ve double checked my webhooks api key, my ip address must be correct or the errors wouldn’t get logged - any ideas what i could be missing? thanks again for helping me out.

oh my god it works. i just erased the body of the webhooks applet - ran the voice command again and it worked. don’t know why exactly - but i feel like i just won a lottery.

thanks again for all your help. mission accomplished.