Bob, thanks so much for your input, please keep us posted on your VIX issue.
I too was helped by Nicholas in a very timely manner via email. Great customer service, all I had to do was ask : ) All systems go !!
In case anyone else is having problems getting the API to connect 'll list what I ran into and what Nicholas advised me to do to resolve it.
I turned on the API settings in TWS via this how-to from OptionNet: http://support.optionnetexplorer.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/41
But I was still getting an API connection error.
Nicholas had me do the following test -
Client3 Test: 1. Open TWS 2. Open API Test program Client3 from directory C:\TWS API\samples\TestActiveX_VC\Release 3. Select connect and press ok within the Client3 test program. 4. Then select Req Contract Data 5. Within the contract description change Symbol to IBM (uppercase) 6. Type to OPT (uppercase) and press enter Within the TWS Server Response a completed request will be displayed as: ID=****==========END=========
I could never do this connection test because I got a "side by side ..." error message so he sent me this link , which had steps to resolve the "side by side" error message.
Once i did this I was able to run the Client3 program and thus view my active API connection. Once I fired up TW and IB data was getting to OptionNet everything worked fine.
Side note - I was a bit confused about the different flavors of TWS the stand alone downloaded version and the version that get's launched from the website.
I'll reach out to Nicholas but I think that one must use the standalone down loaded version to use the API is this correct?
Hope this helps. Thanks.