Remote obs...What remote desktop software?

[bert]

Hi Guys,

I am putting the finishing touches on a new remote automated observatory, I have an adsl connection nearby and a static ip. Just after some info on what software you guys use for controlling the computer remotely. I am looking at team viewer atm and it seems the goods, but I am after experiences of others.

The computer in the obs is a dual core windows 7 machine.

Thanks
Brett

[mill]

I am using tight VNC and it works very good.
Best of all it is for free :)

[mill]

Just tried teamviewer and it is a lot harder to set up than Tightvnc.

[thunderchildobs]

I am not sure if the free version of VNC works with windows 7?
I was using the free version on my local network with XP, vista but couldn't connect to windows 7.

Brendan

[AstroJunk]

er, why not use windows remote desktop connection!

Win7 to Win7 is brilliant

[bmitchell82]

I have used team viewer for a fair while now and its crazy, i have my inside desktop, my eeeepc, and 2 friends that live along way away. so thats connecting via Lan and via web. works seemlessly!

I don't know how you found it hard martin. my dad managed to run it and he has issues finding Firefox icon on the desktop :S :D

[Merlin66]

Team Viewer seems to be the flavour of the month. Got good reviews.
I'm just waiting on my 20m Cat 5 cable to give it a go.....
I'll have the ol' Acer XP3 in the observatory and a new Aspire Win7 on the desk....

[Astroman]

I just set up a win 7 to xp remote desktop, using real VNC, workes okay, but still trying to figure out how to see my webcam pic from it...

[jamiep]

Ditto,

what's exactly wrong with the inbuilt windows functionality in ths case?

Remote desktop works fine, is free, and requires very little setup ... most of the windows servers around the world are controlled using this mechanism ...why not take advantage?

Jamie

[Tandum]

Remote desktop requires the remote machine to be Windows 7 professional and above.
I use vnc here, my remote machine has win7 starter on it.

[bmitchell82]

team viewer has web cam chat file transfer the lot. Its also very quick at doing what it does to boot its free for non commercial use that is it is actively supported with new features and any bug fixes. As for flavor of the month i have been using it for a year and a half :)

[joshhagger]

I agree with the others, TeamViewer is great. Can access it from anywhere without having to worry about firewalls or port forwarding, also, you can have more that one person connected at once.

I liked it so much, I talked work into replacing their previous remot support tool with the commercial version of it.

[rally]

Brett,

RealVNC has the advantage of being multi cross platform compatible
all Windows, iMac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Linux/Unix etc

But ultimately you may find that for your automation (once things are sorted out) you will create your image run schedule on your local machine and upload the schedule and run that remotely - either using ACP or maybe CCDWare.

[AstroJunk]

Team viewer looks pretty good. How does it handle video streams?

[Gama]

Im running vista32 on my remote desktop, and Win7 as my regular computer in my office. Works, and has worked for a long long time now. Without a hitch, and updates my screen at less that 0.5 seconds refresh rate, and im running 1920 x 1080 full 16 bit color.

Theo

[allan gould]

I'm using remote desktop on my machines and both are XP and not win7.

[Tandum]

Then drop the 7 if you must use a 10 year old windows :P and call it Windows Professional/Business and up.
Windows labeled, Home or Basic or Starter, don't have an RDP server built in.

[allan gould]

OK - XP Pro is the software.
I use 10 yr old software because it works and there are drivers for all I need.
Remote desktop also works with RDP-lite and Teamviewer on my Ipad - is that OK for cross platform?

[bartman]

Just downloaded TeamViewer and the iPhone app.
I am amazed!
Within a few minutes of setting up I could control my desktop with my iPhone!
Very easy
this last sentance i write from my phone.... awesome!!!

[Merlin66]

As I said...just seems to work- and work well - what more do you want from a "freeware" program???

[lhansen]

TeamViewer does it for me. It handles multiple screens on the client computer, connection is simple, it is fast and free. On Windows 7 it has a slightly larger processor overhead than it does on Windows XP, but at least it works reliably.

I have had reliability "issues" with Microsoft RD from a Windows 7 machine to a Windows XP system, I have experienced none with TeamViewer.

I run 2 observatory computers and connect to both via TeamViewer. I also have a SAN that provides a common storage area for both the observatory computers and the image processing machine that allows me to monitor all aspects of multiple imaging sessions from the comfort and safety of the house.

thats my 2c worth

[higginsdj]

ACP from DC3 Dreams - designed solely for the purpose of remote and automated astronomical observing.

Cheers

David

[bmitchell82]

ACP is also about 900 dollars more expensive than team viewer! Great program but overkill for the majority of us:thumbsup:

[frolinmod]

That's just the starting point for ACP. It goes up from there. And don't forget the yearly maintenance fees. :eyepop:

A tip for anyone who wants to run TheSkyX over a low bandwidth connection, go into Tools->Preferences->Advanced and set the Target Frame Rate to 1 or even 0. Then minimize TheSkyX whenever you're not actively needing to see it onscreen.