Anyone out there use team viewer to manage a remote site? I use it to remote-desktop into the observatory PC which runs Kstars.
A couple of days ago I got a popup saying "commercial use detected" and its prompting me to buy a licence. I thought I should pay but its actually pretty expensive and I'm not sure I qualify as commercial use. The observatory doesn't make any money

Anyone else get this? Are there any alternatives?

Thanks,
Derek

You are certainly not a commercial user....
Just use VNC it’s free and much easier to use...

www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/

Real VNC,last time I looked, is NOT free (it used to be but sadly no longer - 3yrs) - its only "free" when you use is the following ways:

1. Using RealVNC server on a RPI (never requires internet to work)

2. Using a cloud installed Realvnc server license - note this will ALWAYS require a internet connection to work .

The Realvnc viewer is totally free.

You can look at NoMachine. There is a free version for personal use and, from the few times I used it, it seems to be more responsive that VNC.

www.nomachine.com

stash, the RealVNC Viewer is free and that’s what AstroNerd is referring to. I use the x11vnc server on my Linux machines which is free and works very well. I use the RealVNC Viewer on all my Mac devices and that is free and works very well as well.


Wouter

Forget TeamViewer, just use AnyDesk

i wrote "Real VNC,last time I looked, is NOT free (it used to be but sadly no longer - 3yrs) - its only "free" when you use is the following ways:

1. Using RealVNC server on a RPI (never requires internet to work)

2. Using a cloud installed Realvnc server license - note this will ALWAYS require a internet connection to work .

The Realvnc viewer is totally free."

Which states the "Realvnc viewer is free" but just also points out that server part of REALVNC is ,sadly ,now not free (except as stated ). Just in case he was thinking of using the Realvnc server on the Obsys "PC" and the Realvnc viewer on the clients .

I have used both viewer/client made by Realvnc for about 15 yrs and is my preferred product combination.

Of course the user could be referring to a Windows "PC" and also mentioned "remote desktop" - so perhaps we should have asked for more info first (which OS) to give a more precise advice

I don't see what's the fuss is about?

Hi,
Although I’m am not a huge fan of Microsoft products, I must say that the Remote Desktop protocol is very good regarding responsiveness and performance.
I installed xrdp on my raspberry and I am quite happy with the performance.

Regards
Dirk

If the observatory is truly remote and not just in your backyard on the same network, VNC probably isn't ideal as it is quite bandwidth and latency sensitive. I have my remote observatory 65 km away on 4G modem and use X2Go (x2go.org) to operate the machines there. I also used NoMachine for a while and it worked fine too, but the image quality wasn't always suitable for checking subframe quality during imaging for example as it's video based where as X2Go sends pixel perfect data as it's essentially just compressing and caching X server traffic. Unfortunately there aren't clients for mobiles, only Linux/Mac/Windows and also you need to handle NAT issues yourself, I use OpenVPN to bridge the networks.

I use VNC a lot, for telescope computer control but also for my build and test server on the cloud. There is no need to use other software than the one provided by the Linux distribution.

If the remote computer has a real screen I want to share, I just run the vino server included with Ubuntu.

On a headless computer I install vncserver, using one of the alternative, both vnc4server and tightvncserver work for me.
A detached session is started by an init script. Something like: /bin/su - $VncUser -c "/usr/bin/vncserver -geometry 1680x1050 -depth 24 :1"
In the user home directory create a .vnc directory to contain the password file and the xstartup script to start the desktop and the application you want.

The client I find the more stable and easy to use is krdc, a KDE application.
If the client is on your local subnet you can just connect with : krdc vnc://host:1

For remote access over Internet the best is to use ssh to encrypt the communication. You probably already have ssh configured for shell access. Be sure the vnc port is blocked by the firewall and only the ssh port is open.
For VNC create a tunnel with : ssh -N -p 22 -L 5902:localhost:5901 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Then connect using: krdc vnc://localhost:2

Patrick

Had this too.

Nevermind.
Just keep canceling this messages, and they will stop...

cheers
Niki

Thanks for all the tips everyone!!! VNC is a little bit difficult. The obs is not in my back yard and actually its internet connection is strange. I don't have a public IP so I cant port forward vnc traffic easily. I can't even ping its gateway address from outside that net.
I have a small linode server on the internet and a raspberry pin in the observatory opening a reverse ssh tunnel out to that. So I can ssh into the observatory from the internet by using this linode as a jumphost. Painful yes.... Teamviewer is useful in that your target machine just needs internet access and not a public ip. It uses teamviewer's servers as an intermediary. I guess I could also tunnel vnc traffic back through the linode too..

I'll try nomachine and anydesk thanks!!

Derek