Especially with the pandemic, a recurring question we get is “Can I operate the SV Suite remotely?”. The answer’s a resounding yes, but it does come with a few caveats and, depending on the implementation you choose, will require some LAN networking adjustments. In the sections below, we’ll attempt to walk you through the various “flavours” of remote operation, and you can decide which one would suit your workflow best.

At its most basic, the UI of the SV Suite is just an interface hosted locally on the Seervision server, and you access this interface through a browser. Any attempt to remotely control it will concretely mean that you’re looking for a way to remotely access the server and the interface it serves. Both of the approaches below will walk you through how to get that done without needing to install anything on the Seervision server itself – all of the routing is done using your own available infrastructure.

The easiest way is using any remote desktop software. There’s lots of software that does this – at Seervision, we’re pretty partial to Parsec, as it plays nice with discrete GPUs and is one of the smoothest implementations we’ve seen so far. Of course, there’s plenty of alternatives that will work just fine.

The setup

Connect the Seervision server and the PTU as you usually would, and use an on-premise device (laptop or desktop) to confirm everything works as expected. Once it’s up and running, install the Remote Desktop software of your choice, and leave the machine running (you can turn off the display, but don’t let the machine go to sleep).

Once remote, log in to the machine via your Remote Desktop software, and you should be able to operate the system from wherever you are!

With the VPN approach, the goal is to be able to access the Seervision server’s IP by routing your remote traffic via a VPN that is on the same network as the server.

The setup

The first step is to set everything up normally, and to make sure that the machine that will be the VPN endpoint is already able to access the Seervision server’s IP and UI as normal.

The second step is to configure this machine as the VPN endpoint. Most VPNs will work, though we like the open-source Wireguard the most as it’s probably the lowest-latency one we’ve seen, and has seen rapid adoption across the digital world. Alternatively, our go-to is ZeroTier which is also a wonderfully performant alternative. Note that ZeroTier would require additional configuration to act as the bridge network (as that’s not its default intended use-case).

We don’t have an in-depth guide to offer here, as the configuration of the VPN heavily depends on the available networking infrastructure and what exactly it is that you want to do. Of course, we’re happy to help out and offer some ideas, just shoot us an email!