What do you use to remotely connect to your Blue Iris PC?

[105437]

I run my Blue Iris PC in a data closet and have always used Microsoft Remote Desktop to connect to it to admin things while on my LAN. Using this remote connection is really a convenience thing for me and has worked well over the past several years. Recently, I've noticed that connecting this way causes Blue Iris to spike to ~100% CPU. When this happens... Blue Iris sometimes recovers, but other times I have to reboot the PC.

Microsoft Remote Desktop was updated within the past month, I'm wondering if the upgrade somehow caused this. In the meantime, I'd like to know what other remote control applications others use and have had success with. I'd like to try something different and see if the issue happens or not.

Thanks

 

[Holbs]

I had remote desktop to work when I first started things. Somewhere on later, the darn thing wouldn't work at all. Super frustrated. Went to research and found cabillions and cabillions had the same issue with RDP. Ended up going Chrome Desktop remote for temporary purposes. Dont like using it long term but works in a pinch.
I'll probably revisit this issue soon, now that I have my security lighting, outdoor lighting, and have all camera's mounted and angled the way I want.

 

[105437]

I had remote desktop to work when I first started things. Somewhere on later, the darn thing wouldn't work at all. Super frustrated. Went to research and found cabillions and cabillions had the same issue with RDP. Ended up going Chrome Desktop remote for temporary purposes. Dont like using it long term but works in a pinch.
I'll probably revisit this issue soon, now that I have my security lighting, outdoor lighting, and have all camera's mounted and angled the way I want.

I'm going to start looking for alternatives. I appreciate your reply and I'll check out Chrome Desktop. Thanks

 

[Holbs]

there is also Team Viewer.

 

[JNDATHP]

tightVNC.com. For remote, ie non local LAN, we use our VPN to connect.

 

[Sonomascanner]

TeamViewer....or realvnc

 

[Sonomascanner]

And.... Whatever use I was set up two-factor authentication and strong passwords.... On a side note duo is a company that you can use for two-factor authentication with remote desktop protocol

 

[105437]

Thanks for the replies. I just tried Chrome Desktop and it used a little more CPU than I would like. I'll check out tightvnc.

 

[mikeynags]

VPN for remote access and RDP. Haven’t experienced any issues with it. Been running that way for years.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[105437]

I have TeamViewer working, looks pretty good so far. Thanks

 

[Sybertiger]

Mostly RDP. Sometimes TeamViewer. OpenVPN plus RDP or TV when out of network.

 

[smoothie]

I use RDP with my setup on my LAN without much issue. Sometimes the video playback, which I watch at 4x, gets jumpy but pausing the playback for 5-7 seconds seems to reset the issue. I pause until the static image blinks for an instant then playback is smooth again. This seems to happen more often with BI5 than it did with BI4 but I only moved to 5 this past weekend.

BI5 has their "remote management" option which you might want to check into. My understanding is that it requires an additional BI5 license if you wish to use it as the remote management console after the trial period expires but I could be wrong. You could try it out for the trial period and if it meets your needs perhaps it is one way to address the issue.

I would guess that if the BI PC is spiking to 100% cpu and this is a new behavior perhaps something has changed. Perhaps update your video drivers on your BI PC and your originating desktop. Check the temp folders on the BI PC and make sure they aren't full of left overs. You can find the two temp folders on the BI PC at:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp
C:\Windows\Temp
If there is a bunch of stuff in those folders, more than 2 digits worth, you would want to reboot the BI PC then open those folders and delete everything inside them. There may be some files that cannot be deleted so you can just skip those. On very rare occasions I have seen software put files into the temp folders that you are able to delete but they are required for the software to work. This is very rare and is generally considered poor coding.

Another thing to consider is if the controlling machine has been changed to a higher resolution and you are running RDP in full screen. If the BI PC doesn't have a powerful video card and you are running a high resolution on your controlling PC the RDP session will have to redraw the BI PC desktop and apps at a much higher resolution than it may be easily capable of.

Perhaps open task manager with "more details" so as to see what process is burning all the CPU when you connect, it may help shed some light on what is causing this.

For remote access I use OpenVPN to my firewall then the BI web interface to the private IP or RDP to the private IP if I need to extract footage remotely which is very rare.

 

[105437]

I use RDP with my setup on my LAN without much issue. Sometimes the video playback, which I watch at 4x, gets jumpy but pausing the playback for 5-7 seconds seems to reset the issue. I pause until the static image blinks for an instant then playback is smooth again. This seems to happen more often with BI5 than it did with BI4 but I only moved to 5 this past weekend.

BI5 has their "remote management" option which you might want to check into. My understanding is that it requires an additional BI5 license if you wish to use it as the remote management console after the trial period expires but I could be wrong. You could try it out for the trial period and if it meets your needs perhaps it is one way to address the issue.

I would guess that if the BI PC is spiking to 100% cpu and this is a new behavior perhaps something has changed. Perhaps update your video drivers on your BI PC and your originating desktop. Check the temp folders on the BI PC and make sure they aren't full of left overs. You can find the two temp folders on the BI PC at:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp
C:\Windows\Temp
If there is a bunch of stuff in those folders, more than 2 digits worth, you would want to reboot the BI PC then open those folders and delete everything inside them. There may be some files that cannot be deleted so you can just skip those. On very rare occasions I have seen software put files into the temp folders that you are able to delete but they are required for the software to work. This is very rare and is generally considered poor coding.

Another thing to consider is if the controlling machine has been changed to a higher resolution and you are running RDP in full screen. If the BI PC doesn't have a powerful video card and you are running a high resolution on your controlling PC the RDP session will have to redraw the BI PC desktop and apps at a much higher resolution than it may be easily capable of.

Perhaps open task manager with "more details" so as to see what process is burning all the CPU when you connect, it may help shed some light on what is causing this.

For remote access I use OpenVPN to my firewall then the BI web interface to the private IP or RDP to the private IP if I need to extract footage remotely which is very rare.

Thanks for the reply! The 100% spike is from the BI app when I check Task Manager. The Temp folders had already been cleaned out. Since changing to TeamViewer last night, it hasn't happened.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Chrome Desktop was very seamless to set up and lets me do most tasks on the PC, albeit a little clunky (like if you need to "ESC" a fullscreen window and have to send a CTRL-ALT-DEL instead, and 2-finger equivalent of right clicking is inconsistent). Its performance varies a lot as you might expect with the connection quality of the mobile device but am impressed how much I am able to do remotely with it.

 

[HugChopShop]

VPN to the network. tightVNC to the PC.

 

[Jurek.Kurianski]

Hi, it depends what do you need to do with BI.
You can access BI on local lan via browser (I am using Chrome or Firefox). You need to set up in BI Settings -> Web server. Enable http local lan ip address access.
If you want to control IB via HTTP API json commands, use Github software in Phyton ( by Magnus Appelquist magapp/blueiriscmd) or my Java port jurek1oo/blueiriscmdj. Let me know how it went. Jurek

 

[Zanthexter]

Splashtop Personal: Remote Access Desktop Software

Splashtop Personal is free for personal, non-commercial use on your local home network. Log-in from anywhere by subscribing to the Anywhere Access Pack.

www.splashtop.com

Handles video pretty well, and isn't overly expensive.