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Screen Control

edited October 2019 in SecuritySpy
Just wondering if anyone has had a chance to try the screen control feature recently introduced.

I am having issues where the screen stops updating after a few seconds and it doesn't appear to pass keyboard or mouse comments through. SS is running on an original 5k imac, and im viewing the remote screen on a current 5k imac. There doesn't seem to be any CPU issues either end and there is a 20Mbit uplink from home to work (where i also have a decent connection).

I have allowed all the security spy modules to access the system etc. I can't see anything in the logs relating to this feature.

Comments

  • Could you please let me know what web browser you are using? Does it consistently stop working every time? Also, is the amount of time before it stops working the same each time, and roughly how long is this time?
  • Hi Ben,

    Browser was safari. It seemed to stream the remote desktop for a few seconds then stop. it was roughly the same each time.

    Just tried from home over the wifi, rather than over the internet. This time I'm using an old Toshiba laptop running Windows 10 and Chrome. I notice that the pointer location on the laptop doesn't match the pointer on the imac. The streaming of the desktop image appears to just be laggy by around 10seconds.

    An example of the mouse cursor issue: If i move the mouse pointer using the mouse on the windows laptop whilst looking at the imac, i can (for example) hover a hyperlink in safari. If i then look at the remote view of the desktop on the windows machine/chrome - the mouse cursor is no where near where it is on the imac screen, it's not on the hyper link but on the menu bar of safari.

    Moving the cursor using the toshiba mouse is jumpy on the imac, looks like a video at 1FPS. The delay is around 1second between moving/clicking and seeing an update on the remote end.

    CPU load on the imac is around 30%, on the toshiba is around 70% (its an old laptop).

    Imac is on the wifi connected at around 200Mbit, receiving 5Mbit from remote cameras. Toshiba is connected to the wifi at 240Mbit.
  • This is odd, we've tested extensively in Safari, Chrome and FireFox and can't reproduce these issues (though all our testing has been on Mac, not Windows, as this is what the vast majority of our customers are using).

    Focussing on testing on Safari running on your Mac, could you please try this:

    - Enable Safari's Developer menu (under Preferences -> Advanced)
    - From the Developer menu, select "Show Javascript Console"
    - Load the Screen Control page.

    Do you see any warning/error messages in the Javascript Console?
  • edited October 2019
    i suspect the remote screen is freezing as my remote imac is running out of memory. I closed all other applications on my imac, and the remote screen has been updating for a minute now. Its currently consuming RAM upto around 2.8GB for the safari process, then falling back to 900MB, then climbing again (must be a cleanup process running at some point).
    I can see that the remote view PNG images loading constantly, around 400KB to 2MBytes each. I can see these loading OK now.

    The mouse and keyboard are not responding here from work, it did last night. I will check the privacy configuration to ensure SS has appropriate access to the system later.
  • Does the remote system downsize the screenshot before saving as a png? I assume decompressing and showing multiple 4k images in safari is whats causing the high resource requirements.
  • The safari tab is currently consuming an increasing amount of RAM upto 4GB so far.
  • I think these issues are due to the Retina screen in your iMac: the Screen Control feature is attempting to stream at a resolution that is too high, which explains the lag, high memory usage, and incorrect mouse positions.

    So, I have made adjustments for Retina displays (basically imposing a maximum resolution, and scaling down on the server if necessary) in the latest beta version of SecuritySpy (currently 5.1.1b9) so please install this on your server and let me know how it performs.
  • I've downloaded the beta. I received the following error when trying to run it: "SecuritySpy" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information.
  • Never mind, I've right-clicked open on the application and its loaded. I will test later today.

    Thanks!
  • Just for completeness for anyone else having issues with this new feature - the Bensoftware team have resolved issues with screen-control on remote 5k screens. Updates are currently in the beta, and appear to resolve the issue.

    Also, if things run a little slow, try hiding the 'all cameras' window on the remote machine. This area of the screen is constantly changing, which requires lots of bandwidth to send the changes to your browser.
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