Remote display and keyboard question

[Techmech]

Hi,
I have my home office (hut) located at a distance of around 30m from my house. My main pc is located there but I'd like to be able to use it from an alternative location in the main house. How could I do that?

Basically I'd prefer to limit the hardware in the house to a display plus mouse a keyboard plus maybe some other smallish bits but preferably not another pc. I can run cables between the locations easily enough.

Why? you may ask. The pc in my office is a pretty expensive workstation used for high end CAD and the licence for the software is specific to that installation. The licence can be transferred to another machine but time consuming. I don't want to buy another expensive pc to use in the house.

Any suggestions at all?

 

[carnageX]

If it's connected to the internet, or at least your internal network, just remote desktop into it.

You can use the built-in Remote Desktop program in Windows, or use something like TeamViewer, Join.me, or UltraVNC.

 

[iFargle]

(or Chrome Remote Desktop!) I use it all the time at work. So long as both computers have Chrome running using the same account you won't have an issue.

 

[Techmech]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the suggestions of using remote desktop or Chrome. I hadn't thought of that. However, these methods obviously require the use of a local PC which I would have preferred to avoid. In addition, what happens if the remote PC in my office has gone to sleep? (I.d like it to)

Is there any way I could simply run cables from my office to serve the remote monitor and keyboard? I could have a manual switch of some type that I could set to 'Main house' when I leave the office. An automatic switch similar to a KVM switch would be even better.

So, to redefine my preferred objective;

1) The PC in my office is allowed to sleep,
2) I could have a lower specification PC in the main house,
3) I'd prefer not to have to log on using remote desktop as it appears a bit time consuming to log on etc.
4) I can run any number of cables between the locations,
5) I don't want to use the internet,
6) I don't want to use wireless.

Is that enough of a challenge yet?

 

[iFargle]

Hmm.. There is an upper limit to how long a cable can be before you see signal degradation. I don't exactly know how long and if you'll need signal boosters, but that's a definite wall you'll have to hurdle

Sent from my One using Tapatalk

 

[DistraughtSysop]

You can use USB active extension cables for the keyboard and mouse, and you'll need powered signal boosters for the video cable, which might mean extension cords. At that distance I think you'll need very long extension cords, several signal boosters and a lot of active extension cables. The maximum effective length will be different depending on whether you are using VGA, DVI, or HDMI, so just google it. It won't be pretty or elegant but it should work, although having multiple extensions on the same line always makes me nervous. In essence, you are just adding super long cables to the keyboard, display, and mouse. You wouldn't need a KVM switch, just connect an extra keyboard, mouse, and monitor at the office location and set the display to duplicate.

Personally, I'd rather not have such a huge mess of cables over such a distance. I'd run a single network cable from the workstation to a router in the house and connect using a PC in the home. The home PC doesn't need to be anything fancy since the workstation is doing all the heavy lifting and the home PC would just be a glorified terminal. Remote desktop is also quite fast over a LAN connection.

Either way will work.