LabVIEW Idea Exchange

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altenbach

Cloud based remote panel connectivity

Status: New

 Connecting to remote panels using LabVIEW is difficult if private networks, local private and external public IPs (under NAT), and firewalls, etc. are involved. It requires significant knowledge as well as external networking configurations (port forwarding, etc.), and possibly admin privileges to modify those.

 

There are plenty of companies that have found a way around all this. The prime example is chrome remote desktop, which seamlessly works even if target computers are in hidden locations on private networks, as long as each machine can access the internet with an outgoing UDP connection. The way I understand it, each computer registers with the Google server, which in turn patches the two outgoing connections together in a way that both will communicate directly afterwards. All traffic tunnels inside the plain Google chat protocol (udp based). Similar mechanisms have been developed for security systems (example) and many more.

 

Since the bulk of the traffic is directly between the endpoints, the traffic load on the external connection management server is very minimal. It simply keeps an updated list of active nodes and handles the patching if requested.

 

I envision a very similar mechanism where LabVIEW users can associate all their applications and distributed computers with a given user ID (e.g. ni profile), and, at all times be able to get a list of all currently running remote systems published under that user ID. If we want to connect to one of them, the connection server would patch things together without the need of any networking configuration. Optionally, users could publish any given panel under a public key, that can be distributed to allow public connections by any other LabVIEW user.

 

This is a very general idea. Details of the best implementation would need to be worked out. Thanks for voting!

 

3 Comments
vitoi
Active Participant

Anything that improves the connectivity of LabVIEW and/or moves towards LabVIEW everywhere is a good thing in my book. Kudos.

SnowMule
Active Participant

LogMeIn, TeamViewer both do the same for remote desktop purposes.  Don't see why NI can't implement it as well.

David_L
Active Participant

There are a few third party tools that I know do something similar to what you describe.  One is Labsocket by Bergmans Mechatronics and the other is Webpager by VFPSoft (formerly Labicom).  They both implement LabVIEW front panels into HTML5 but each does it slightly differently.  I believe both have the abililty to set up dedicated or cloud-based servers in which the HTML front panel is hosted, but each does it a bit differently.  Worth checking both out if you're looking for an alternate remote panel experience.