How to take a screen shot automatically and from a remote location

[JacobBrinkmann]

Hi,

I have a Desktop, a Video Analyzer with Windows XP, and a Laptop, also running Windows XP. What I would like to do is take a screen shot from the Video Analyzer while running the LabVIEW VI from my laptop.

I have found this, which gives me insight into the complexity of a print screen call, but this is really only if LabVIEW were running on the system from which my screen shot is desired. For this post, that is not the case.

If you have a solution or even just a vague idea or comment, please do not hesitate to post. I appreciate any and all feedback on this topic.

Thank you for your time.

Jake Brinkmann

Electrical Engineering Intern

[Joseph_Loo]

Try running TightVNC on the windows machine. This will allow you to see what is happening and take print shots remotely from your computer.

[JacobBrinkmann]

Thank you for your response. I would like to aviod using outside software in this. I'm sure that TightVNC is great, and it would probably work. I would, however, just like to do this using labview and labview only. Maybe it isn't possible but I really would like to do it entirely in labview. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them even if they, too, have outside software involved.

Thanks again Joseph

[dan_u]

I don't think you can take a screenshot from a remote PC without any software running on that system.

You could of course write a server in LabVIEW that runs on the remote system and, upon request from your machine, takes a screenshot and sends it over the network (or saves it on a network drive).

Communication could be done using TCP/IP, VI server, shared variables or other techniques.

[JacobBrinkmann]

Thanks Dan.

What type of communication would you recommend? TCP? I haven't ever created a VI Server, but if you had the time to give me some starting pointers to get me on my way, I would really appreciate it!

[dan_u]

I think the simplest solution is to use VI server. You can call a remote VI (if you have LabVIEW on the remote machine) that will take a screenshot.

If you don't have LabVIEW on the remote machine you'll have to build an exe.

Use the example finder to search for example code using VI server, TCP etc.