All my devices can now remote control any of the others
I’ve mentioned some of my remote control setups before, like Splashtop 2 for PC-iPad and Teamviewer Quicksupport for Android-iOS/PC. I’ve had some others as well, and as of today, all my devices are capable of remote controlling any of the others.
To start at the beginning, my active devices currently consists of a desktop PC and a laptop running Windows 7, a jailbroken iPad 2, a rooted Galaxy S II, and a rooted Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. So, two Windows devices, two Android devices, and an iOS device. The setup varies from OS to OS, but each device can remote control any of the others. The software I use to achieve this is:
- iPad as source: Veency. A jailbreak-only VNC server for iOS, allowing you to connect to and control the iPad from any VNC client. I have clients on both Android (android-vnc-viewer) and Windows (RealVNC) that can connect to Veency on a local network.
- Android as source: Teamviewer Quicksupport or VMLite VNC Server. The latter is an Android equivalent of Veency, which means I can use the same apps. On iOS I use Remoter VNC to connect.
- Windows as source: Splashtop. There are Splashtop apps for both iOS and Android, so this one is no problem.
So what do I use this for? Well, today I held a presentation in a room where the available equipment was a VGA cable going to a projector, and a 3.5mm audio jack. I connected my iPad to the projector with the VGA adapter, and used a Bluetooth mouse as a remote via the jailbreak-only app BTC Mouse & Trackpad’s presentation mode. I then needed to show something on my phone which also required audio, so I hooked up a Bluetooth receiver to the audio jack, and set up a remote connection between the iPad and the phone. The iPad, mirroring the VNC app on the projector, then showed what was going on on the phone. Completely wireless, and it worked perfectly. Lots of Android devices don’t even have VGA adapters available for them, and even for those that do, it’s not a wireless system. By making the iPad and the Galaxy S II work together, I got both.
I honestly think that in the current market, choosing one platform and sticking to it is going to end up locking you out of a lot of platform-specific software. It’s not easy, but it’s possible to make multiple platforms work together. Draw on the strengths of one when dealing with another, like showing an Android device through VGA by using an iPad in between. Platform war you say? Time for a seize fire, perhaps.
