Remote control of your telescopes webcam

Hi All,
Heres one for the PC gurus !!

I have installed PCanywhere on my main desktop and on a laptop I use to run the GOTO scope, and the laptop is attached to the scope through the usual serial cable while the 2 PCs are on a network.
The laptop will be in the observatory with the scope while I'm nice and snug in the house by the desktop.

I can control the scope with the desktop through the laptop perfectly well, but there is a snag with the webcam,!!
When I open the VRecord program that comes with the webcam (toucam pro) I get a perfect image on the laptop (webcam is plugged into the laptop) but the desktop screen only gives me a black box for the image !

So I can control the scope remotely but I cant see the live feed from the webcam remotely, I can that there is miles of bandwidth available on the network so I dont think its a network bottleneck issue thats causing this.

Is there a bandwidth setting in PCanywhere, I cant find one that might be causing this ??
Are there any PCanywhere users out there who have come across this before ??
Besides this, I can do everything else remotely from the desktop, but this problem will prevent me from any remote webcam (planetary) imaging.

For those who aren't in the know, PCanywhere lets you see a remote PC/laptop screen from another computer and run it as if you were in front of it, very handy.

After more experimenting with the Vrecord program, I found that if I use IYUV image format, a still image (1 frame) appears on the remote PC (desktop), and if I click continuously on the image, it refreshes each time.

There has to be a better way!, this would get me by, but it's tediously impracticle as you need to do this using the mouse, so while you're doing this you cant do other things like focus or controlling the scope using another program :roll:

After more experimenting with the Vrecord program, I found that if I use IYUV image format, a still image (1 frame) appears on the remote PC (desktop), and if I click continuously on the image, it refreshes each time.

There has to be a better way!, this would get me by, but it's tediously impracticle as you need to do this using the mouse, so while you're doing this you cant do other things like focus or controlling the scope using another program :roll:

i think david the problem is the refresh rate. seeing that you get one still image it shows that you are getting something but seeing that when you capture video because it is continously the program is not keeping up. if possible you could try reducing the laptop desktop size. maybe with a lower resolution you might get a higher refresh rate.
stephen.

The problem is to do with the way windows displays a moving image on screen. It does this by using a video overlay which is set on a black background - hence the black window.

I have not yet setup such a remote system but I think I can safely say that using PC anywhere is not going to be possible for the purpose you want.

There is specific astronomical software ( I think it's free too) that can do this though I don't have names or websites, but I do know that it is possible with special astro software.

I will try and find out some names and hyperlinks to help you.

The problem is to do with the way windows displays a moving image on screen. It does this by using a video overlay which is set on a black background - hence the black window.

Thats ugly...

You might be able to get this to work better with VNC. Never used this with a windows server, but I use it all the time from unix servers. Pity the wecam tools arnt up to scratch on unix, any chance of a java version of registax/k3ccdtools etc.

Start looking at
www.uk.research.att.com/archive/vnc/index.html
www.realvnc.com/
www.tightvnc.com/

If its relying on underlying windows technology, then perhaps the black screen will still be present, but its worth looking at.

Cheers,
~Al

ultravnc.sourceforge.net/

seems to be well reviewd for windows