Creating a remote viewer?

[troubled_woman]

Could somebody point me in the right direction please...

I am a teacher and want to create a ?simple? vb program that will allow me to remotely view students screens, in my classroom, from myPC. I know that there is software avaiable, but the college won't pay for it and two eyes in my head are never enough!

What will I need to research/learn in order to create such a program
What kind of information will I need to think about (login details etc)

Is this too vague or too big of a project if I'm asking these questions?

Thanks in advance

[the182guy]

Hi, whats your skill level in vb? are you new? what about Winsock, have you used Winsock before? Winsock is what you need to establish connections to your classroom computers so you can send and receive data.

For this project you need to have a pretty good grasp of
General VB
Winsock

The problem with this project is the screenshot - you want to see an actual image of the screen, this can be done, but it makes the project hugely more complicated.

I would suggest if you want it to be as simple as possible, instead of getting a screenshot, I would program so that you can just get the list of open windows. So you could see what your student is using, it will send back the window captions of each item in the Taskbar. So it would look something like...

Games.com - Microsoft Internet Explorer
Document1 - Microsoft Word
MSN Messenger
Chris - Conversation

Having a list of windows instead of a screenshot will make it hugely faster also.

You will need to use a client-server architecture. It depends how often you want to check what they are doing, if only now and again, then I would have a small server vbapp on each computer, and the client on your computer, so that you can establish a connection to whichever machine you wish and request the data, it will go something like this..

-All student PCs listening on port xxxx
-Teacher client attempts connect to PC-5 on port xxxx
-PC-5 accepts the connection
-Teacher client sends data to request the window list
-PC-5 sends back the window list
-PC-5 terminates the connection
-PC-5 returns to its listening state on port xxxx

If you dont know winsock, you can learn it here: http://www.winsockvb.com/
Thats the best place to learn it in my opinion, thats where I learnt it. That site also has a tutorial for sending files, which you could use to send a screenshot as you wanted.

[troubled_woman]

A list sounds justs as effective, and if it will make it faster thats the way I'll go - I have a ? sound vb kbnowledge and am just about to start my education in winsock - many thanks for you responce

[the182guy]

if you have a pretty good vb knowledge then you will pickup winsock really quick

[troubled_woman]

I was going great guns until I added a winsock control and realised I only have a control edition! - thats what I get for being tight!

I will have to wait, but it does seem pretty simple so far (for now! - I'm sure I'll be back here for some more advice before I've finished this project)

Cheers again

[troubled_woman]

I was going great guns until I added a winsock control and realised I only have a control edition! - thats what I get for being tight!

I will have to wait, but it does seem pretty simple so far (for now! - I'm sure I'll be back here for some more advice before I've finished this project)

Cheers again

[the182guy]

oh do you have a limited version of VB? good luck with the project anyway

[qhyzme]

maybe i suggest using remote desktop like VNC. Real VNC although its quiet old, you use this by connectin to a remote pc. so can see all the windows open on the host. you can also control it the way you are using your own pc. mouse and keyboard event you have triggered in your pc, affects the remote host (e.i. if you move your mouse pointer in your pc, also the mouse pointer of the remote host will move).

hope this will help you.

regards,

richard "qhyzme"