Remote access to computer using external device

I've been looking for a reliable way to remotely access one of my computers when I'm not physically there, and so far TeamViewer has worked quite well for my purposes. However, I'm curious to know if it'd be possible to use an external device, such as a Raspberry Pi, to send video output from the PC and input keyboard + mouse actions to the PC.

This allows me to control the PC before Windows allows Teamviewer to start, which I'm sure you could imagine to be useful.

Thanks in advance.

Solution 1:

I'm sure that could be done, but it would be a complicated way to do things!

The simplest solution in your case would probably be to enable the "Unattended Access" features of TeamViewer.

By setting up "Easy Access" and enabling TeamViewer to start with Windows, you'll be able to connect to TeamViewer and interact with the Windows login screen.

Note that this does place a degree of trust in the security of TeamViewer and your TeamViewer account. Should either be compromised, the attacker would potentially be able to connect to your computer in the same way that you can.

The most common approach for this kind of thing is to connect to your network via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) server, which you can run on a Raspberry Pi.

You would then expose the VPN to the internet and connect to the VPN from wherever you are in the world. Once connected, you would able to connect to your computer as though you are on the same network. You could then use the "Remote Desktop Protocol" to connect to your Windows computer, which is the native equivalent of TeamViewer.

This way, you wouldn't be reliant on TeamViewer. However, you would need to keep your VPN server secure to prevent someone connecting to your network.