Looking for a cheapfreeware solution to control a suite of Win10 machines.

[MrBitey]

Hi all,

 

I'm looking around to see if I can find a solution (preferably freeware) to take control of students' computers in the ICT suite.

At the most basic I'd like to be able to freeze all their screens at once so they have to pay attention to the teacher.

 

I'm guessing some sort of client running in the background on each machine would be needed.

 

Even better would be the ability to push a whole screen image out to the PCs as they freeze - for example something with instructions on it. A way of having the instructions easily customisable would be great, but even if it was just a case of forcing a generic 'lockscreen.jpg' to show that would be great (I could just pre-save a picture with that name).

 

What would be mega wonderful would be to be ablle to do all of this and mirror my screen on theirs too.

 

Do you have any ideas on this or any favourite programs that you use?

 

thanks very much!

 

MrB

[LeMarchand]

Not used it, but Veyon sounds like it might fit: https://veyon.io/

[aleach2]

I was also going to suggest https://veyon.io/

[MrBitey]

Thanks very much. I'll have a look!

[MrBitey]

Thanks very much. I'll have a look!

So I have set up Veyon and been using it for a week. Very good. I am able to lock screens, reboot etc, send messages, open webpages and applications on each machine. Very impressed!

[compsue]

So I have set up Veyon and been using it for a week. Very good. I am able to lock screens, reboot etc, send messages, open webpages and applications on each machine. Very impressed!

 

That's what I was hoping to use for the same kind of things however our technician couldn't get it to work. Did you have trouble setting it up? Thanks Sue

[MrBitey]

That's what I was hoping to use for the same kind of things however our technician couldn't get it to work. Did you have trouble setting it up? Thanks Sue

Hi Compsue. It was really easy to set up. My tech wizardry levels are medium at best. Basically, as ling as the cluent machines have static IP addresses it should be very easy. Just install the Veyon service to each, add them by IP address in the configurator and then make a 'room' with them all in and it should work. I do find that it crashes fairly often but this is usually on startup so sometimes you have to log in to the Veyon server 3 or even 4 times as it bombs when connecting to 30 machines at once. Once it has settled down though it is good for the whole session.

[compsue]

Ours don't have static IP addresses, would this not work?

[MrBitey]

I think that's your problem then. When I set it up, they were added by IP address. I don't think it will work if they are not static.

[jthompson]

You can add computers by hostname. You can also have Veyon populate the list of rooms and computers from Active Directory. I can't remember the details, but that's how our list in Veyon is populated. All our staff get presented the same list of all computer rooms (they all use the same Veyon config file), but access to clients is ultimately governed by membership of AD security groups (a group for each of the rooms).