Control Roon Core with Phone and Secondary Laptop (ref#SWYDG4)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· Can’t reach my Server, remotes or ARC

Can’t connect to my Server, remotes or ARC

· Other ARC issues

Tell us what's going on

· I want to control my Roon core with my phone and a secondary laptop.

Tell us about your home network

· Vpn

2

That’s what most people do and what Roon is designed to do. There shouldn’t be a problem. Just install Roon on the phone and second laptop, start it, and connect to the Roon Server on the other computer when asked.

Where do you get stuck?

What does this have to do with ARC?

3

Hello @yves.chabot55

Welcome. Controlling your Roon Server from a phone and a second laptop is exactly what Roon is designed for, so this should work without anything unusual. Let us start with the basics, because your description sounds like it may be a setup question rather than a fault.

The basics

  1. On the phone and on the second laptop, install Roon from our downloads page. Both use the same app you already have, there is no separate remote app to find.
  2. Open it. It will look for Roon Servers on your network and list yours by name.
  3. Select it and press Connect. That is the whole process.

Three things have to be true for the server to appear:

  • All the devices are on the same network, meaning the same Wi-Fi name, not a guest network and not a separate band that is isolated from the rest.
  • The server and every remote are on the same Roon version. If one updated and another did not, update the one that is behind.
  • On the computer running Roon Server, the firewall allows Roon.exe and RAATServer.exe through.

These two articles cover it step by step, and the second is the one to work through if the server does not appear:

Then the VPN

The one detail you gave us is that you use a VPN, and that is worth coming to second because it can undo all of the above. A VPN changes how a device sees its local network, so if one is running on the machine hosting Roon Server, or on the phone or laptop, they may not find each other even when everything else is correct. VPN configurations sit outside what we can support, but the effect is well documented:

So if the server does not appear, please turn the VPN off on every device involved and try again. That tells us straight away whether it is the cause.

What would help us

  • Which device runs Roon Server, and what operating system?
  • Is the VPN on that machine, on the phone and laptop, or on your router?
  • What exactly do you see on the phone and laptop when you open Roon? Please quote the message, for example “Looking for your Roon Server”.

One last thing: on the form you selected an ARC issue. Is Roon ARC actually part of this, or was that just the nearest option? ARC is for listening away from home, which is separate from controlling your server on your own network, and we want to answer the right question.

4

Hello @yves.chabot55,

Wanted to follow up on this. Were you able to try the basics we outlined, installing Roon on the phone and second laptop from our downloads page, opening it to connect to your Roon Server, and checking that all of the devices are on the same network with the same Roon version? If the server still does not show up, the next things we asked about were the firewall on the Roon Server machine, the VPN on any of the devices, and which device is actually running Roon Server, so any update on those would help us narrow it down.

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