I just now wanted to use Roon ARC on my iPhone while “out and about” while at the MIL’s home. I was able to log into my Roon Nucleus with Roon ARC with no issues, but only my 6 local albums showed up with no Tidal or Qobuz linked albums. I immediately knew that meant my Nucleus had lost it’s connections for some unknown reason.
I used my laptop and Splashtop to connect to my Mac Mini and used that to reconnect the Nucleus to Tidal and Qobuz. I haven’t had to do this very often, but it’s great to have it available for when your Nucleus has a problem and you’re 240 miles away from home.
The Mac Mini (late 2014) was $200 and Splashtop is $16.99 per year. Well worth the price IMHO.
And now, my iPhone battery is running low so I switched to my iPad Mini 6 that uses Tailscale to connect to my Mac Mini Roon server. This secondary Roon Arc setup is working great also.
Splashtop Personal is free for use but only for local network access, I believe. I started using Splashtop to control iTunes from my iPad 1 probably around 2010 or so (?), and I now use it to control my headless Mac Mini for music imports - especially downloads as the Mac has full wired access to my Gigabit Fibre Broadband. Control is either from the iPad (for laziness) or my desktop PC in the office (for mouse-and-keyboard ease of use).
I hate Team Viewer. I use Splashtop for access to my Mac Mini away from home.
I bought this $200 Mac Mini to control my Nucleus when away from home. I tried Splashtop for this and like it.
Originally, I was going to use the Mac Mini as a Roon client (with Splashtop) to reboot my Nucleus and reconnect the Nucleus to Tidal and Qobuz. Soon after, I decided to upgrade it to full Roon server and client.
Just recently I installed TailScale and set up a second Roon ARC server on the Mac Mini. My Nucleus is the primary Roon ARC server.
I obviously know I can use the Tidal or Qobuz apps. If I wanted to do that, I would.
I’m a local storage only guy, have tried Tidal and Qobuz but it made my brain itch to have rented music shoulder-to-shoulder with my albums. I guess I’m a bit of an odd-bod, or at least an outlier.
Remote access for traveling and being able to troubleshoot any Arc issues is a great benefit, and I could see myself adding that Splashtop extra for a month or two should the need arise.
I should imagine if one has set up a tailscale account you could simply set tailscale up on your computer as well and remotely access it, this seems like doubling up and paying for no reason. I have not tried this as I have no use for ARC but I am guessing tailscale works similar to ZeroTier then its entirely possible to do.
I had this set up before I ever heard of Tailscale. It works so well I have no desire to mess with it. $17 per year is not enough to worry about.
“For remote control of a Mac Mini, Splashtop generally performs better than Tailscale as Splashtop is specifically designed for remote desktop access with excellent performance and user interface, while Tailscale primarily functions as a VPN, making remote desktop control a secondary feature.”
I have very little interest in you or your financial position. However for anyone reading this they may very well have installed tailscale already and therefore there is a solution already in place, that doesn’t even cost 17 buckeros so thats nice.
