2 Servers, 1 Client - is it possible?

[JLEE]

We have a shared office.  We have 1 60" TV and PC mounted in the middle of the office.

We'd like to control the shared PC from our own PC's.   In the past we have done this by running an HDMI to each machine and using an HDMI switcher.

I was hoping there would be an easy seamless way to do this with Synergy.

 

[Paul Suarez]

This might be possible with using Synergy V2.0 which will be launched on November.

[JLEE]

Does the functionality exist in the beta?   I’ll sign up to test..

 

 

[airtrax]

I wasn't sure if this was answered in Synergy 2 forums yet but wondering if this is supported yet since we are way past November.

Is a client able to talk to two servers at the same time?

[UniTrader]

you could start synergyc in 2 instances and each instance connects to another server... i think...

 

 

PS Synergy 2 has dynamic switching of the Server (it uses the last one which had keyboard input iirc)

Edited March 24, 2018 by UniTrader

[airtrax]

3 hours ago, UniTrader said:

you could start synergyc in 2 instances and each instance connects to another server... i think...

 

 

PS Synergy 2 has dynamic switching of the Server (it uses the last one which had keyboard input iirc)

UniTrader,

That's fantastic news. I can give that a try. We have two employees sitting side by side, each with a dual screen setup. In between them is a single monitor connected to a third computer. Whoever wants to be using that computer at the time can just move their mouse onto that screen. I was hoping that Synergy 2 could allow this to happen.

I don't imagine that there will be a case that both users will want to control the mouse at the same time, but I see that as an edge case and hope it won't break Synergy 2.

Edited March 24, 2018 by airtrax

[airtrax]

So ran into a problem with Symless 2.

We have this sort of situation:

Employee A Computer <-----> Shared Computer <------> Employee B Computer

Here's what's happening:

When Employee A wants to use the shared computer, she can move her mouse and she can take control. When Employee B wants to use the "Shared Computer", he can move his mouse onto the "Shared Computer's" screen and control. The problem arises when Employee B wants to access the "Shared Computer" while Employee A is operating on her own computer. Her actions on her own computer are debilitating Employee B's ability to control the "Shared Computer". It seems only one Employee A or B can be working at a time and this isn't good.

Am I configuring Symless 2 wrong? I have the setup exactly setup the way I have shown above with the monitors oriented that way.I currently have "right clicked" Employee B's monitor in the Symless setup and clicked "Shared from Employee B's computer". Any way to fix this so they can all work independently and then grab control of "Shared Computer" at any given time whenever they agree who will control?

[Davewill]

I'm afraid this is not a feature of Synergy 1 or 2 at all. You're not doing it wrong, it simply won't work that way.

[airtrax]

1 hour ago, Davewill said:

I'm afraid this is not a feature of Synergy 1 or 2 at all. You're not doing it wrong, it simply won't work that way.

I figured that. It was wishful thinking.

[GranPaSmurf]

it's not your question, but you can also lock yourself to your own computer by selecting the scroll lock. Then the co-worker should have synergy-ablilty to the shared machine 

[airtrax]

59 minutes ago, GranPaSmurf said:

it's not your question, but you can also lock yourself to your own computer by selecting the scroll lock. Then the co-worker should have synergy-ablilty to the shared machine 

Um GranPaSmurf, this is exactly what I wanted to do!! I wanted to be able to lock Employee A to her own computer and allow her to continue to do her work without interfering by accidentally taking over Employee B's ability to control "Shared Computer".

I'm going to try this and report back! So it seems it does have this built in as a feature!

Edited April 10, 2018 by airtrax

[GranPaSmurf]

? it goes back to the earlier days of version 1. A's for me, I didn't discover it until I'd spent hours trying to figure why my Synergy quit working.

Mostly it's a 'gamer' thing.

[airtrax]

On 4/10/2018 at 10:23 AM, GranPaSmurf said:

? it goes back to the earlier days of version 1. A's for me, I didn't discover it until I'd spent hours trying to figure why my Synergy quit working.

Mostly it's a 'gamer' thing.

GranPaSmurf,

"scroll lock" works beautifully to lock myself to my own computer and to never use the shared computer. But the problem is even though I'm locked to my computer, if my co-worker is working on the shared computer and I click my mouse, it takes away control from him. You can see the white dot move from his computer in the Synergy window, to my computer. Seems that using "scroll lock" to lock the user to the computer didn't work because as soon as the other user clicked the mouse, Synergy assumed that user wanted to take over and completely took over.

So bummed.

[airtrax]

23 minutes ago, airtrax said:

GranPaSmurf,

"scroll lock" works beautifully to lock myself to my own computer and to never use the shared computer. But the problem is even though I'm locked to my computer, if my co-worker is working on the shared computer and I click my mouse, it takes away control from him. You can see the white dot move from his computer in the Synergy window, to my computer. Seems that using "scroll lock" to lock the user to the computer didn't work because as soon as the other user clicked the mouse, Synergy assumed that user wanted to take over and completely took over.

So bummed.

I found that if I manually right click the Synergy icon in the system tray and "disable synergy" then I won't interfere with my co-worker who is currently using the shared computer. I'm not sure if that Scroll-Lock feature works GranPaSmurf.

Is there a hotkey to enable and disable synergy then?

[GranPaSmurf]

Try the selection on the tray icon. Right click it. Maybe that 'disable' will work for you

[Albert C]

For the moment, I forget which computer is described as the "server" and which is the "client".  IIRC the server is the computer "serving" it's mouse/keyboard to control a remote client computer.

Anyways, some of us occasionally miss a feature that worked well in Synergy 1:  You could reach up and use the keyboard on your remotely controlled device without taking over the role of server from the main computer.  I found myself using it if I needed to simply press a confirmation key or do something "quick" on my "secondary" computer.

I also like the idea of Synergy 2 normally "not caring" about which computer is the server.

It's been suggested that 2.1 (or a later version) may add an option to temporarily lock the server role to a specific computer.  That would let it work more like Synergy 1 when you need it to -- and might fix your problem.  I've used Synergy 1 in a 3 computer configuration where i could have a keyboard attached to machine 1 controlling machine 3 and still reach up and do something on machine 2, which is sort of analagous to what you do, except that there's only 1 server involved.

It isn't exactly what Synergy is designed for -- but there may be ways to do it...

Thanks,

albert

[Danny G]

Bringing this back up for discussion; has this become a possibility without having to use a complicated work around? 

Same story as above. Two users need to share a 3rd machine in between them if possible. Thanks in advance!