All Imagine Communications products and solutions (except for certain legacy products that are discontinued) are designed with remote control capabilities. Certain components in the Playout solution are designed for physical human interaction (such as router control panel, multiviewer etc). These components can be remotely controlled and operated using the following recommendations –

• Imagine has a “soft” solution (software) for our Magellan Router Control panels (RCP). This option can be activated as needed. Please contact Imagine Support if you would like to use this option.
• Multiviewer display output can be monitored using any commercially available video capture device – such as webcams that are connected to a “monitoring” workstation, or other video capture devices that can be installed on the workstation, in order to visually capture the multiviewer display. Operators can then view multiviewer display output via the “monitoring” workstation.

Imagine products and solutions are designed to operate in a secure LAN environment (unless explicitly specified otherwise). We recommend the following architecture for customers implementing remote operation –

• Install one or more “jump-client” workstations in the LAN environment which hosts your playout solution.
  • NOTE: While one “jump-client” workstation is sufficient to control all component, customers should decide on the number of “jump-client” workstation based on their operational requirements.
  • It is highly recommended that a minimum of 2 “jump-client” workstation be used for redundancy purpose
• Connect to the “jump-client” workstation from “anywhere” following the processes and protocols established by customer’s IT policies.
  • Users/operators can connect to the “jump-client” workstation using many commercially available remote desktop software solutions – such as Bomgar, TeamViewer, etc. 
  • Most software solutions used for collaboration & conferencing also support remote control capabilities – such as Zoom, WebEx, Bluejeans, Microsoft Teams etc. However, these software solutions require someone to initiate the connection from the “jump-client “workstation.

NOTE: Imagine products and solutions can also be accessed via VPN connection, though it is not recommended for time-critical applications. VPN connection over WAN link tend to have varying packet transmission latency which can impact performance of time-critical application.