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Raspberry Pis Get a Built-in Remote-Access Tool: Raspberry Pi Connect (arstechnica.com) 36

An anonymous reader shares a report: One Raspberry Pi often leads to another. Soon enough, you're running out of spots in your free RealVNC account for your tiny boards and "real" computers. Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. All of this is not the easiest thing to tackle if you're new to single-board computers or just eager to get started.

Enter Raspberry Pi Connect, a new built-in way to access a Raspberry Pi from nearly anywhere you can open a browser, whether to control yourself or provide remote assistance. On a Raspberry Pi 4, 5, or Pi 400 kit, you install Pi connect with a single terminal line, reboot the Pi, and then click a new tray icon to connect the Pi to a Raspberry Pi ID (and then enable two-factor authentication, of course). From then on, visiting connect.raspberrypi.com gives you an encrypted connection to your desktop. It's a direct connection if possible, and if not, it runs through relay servers in London, encrypting it with DTLS and keeping only the metadata needed for the service to work. The Pi will show a notification in its tray that somebody has connected, and you can manage screen sharing from there.

Raspberry Pis Get a Built-in Remote-Access Tool: Raspberry Pi Connect

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  • by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @04:13PM (#64457697)

    How wonderful. One more security risk. Yey.

    • by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @04:30PM (#64457733) Journal

      How wonderful. One more security risk. Yey.

      Yes and no. It can work strictly on a LAN or by directly accessing a Pi's outward-facing IP address, similar to RealVNC presently. It can also route the connection through RPi Foundation's servers, if "direct dial" to the target Pi isn't available. Bonus: the connection will tell you if it is routing through the servers.

      • As long as it can detect (and connect to) LAN-based Pi devices without having to sign up for an account, it's all good.

    • Well, it's not enabled by default. And it seems to allow some amount of customisation regarding using local lan / internet etc.

      So as long as you don't install random stuff on whatever device you use without knowing what you are installing, I guess you are safe.

      If you have a habit of installing random crap in whatever devices you own / control, I think there is a bigger problem.

      • Maybe I should have been more verbose.
        A tool which enables remote connections WITHIN LAN, and WITHOUT ever going outside LAN, is great.
        A tool which requires you to access and use an external URL (and create an account there), is not.

        The article itself says "Click this icon and choose “Sign in” to get started." - which means you absolutely HAVE to create an account / sign in to an external page, which means the whole solution is externally-managed.
        No, just NO.

        Furthermore, there is no mention of w

  • Additional Info (Score:4, Informative)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @04:26PM (#64457721) Journal
    Jeff Geerling posted a video about this [youtube.com] yesterday.
  • SSH (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @04:33PM (#64457743)
    Those who shun SSH, do so at their own peril and always come to regret it.
    • My thoughts exactly. However, this looks like some kind of GUI VNC manager thingy. Of course, everything about what it is and why they made it makes me cringe, but hey, someone thought it was helpful, I guess. I'll stick with Secure Shell, but ya'll have a good time over there creating new attack surfaces.
  • That the company has been looking for ways to softly warm the public up to their product being backdoored. I won't be buying another one of their crown surveillance systems again.
  • Why??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @04:56PM (#64457801) Homepage

    I have four Pis doing various things. I manage them all via SSH and the CLI. Only one of them even runs a display server, and that's because I use it as a news and weather display ticker in my living room.

    What on Earth is the use-case for managing a Rasberry Pi with a graphical desktop? The mind boggles!

    • by tbuskey ( 135499 )

      I have four Pis doing various things. I manage them all via SSH and the CLI. Only one of them even runs a display server, and that's because I use it as a news and weather display ticker in my living room.

      What on Earth is the use-case for managing a Rasberry Pi with a graphical desktop? The mind boggles!

      Some people think every computer needs a display.

      I used to manage Sun systems. If there isn't a keyboard attached, the console (BIOS, everything) went to the serial port.

      We had a multiport serial terminal server to hook up to them. At the time it was probably $70-$100 per port. You really only needed it when the OS didn't come up.

      My managing idiots, who engineered by brochure and salesman, bought a $300 graphics card, $100 keyboard and a monitor ($300?) to put on it. And they had 2-3 of these servers the

    • I have four Pis doing various things. I manage them all via SSH and the CLI. Only one of them even runs a display server, and that's because I use it as a news and weather display ticker in my living room.

      What on Earth is the use-case for managing a Rasberry Pi with a graphical desktop? The mind boggles!

      Some "computer" users out there cannot shift their paradigm from Windows-oriented Windows PCs & Apple devices to true CLI work. Just sayin'

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I have one set up as a spectrometer. One day I will write a web GUI for it, but somebody has already written a perfectly good OpenCV one.

    • What on Earth is the use-case for managing a Rasberry Pi with a graphical desktop? The mind boggles!

      There's actually plenty, you even listed one yourself. My media player has a GUI running on it. I've seen someone use it as a security camera server (with GUI and playback ability), I see lots of them running some kind of data dashboard (a friend of mine has his attached to his inverter showing real time stats). My 3D printer runs a GUI on top of OctoPi, a friend of mine has a little arcade machine which of course needs a GUI, I see smart home control units running on the Pi (and that's likely to be my next

      • I think he means "managing a Rasberry Pi {with a graphical desktop}" but you read it as "managing a {Rasberry Pi with a graphical desktop}".

        As in he's decrying the remote management being GUI based not that managing a machine with a GUI is bad.

        My 3D printer runs a GUI on top of OctoPi,

        Isn't the point of octopi that it presents a web interface? I've not fired mine up in years, though.

  • Why do you need an "account" to log in to your own computer? Are people not able to track the devices by mac address and SSH into them? Even for the occasional errant SBC (and I have lots and lots of SBCs, not just Pis) I track them by mac and can always poke around my DHCP server to see what's what.

    I even have 3 NeoDen 8 pick and place machines. They use RPis. Because I don't always want to walk over to them I installed Xvnc so I can log in to them from my desk.
  • Having a cloud connection broker is always nice, as long as there is 2FA for the account, and the client does its own authentication as well. In any case, it is cheaper than TailScale to provide a quick way into one's place via a decently secure VPN.

  • It's not built in to the Pi - it's a part of the (64-bit only) Raspberry version of Debian.

    So if you're running any other sort of OS at all, yeah, just use ssh like normal people.

  • ultravnc is free.
  • xrdp and ssh (Score:4, Informative)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @07:57PM (#64458157)
    I use xrdp for mine with ssh tunnels. I trust it more than a some cloud based single point of failure. Most of the time the units I have in operation don't need a gui. I can start xrdp when I need to do something that is easier done with a local browser and desktop access and shut it down when I'm done.
  • Sucks. They need to figure out how to reduce the price of a desktop computer, not increase. They've been slowly increasing the barrier of entry to computing. Why does the board cost $70? That means a PC built for raspberry Pi will cost $170 (math: board $70 + $60 cheapest non-shady LCD monitor + $10 SD CARD + $15 case+power supply + $15 keyboard + mouse). ... Am I wrong? That's what the cheapest walmart laptop costs. It's a lot of money for a kid in a developing country trying to learn skills that can get t

  • > Even if you go the hardened route of SSH or an X connection, you have to keep track of where they all are. What is there to remember? If you use ssh at the command line, just slap the hosts in your /etc/hosts or other naming facility.

    PuTTY has been available for Linux for a long time too - nothing to remember there.

    Or use the one I wrote: https://stromberg.dnsalias.org... [dnsalias.org]
    It can start a remote shell from a menu in 3 clicks, if you count the click for starting it up.
    It sets up X11 tunneling, an

  • Well, if you do not know where your RPi are, you probably do not care about security anyways...

  • Since when has a protocol required an account? No one has ever asked me to register for anything or pay for anything when running TightVNC, TinyVNC, TigerVNC, UltraVNC, or X11VNC.

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