Aurga Viewer

[Alex Atkin UK]

So after having huge doubts about the claims of the product I decided to give it a go anyway.

 

So initially I connected using my Galaxy S10 to configure the device into bridge mode (their name for connecting the device to your own WiFi) , but after completing the task and connecting I couldn't get any of the input controls to work so I moved onto MacOS.

 

On MacOS initially when I got into input mode I got stuck as the "need to allow input" popup appears behind the app window and Command + Right Click (Command + two-finger tap on Macbook) which is used to exit input capture mode (so you can control the OS/other apps) wouldn't work.  Had to fight to get out of the app, go into settings and allow input capture. Then all seemed to work fine in Direct mode (connected to the devices own WiFi network directly), but bridge mode is unusably laggy.

 

Windows was a lot smoother to connect but the same result, bridge mode unusable, even if the client is using a wired connection.

 

Intermingled with all this I kept trying my Galaxy S10 which eventually did decide to work. Not obvious that you have to tap the keyboard icon to input capture mode on there. Video stream is smooth but the cursor lags too much which feels more awkward on a touch screen used as a trackpad (plus I think its lagging worse than Windows or Mac), in fact it lags so much its impossible to logout in KDE as the option disappears before the mouse cursor moves again after left clicking. There is a touch-screen mode too, but a 1080p desktop on a small phone meant that's pretty much unusable, maybe on a tablet it would be okay.  Also sometimes the app gets stuck and stops responding to taps on the screen, including the three tap necessary to exit input capture mode so you can actually get out of the app - had to sleep/wake the phone to get out of this before realising a side swipe will still bring up the Android soft keys to task switch out.

 

Of course with bridge mode enabled it forces direct mode (both are enabled at the same time but its advised to use direct) onto the same channel, as its just a single radio so how it has to work. This has the benefit in knowing its on a known-good channel however and I can control how much traffic is going over it from my own network.

 

I also tried with my Macbook on my second Access Point, which is WiFi 6 on a DFS channel well away from the Aurga on channel 52. Same problem, latency is terrible.

For reference, I can use tigervnc over either of these networks with no issues, low latency and the AP the Aurga is connected to can do 500Mbit and the WiFi 6 network Gigabit.

So I tried switching the Aurga to connect to my WiFi 6 network, it wouldn't work at all then (done on Windows).

 

So I disconnected it from bridge mode entirely, connected to the Aurga network and it still wouldn't connect flashing up "No HDMI" then kicking me back out.

Upon connecting the Galaxy S10 I got the display (so no HDMI was a spurious message as it should have let you connect even if HDMI was not detect anyway), then the Windows client would connect again but with huge lag every time I moved the mouse. This seems to be as the Aurga by default picked channel 36, also used by the neighbours whereas bridge mode forced it onto 52 which is clean, used only by me.

 

So to summarise, its only really usable on Mac or Windows if you need remote controls rather than just laggy video and has to be bridged to my network to force it onto a sensible channel.  In spite of that I still have to use direct mode as connecting to it over my LAN, even from a wired client, is unusably laggy.

 

I'm currently stuck trying to get it bridged again as now none of the SSIDs are showing up in the app to reconnect it.

[bamy]

I had to push for a return/refund on mine because of similar issues. I had to connect a normal HDMI monitor in, before plugging the AURGA viewer in to actually get any HDMI output to display. Their support was quick to reply, but very basic troubleshooting. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Its so strange, as on my Macbook sometimes it works fine, but it will suddenly become a slideshow.  On Windows, Linux and Android its just plain unusable.  The fact I have to bridge it to my WiFi just to get it onto a channel that works at all is dodgy though, it should not be picking channel 36 by default when practically every device on the planet does this so its guaranteed to be congested.  I literally have the entire 5Ghz spectrum channel 52+ to myself (at least as far as I can see from a WiFi scan).

 

I used to think there was some unknown crosstalk with my WiFi speed halving some days, but so far moving all WiFi 5 clients onto their own AP so that the WiFi 6 AP only has WiFi 6 clients seemed to solve that.

Of course this could also be an issue Aurga as it has to connect to my WiFi 5 AP to work due to the above, but I don't see how a single-stream 80Mhz device would clash with all my 2x2 MIMO 80Mhz devices just idling.  If I could just manually stick it on a channel away from everything and use direct mode, at least I'd know for sure.

 

The only thing I haven't done yet is tried an old router to create a third AP and connect only the Aurga to that.

 

I have been talking to some people on Reddit who claim theirs works fine though, probably people in bigger houses where the neighbours WiFi cannot interfere.  So if there is some way to get it to work, its probably worth the effort.