We are working on a large home 4 hours away. It was wired more than 5 years ago and the owner went to jail before the house was even close to completed. I think sheetrock went up, and that is as far as they got (long story...remember Solyndra?).

The house finally sold at auction last year. The electricians had to finish the lighting system before anyone could live there, duh. Lutron HW was what it was wired for. So we shipped them up a bunch of parts and they installed them, and my boss is now up there programming some more things. They are doing things in phases for some reason...so every once in a while, we order a bunch of parts for them to install, then we go up and program it. We need to set up a PC at that house so we can use Teamviewer or something to access remotely for programming changes, etc.

My first though is to just have the owner let us install the software on one of his computers, and let us know when he needs something done, and we could coordinate it that way.

Having our own PC on site makes more sense. All it needs to be able to do is run the QS software, and Teamviewer.

I am not sure it matters how much it costs, because currently, to make changes will require 8 hours of drive time, a night in a hotel, and some other incidental charges before any programming is even started. It will pay for itself the first time it gets used. :)

Mac Mini would be great....but I do not feel like messing with the parallels or other software to run Windows and Lutron software. Something similar in form factor would be preferred, however.

And you dont want to do a VPN or even basic Port forward to the lutron Processor why?

VPN was my first thought too. I'd always avoided it, but have now made changes to HWQS systems at two different properties several times over VPN without issue.

Don't do it. Too many reasons to list why this is a bad idea.


Be sure to set it up so that it wakes on power so that if power goes out your computer comes back online. If it crashes you can have the client unplug it and plug it back up and it will boot up by itself.


Lenovo and HP have small form factor off the shelf PC's.

[Link: store.hp.com]

[Link: shop.lenovo.com]

Lutron tech support told me that they have seen many processors "bricked" due to lost packets during VPN transfers, and do not recommend doing it that way. I see their point. I have done it before as well and have not had issues. Better safe than sorry.....especially on a job this size and this far away.

I think we will just get a small PC, set it up here, send it over, have him plug it in, and away we go. Thanks for the links Mac. I will look at those.

Don't go too cheap on the PC. I tried using a $500 ACER PC a few years ago and the Lutron uploads would fail 5 or 6 times every time i made a programming change. At some point that ACER failed and we replaced it with a Lenovo and the upload issues all but vanished.

Intel NUC. We use it on all of our installs.

I understand the problem here. Computers now a days are insanely expensive. The idea of putting up, say... $1500 for a project that is probably running in the 10's of thousands is insane!

Buy a Dell, put it in the house and install teamviewer for $9.95 and hope that works.

Or, you can set up a proper network VPN and log in at any time. Problem, this requires a network professional that really knows what they are doing. I'd be screwed too.

Third option, go with a service like OVRC Pro that creates a VPN for you and gives you direct access to the network without having to know what you are doing.

I'd use a pfsense firewall and a intel NUC. Set the NUC up to allow remote connections (remote desktop) and to power on after power fail. Set up the pfsense for VPN access. Secure, easy to use, and dead on reliable.

Lutron processor bricked due to lost VPN packets? Really? LOL

Lutron Processors are typically bullet proof...even during a firmware update. Everything else? Not so much.

What about a VPN router that you access remotely and turn on/off firewall rules as needed?

I have a client where we setup forwards so the lighting programmer could get to the system. I wanted them to use the VPN tunnel but they claim they have had trouble with this in the past. So I setup forwards and they used them weekly at client move-in to tweak the programming. Forgot to turn them off.

Fast forward a year or so and client complains Savant won't talk to Lutron (which is setup via ethernet). After several restarts over a couple of days I determined something from outside was hammering the Lutron on the open port causing it to lock up. Removed the forward and it's been working fine ever since.