Am I able to setup a 2nd instance of the software on my network on a different machine and access them both remotely through port forwarding or some other network trickery?
If so, would I have to pay for both installations?
You can have multiple instances under one subscription, but only one can have remote access enabled
Only one can use Channels' native remote access. The other you can access through a different port, but it requires manual intervention and a VPN (or some other type of tunnel).
1 Like
Thank you both. Is it because with remote access it routes from the my.channelsdvr.net first and then forwards to the individual instance?
I ask because I was thinking if that's the case and people have multiple instances the only thing you'd have to allow us to change is port 8089 and each incoming request from an IP can go back to it's source using the port as the unique ID. However I know port is hardcoded, so... pipedream at the moment.
That being said, I was doing this to have 2 at my house where I can restrict channels on 1 instance for kids and keep one fully open for the adults. I don't see user profiles as an option either, so, is this possible aside from using a VPN? Maybe something with my dynamic dns I've got setup can be utilized?
One way to make multiple instances work is to set one up as recommended, including external access. Call that one your "main" instance. You can set up a second instance on separate computer, or on a VM on your main server (that's what I've done). The only non-standard configuration you need once you set up the second instance is that you must disable Bonjour discovery on both instances, and configure every client with the desired instance's IP address.
So, the main instance can be accessed remotely using the native method. Accessing the secondary instance is trickier and/or somewhat limited. You need to be comfortable with manual network configuration to do this.
One way is with a VPN. When you are remote, VPN essentially puts your client on your home network, so you simply access the desired instance by specifying the same IP address that you use at home. This type of VPN access requires a VPN server on your home network. Some routers support it natively. In my case, I use PiVPN (a Raspberry Pi running OpenVPN) because the first time I tried a router-based VPN it just didn't perform well enough.
Another way is you configure your router to forward a separate external port to your secondary instance. For example, use a rule that forwards port 888 to port 889 on the secondary server's host. After you've done that, you can remotely access the secondary instance with the web client by simply using port 888 instead of 889. The web client isn't as easy to use, but it does everything you need!
One problem with the web client, though, is that it asks you to enter a (very long) key the first time you use it. That is very tricky to do when not using a computer as a client. I tried to do it in Firefox on a Fire TV stick but I couldn't figure out how to copy and paste! Manually typing the key turned out to be ...stressful.
Anyway, it's possible, I'm doing it! User profiles would be a much better solution (ahem).