Aria Remote: running it from your phone

Drive the whole desk from a phone anywhere in the room, so nobody has to stand at the computer.

What it is for

The person who knows the service is rarely the person sitting at the laptop. Aria Remote puts the controls on a phone, so whoever is leading can move the service on from the front, and the computer can sit out of the way.

Setting it up

Make sure the phone is on the same wifi as the church computer. This is the single most common reason it does not work. A phone on mobile data cannot reach it.
Open the remote panel in Aria and scan the code with the phone's camera.
Set a PIN if you want one. With a PIN set, the remote asks for it before it will control anything.

If the phone will not load the page

Aria checks this for you and tells you which of the two it is, because the fixes are completely different.

"Windows is blocking this"

Windows keeps a doorman. Until a rule says otherwise it will let Aria listen and still turn away every knock from another device, so the code scans, the phone opens the link, and the page never loads. It looks like a broken feature. It is a firewall.

Use the button Aria offers. Windows itself will ask for an administrator password — Aria never sees it — and the rule is created.

If you have done that and the red state did not change, you are on a version with a fix that could not succeed. Windows resolves a conflict in favour of a block, and something on that computer had already blocked Aria — Windows writes that the moment anyone clicks Cancel on its firewall popup once. Adding permissions could never outweigh it. Update Aria and press the button again; it now clears what is in the way first.

The permission is there but it still does not work

Windows files a permission separately for each kind of network it thinks you are on — private, public, or a work domain — and a permission granted on one does not apply on another. A church network and a home network are often different kinds, which is exactly why a remote that worked all week stops on Sunday. Nothing about Aria changed; the network did. Press the button again on the church's own wifi.

What you cannot fix from inside Aria

Guest wifi that isolates devices. Many church routers stop devices talking to each other on purpose. Put the computer and the phone on the main network instead.
Two separate networks. A phone on 5 GHz and a computer on a wired connection can be on different networks entirely.

Keeping it safe

Set a PIN. Anyone who can reach the network could otherwise open the remote, and the remote drives what the congregation sees. Aria will not let the PIN itself be changed from another device on the network — only from the computer running it.

Slides that run themselves → When something goes wrong →