Windows Mixed Reality Commander: Suggestion: button to scan subnet

[ForrestTrepte]

We sometimes use a laptop on a local network with multiple HoloLens devices to install and launch apps when managing a demo or testing session. It is cumbersome to look up the IP address of each HoloLens and register it with HoloLens Commander. It would be nice to have a button that would scan the network to find HoloLens devices. For example, if the IP address of the PC is 123.432.345.10 it could ping all 255 IP addresses beginning with 123.432.345 to see if a HoloLens is present.

[david-c-kline]

The primary concern with this feature request is how to protect users / machines on the network. If it is entirely a private network where all machines are owned by the user, this is cool. If not, I can see users taking issue with the auto-connection (how we would identify HoloLens devices).

[ForrestTrepte]

@davidkline-ms raises an interesting issue. Is there a security concern when pinging the device or a security concern with being able to control another user's device? If so, HoloLens Commander would merely make it more convenient to do something that would already be possible through other means. If this is a security concern, then I'm thinking that the devices should be configured with secure passwords or have the device portal feature disabled.

At any rate, I often give demos that require installing apps and managing multiple different HoloLenses. I would like to use HoloLens Commander to automate this, but it is too cumbersome to look up and enter in the IP address of each HoloLens. Instead, I plug each of them in via USB one at a time. Perhaps an alternative way to accomplish the scenario would be to physically connect each HoloLens with USB, at which point it would automatically register with HoloLens Commander and continue to work over WiFi even after I disconnect the device. By demonstrating physical connection I show that I have ownership over each device and then I am able to manage all such devices simultaneously.

I'm open to better ideas about how to conveniently connect to and manage multiple HoloLenses.

[david-c-kline]

The primary concern that I have is that to determine if the device is a HoloLens, we need to make a connection and talk to the portal.

@ForrestTrepte, If you know the IP addresses in advance, perhaps they are static or have a long lease (not uncommon in conference settings), you can create a connection file and use the "Open a saved device session" feature.

Thanks! Dave

[ForrestTrepte]

This kind of scan would be useful to me. I sometimes use a private network where I know that all the devices are my team's HoloLenses that I want to manage. However, @davidkline-ms makes a good case that on other networks it may not be good behavior to scan the network and spam devices to access their network portal. For that reason I'll go ahead and close this issue.

If someone can think of an easy "it just works" method of connecting to and managing multiple HoloLenses that doesn't require looking up each IP address and entering it into Commander, please let me know. The idea that @davidkline-ms suggests of assigning static IP addresses to each device may be a good workaround for demo situations.

[smstuebe]

Regarding to the documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/debug-test-perf/device-portal#dns-sd.

Device Portal advertises its presence on the local network using DNS-SD. All Device Portal instances, regardless of their device type, advertise under WDP._wdp._tcp.local.

So it should be very easy to discover all device portals in the network via MDNS. Unfortunately, in our tests it turned out, that it is very unreliable. It would be cool if you ( @davidkline-ms ) could maybe escalate this internally to the HL team or who ever is responsible for the device portal. I couldn't get any answer on forums, direct contacts, MVP channels :(

[david-c-kline]

@smstuebe, Sorry about the lack of response on the forums (that is on me). I will work with the correct folks on your issue.

Thanks! David