Remote installation

An installation nobody sits at, a show machine or a gallery box, can host the session: you join it from anywhere and work on its Collab Zone live. Unattended Host makes it safe to leave alone: nothing pops up on it, and only the people you gave a member token get in.

Setting it up

1. On the installation, set it up to host as usual with Set Up: a relay room, or this network over a VPN. TCP/IP is not encrypted and a partner's message can run Python there, so never put it behind a bare port forward. Leave Active on and save the project, so TouchDesigner opens hosting.
2. On TDXCollab's parameters (Host page), make a member token for each person: type their name in New Member Label, then press New Member Token. Each token is copied to the clipboard as it is made: send it to that one person. Its role is New Partners May's; change it in the Members table beside TDXCollab.
3. Turn Unattended Host on and save the project. From now on nothing opens there, and only tokens in the Members table get in.
4. Each partner pastes their token into Member Token and joins as usual (Join Invite for a relay room, the address and port over TCP/IP). Their Status ends "the host is unattended".

To revoke a token, delete its row in the Members table: whoever is in stays for this session and cannot come back with it. A member token is a credential: send each one to its person only, and keep the Members table out of files you share.

What it does differently

• Nothing opens on it: not Set Up, the TDXCollab window, the join window, the drift pop-up or a confirmation. Pings and summons that reach it are ignored.
• It keeps its own settings in line: Ask Before Letting In, Ask on Drift and Resync on Connect off, Log Session and Keep Replaced Zone on, Kept Zones Limit at 1. They are greyed out, and put back as they were when Unattended Host is switched off.
• It comes back as the host: after a restart it joins its relay room again under the same id, so it is the room's opener, and host, again, even when a partner stayed in the room meanwhile.
• It watches the whole zone, every depth, so anything changed on it is sent wherever its pane is (DAT text only for the network a partner views).

When copies differ

Unattended Drift (Host page) decides who settles it:

• Partners Decide (the default): every Full Edit partner who is connected gets the drift pop-up on their own screen: Leave It, or Choose whose copy everyone takes, confirmed once more. The first answer to reach the host counts. With no Full Edit partner connected, the host keeps its copy and asks again when one joins.
• Keep Mine: the host sends its own zone to whoever differs.

Saving

The host never saves by itself. A Full Edit partner saves its project from afar with Save Host Project (the TDXCollab window shows the host's line with Save Host's Project while it has unsaved edits). They are also asked when they save their own project ("Save the host's project too?") and when they leave from the window or the chip (Save and Leave). A save stops the installation, its output too, for as long as it takes: pick the moment.

Changing it

To change anything on the installation's TDXCollab, someone at the machine switches Unattended Host off on its parameters.

Not done yet

• One real run on a second machine in Perform mode: remote in, edit, save, reboot it, come back.
• Changing the installation's TDXCollab parameters from a partner.
• Restoring a kept zone from afar: Restore is the host's own action, so a partner brings one back only with Sync Zone of that copy.