X-Control

Remote desktop screen sharing and control utility. Lightweight Windows agent (594 KB) + web viewer (iPhone/iPad/desktop) relayed through a VPS.

Architecture

┌──────────────┐     WebSocket      ┌──────────────┐     WebSocket     ┌───────────┐
│  Windows     │ ◄─────────────────► │   Relay      │ ◄────────────────► │  Browser  │
│  Agent       │     screen JPEGs    │   (VPS)      │     screen JPEGs   │  Viewer   │
│  (xcontrol)  │ ◄─────────────────► │              │ ◄────────────────► │  (HTML5)  │
│              │     input events    │              │     input events   │           │
└──────────────┘                     └──────────────┘                   └───────────┘
       │                                    │
       │ PIN: A B C D E                      │
       └─────── register ────────────────────┘
                                            │
                               ┌────────────┴────────────┐
                               │        Browser           │
                               │  enters PIN, joins room  │
                               └─────────────────────────┘

• Agent (Rust): Runs on the Windows PC to be controlled. Shows a PIN, connects via WebSocket to the relay, sends JPEG screen captures, receives mouse/keyboard input.
• Relay (Rust/Node.js): Runs on a VPS. Routes WebSocket traffic between agent and viewer using PIN-based rooms. Currently deployed as Node.js on Vultr.
• Viewer (HTML/JS): Opens in any modern browser. Enter the agent's PIN, see the remote screen, touch/drag to control mouse.

Quick Start

1. Run the agent on the Windows PC

xcontrol.exe

A small window appears with a 5-letter PIN (letters A–H only).

2. Open the viewer

Browse to http://[2001:19f0:8000:385b:5400:06ff:fe43:eb83] on any device (iPhone, iPad, desktop).

Enter the PIN shown on the agent window and tap Connect.

3. Control

• One finger: Tap to click, drag to move mouse
• Two fingers: Drag to scroll
• Tap near top of screen: Shows info bar (FPS counter, Disconnect button)

Building from Source

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.96+ with x86_64-pc-windows-gnu target
• MinGW-w64 (gcc linker, e.g. from MSYS2 ucrt64)

Build

cargo build --release

Output:

• target/release/xcontrol.exe — Windows agent (594 KB)
• target/release/xcontrol-relay.exe — Rust relay server (optional, not used on Vultr)

Cross-compile hints

The agent targets x86_64-pc-windows-gnu with MinGW linker. The .cargo/config.toml sets:

[target.x86_64-pc-windows-gnu]
linker = "gcc"

Configuration

Environment Variable	Default	Description
XCONTROL_RELAY	ws://[2001:...]/ws	Override the relay WebSocket URL

Deployment (Relay on Vultr)

The relay is a Node.js server behind Caddy reverse proxy:

:80 → Caddy → :8080 → Node.js relay

Server: node /root/relay/server.js on port 8080, proxied by Caddy on port 80 (HTTP, no TLS).

Auto-start: /etc/local.d/xcontrol.start via OpenRC rc-update add local.

Firewall: UFW open on ports 80 and 443.

Web Viewer

Embedded in the relay binary via include_str!. The source HTML lives at:

xcontrol-relay/src/web/index.html

Update it, rebuild the relay, or (for Node.js deployment) SCP it to the server:

scp xcontrol-relay/src/web/index.html root@[host]:/root/relay/src/web/index.html

Binary Size

Component	Size
xcontrol.exe (agent)	594 KB
xcontrol-relay.exe (Rust relay)	858 KB

Release profile optimizations:

[profile.release]
opt-level = "z"
lto = true
codegen-units = 1
strip = true
panic = "abort"

License

MIT