(UPDATED MAY 2023) Running the EDCoPilot UI on a separate Windows device

(Main photo courtesy of Cmdr Maketaurie Guaiaba, with thanks)

You can run the EDCoPilot UI on a separate Windows device if you choose.

A Surface Pro or a touchscreen Windows laptop become awesome touch interfaces to control the UI, and to access the Controls panels for Flight, Combat, SRV, OnFoot and Camera.

The UI will run on the Windows device and connects to the EDCoPilot process running on your game PC. You can then use the UI without ever taking focus off of your game window.

Control buttons are very responsive. All UI features work the same way as if the UI was running on the game PC.

Wait, your 2nd device isnt touchscreen, you say? You can run the UI on it, but use it with SpaceDesk to use your tablet as the touch interface, with the bonus of no loss of focus (and only a single button click needed) when you use in this configuration

To set up your 2nd device for the UI (note: Updated 23-05-25):

New approach May 2023 : EDCoPilot will maintain files in a separate folder on your primary PC that are required for the UI to run on its own on a separate PC. You can then either copy this folder over in its entirety to your 2nd PC, or set up software such as OneDrive to automatically synchronize updates to this folder onto your 2nd PC.

1. On your primary device (where you run Elite Dangerous and EDCoPilot), create a new folder where EDCoPilot will maintain a set of files needed to run the UI remotely. I named mine c:\EDCoPilot-RemoteUI

2. In EDCoPilot on your primary device, in the UI Settings panel, at the bottom are new options (see image below):

   1. Click the Remote UI folder option and set the location to the folder you created in step 1

   2. Set the IP address of server running EDCoPilot.exe to the address of your PRIMARY pc (the one that runs Elite Dangerous

3. Restart EDCoPilot and it will populate the files needed for the Remote UI

4. Either copy the folder over to your 2nd PC, or configure OneDrive (or similar) to synchronise the folder onto your 2nd PC Important: Make sure the full path of the folder on the 2nd PC matches the full path on the main PC (though drive letter can be different). This is how the remote client detects it is running remotely and will then attempt to connect to the main PC IP address. Example: if your remote UI folder on the main PC is d: \ ED apps \ EDCoPilot-RemoteUI, then on the 2nd PC it needs to be <any drive letter>: \ ED apps \ EDCoPilot-RemoteUI

5. On the 2nd PC, once folder has been copied or synchronised, simply double click the EDCoPilotGUI2.exe file to start the UI, which will attempt to connect to your EDCoPilot instance running on your Primary PC.