Try installing RealVNC: www.realvnc.com/en/
That works well on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 (Server) and on my Macbook (Client).

Hello PK
You might survey the versions of armbian that works really fine on Rockship platforms as the Tinkerboard. There is no version available today but the nanp PC is a recent. SBC. I guess the specific version will come very soon.

www.armbian.com

Hi Peter, did you already gather any experience with the GPIOs, is there any library that can be used to address the pins (such as the wiringPi lib)?

Best, Helge

Helge, check out:
wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/Nano...stem_with_npi-config

One thing with vnc is that not all installations allow you to connect to a running session. Usually the default configuration of the running service is to provide a session for a user who logs in through vnc, while you probably expect the service to provide a view on the session you are currently locally logged into. I won't elaborate more, but if you think this is your issue I can probably help.

-Eric

Peter,
Here are the links to RealVNC for Linux (server) and MacOS (viewer).

www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/vnc/linux/
www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/macos/

Those work great on my setup.

Jo

Is the basic setup as you think it is and getting through any firewall?
If you have something like telnet on the MAC client.
[tg@tcup]$ telnet obs 5905
Trying 192.168.1.108...
Connected to obs.
Escape character is '^]'.
RFB 003.008
Also some clients only need the last digit of the port #.
/Tom

Thanks Tom. I got this:

Peters-Air:~ peterkennett$ telnet 192.168.1.73 22
Trying 192.168.1.73...
Connected to friendlyelec.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.2p2 Ubuntu-4ubuntu2.4

So I have no problem connecting to the NanoPi from my MacBook via Telnet.
But no VNC, not with the built-in VNC client, not with JollyFastVNC Pro, not with VNC Viewer, and not with Chicken of the VNC.

Can you run "netstat" on the nanopc? If the service is running, there should be port 5900 in the list.

-Eric

I remember when I was installing some version of VNC and it had port 22.
Perhaps this is the real issue. I am having problems installing RealVNC so I need to install something else.
I thought Lubuntu had a VNC server included in the OS.

PK

Sorry, Peter, my fault. RealVNC is not (yet) compatible with Ubuntu 18 based systems.
Here the instructions I found for installing VNC on OS 18 systems:
linuxconfig.org/vnc-server-on-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-linux
Please note, I have not yet tried this. I am holding out until I REALLY have to "upgrade", knowing full well that it will probably take me a couple of hours at least to unbreak my system again.
Greetings from Ubuntu 16.04.....
Jo

If vnc is using port 22, it means there's a special configuration to have it go through ssh. There should be documentation to explain the default.

I'll just describe my own setup. I installed TigerVNC because the documentation is simple and clear. I have automatic login enabled, and x0vncserver configured to start in the background in the user profile. I configured the vnc password for my local user with vncpassword. The connection port is the default 5900, and there is no further security involved than the WiFi connection, and the VPN when accessing the computer from outside my local network.

I had this use case planned from the beginning, and I must admit I was quite angry against most vnc packages only documenting the unintuitive full-vnc user session. That is only useful for multi-user servers, not in our situation where we configure the system with a screen connected, then move it headless to the telescope setup.

EDIT: TigerVNC is only available on arch x86, I just wanted to describe my setup, in case the issue is configuration.

-Eric