Inside Synark Station: how the app is built
What happens between your computer and the twenty phones: how each screen reaches you, how one tap repeats on all of them and how mini-apps run on their own.
By SYNARK SYSTEMS · · 4 min read
Synark Station is the Windows app that comes with the box. Open it and all twenty phones are on your screen, live, and you control them with your mouse and keyboard. Here is what happens underneath: how each phone's picture gets to you, how one tap repeats on all twenty, and how tasks run on their own.
- 20phones live, in a single window
- 14 daysfree trial, no card needed
- 5languages: Spanish, English, French, Italian and German
A desktop app, not a website
It installs on Windows 10 or 11 like any other program, just for your user and without admin rights. Everything it needs to talk to the phones is inside the installer: nothing else to install and no account to create.
It runs on your computer, not on a server of ours. Phones, groups, tasks and settings are stored in a database inside your user folder, and every 24 hours the app leaves a backup in Documents. If the internet goes down, it keeps working.
How it talks to the phones
Every phone in the box is a real Android. The app talks to them over ADB, the connection Android ships with for building and testing apps. The box is linked to your computer by the network cable, the app finds the phones and, if one drops off the network, reconnects it on its own.
The box's own board has a separate connection. From the Box tab you turn the fan up or down and restart all twenty phones at once.
Twenty screens, live
The picture isn't a screenshot refreshed every so often: it's video. Each phone compresses its own screen with its video chip and sends it over the connection, and the app receives it and draws it on your monitor. The heavy lifting happens on each phone, so your computer doesn't choke on twenty screens at once.
On top of that, only what you're looking at is sent. If a phone is outside the window, its video pauses until it comes back. Thumbnail size and quality are set at the top of Screens.
One tap, twenty phones
Double-click a phone to open it large and use it with your mouse and keyboard. Control travels over the same connection as the video: every tap, gesture and key arrives instantly.
If other phones are selected and you turn on Repeat on selected phones, whatever you do on one happens on all of them. Not every phone has the same screen, so the app adapts each tap to each phone's resolution: you tap a spot and the same spot is tapped on the rest.
To avoid surprises there's a guardian. If a group tap lands on a button like “Deny” or “Reset”, it isn't sent and you get a warning.
The box brings the twenty phones. The app makes them work as one.
Mini-apps: tasks that run on their own
A mini-app is a list of steps the app runs on the phones you choose: open an app, tap, swipe, type, wait for something to appear. Steps can go inside an “if…”, a “repeat” or a “random”, and use variables. There are three ways to build one:
- Recording it. You do the task once on a phone and the app turns it into steps, with the real pauses between them.
- With blocks. In the editor, step by step, no code. The inspector reads what's on screen so you can pick the button to tap.
- From the catalogue. Mini-apps made and tested by SYNARK, such as posting or reading an email to get the code, installed in one click.
To find things on screen, the app can read the elements the phone itself reports, like buttons and text, or look for an image. For images it compares a crop with the screen in two passes: a quick one at reduced size and a full-size one where it found something. That way it gets it right even if the brightness changes.
Each mini-app can be scheduled every so often or at a set time, while the app is open. Every run keeps a step-by-step record that you can export.
Keeping watch without looking
The Health tab checks each phone every so often: battery, temperature, storage, memory and screen. If something goes past the limits you set, you get a Windows notification.
And it fixes things on its own: it reconnects a phone that drops off the network, restarts the video if it freezes and, if you allow it, restarts a phone that stops responding. Everything is logged.
From somewhere else
To use it from your phone's browser or another computer in the office, turn on remote control with a password. It works inside your network; from outside, through a VPN.
If you connect an AI, which is optional, you can ask for tasks in plain language, like “open Settings and turn on airplane mode”, and it does them by looking at the screen. And to connect it to your own tools there's an API that only answers on your computer and requires a key.
Licence and trial
The app starts with a 14-day free trial, with tasks on up to 3 phones at once. The licence is a signed key the app checks without contacting any server.
Right now it's at version Prelaunch 0.9.1. The download is coming soon: on the app's page you can leave your email and we'll tell you the day it's out.
