It's common to think that operating your telescope at a remote observatory is going to be hard to figure out and difficult to do. What you'll discover is that remote imaging doesn’t fundamentally change how you image. You're still imaging from your backyard; it's just that your backyard is farther away.
The benefits are obvious: no driving to a dark site; no hauling equipment out and setting it up; no nightly polar alignment; no cold in the winter nor bugs in the summer; no worrying that someone is going to grab your gear and run off with it; and no tearing everything down in the morning after being up all night. But there are some challenges: you need to be able to access your control computer remotely over the Internet; you need to be able to remotely control power to your gear; and you need to automate everything you normally do manually.
Once your equipment is set up on your pier at AstroPeak, you never have to do any of that again. Observatory staff does your polar alignment once, then you’re good forever (or for a long time at least). Your gear is secure in an observatory building staffed 24/7/365. Automated systems close the observatory roof if it looks like rain or if it gets too cloudy.
Controlling your Rig
You probably are using NINA, ASIAIR, or some other means of controlling your rig with a computer. You'll continue to do that at the remote site.
If you're using NINA, you have either been connecting devices directly to your laptop or going through a USB hub, or you have a dedicated mini PC mounted on your scope. If you’re using the former, you’ll have to convert to the latter. Get yourself a Beelink SER-series or MeLE Quieter mini PC and mount it to your scope. Then you'll use remote desktop software like Microsoft Remote Desktop, AnyDesk, RustDesk, or Chrome Remote Desktop to log into the computer on your pier from home.
If you're using ASIAIR, you'll be given VPN credentials and an IP address that accesses your specific pier so that the ASIAIR app running on your iPad or Android tablet can talk directly to your rig as if it were in the back yard. Alternately, you can do what I do and put a Mac mini on your pier and run the iPad version of the ASIAIR app on the Mac. It will talk to the ASIAIR, and you will use one of the remote desktop solutions mentioned above to log into the Mac.
If you’re using some other device, like StellarMate Pro, StellarMate running on a Raspberry Pi, or StellaVita, they work the same way as ASIAIR — you’ll get an IP address and VPN credentials for direct connection to the device as if it were on your local network.
Automate Everything
Everything you normally do manually that isn't already automated will need to be automated.
For example, you won't be there to adjust focus, so you'll need to install an electronic focuser to do that for you. You won't be able to change your filters, so you'll need a filter wheel that can be controlled from your computer or ASIAIR (or make arrangements to have your filters manually swapped, which can be costly and takes time). And while you can manually switch the power on or off to your dew heaters, it's best to automate that, either through your control computer or a device like the Pegasus Astro Powerbox Micro that can monitor temperature and humidity and do it for you.
Note that if you’re shooting color, it’s not terribly inconvenient to install a filter drawer instead of a filter wheel, then have staff swap in a narrow band filter for shooting emission nebulae when needed. This would get tedious if you're shooting mono, but it can work for OSC. There's no charge to swap filters in a filter drawer, but it can't be timed to your shooting schedule. It will happen in a day or two depending on workload. In other words, a filter wheel is highly recommended.
Some people find it helpful to install a motorized flat panel so they can shoot flats before or after an imaging session. Alternately, you can shoot sky flats once the sun is up and before the roof closes (or just after the roof opens in the evening).
Power Considerations
Finally, you need to think about power. At home you unplug everything at the end of the night and bring it indoors. At the remote observatory you can use NINA or ASIAIR to turn off your mount and camera cooler. You’ll likely leave your computer running. If you want more control over your power, you can get a Kasa Wi-Fi power strip, Digital Logger Web Power Switch, or similar device, so that you can turn off individual power outlets from home with your phone or tablet.
AstroPeak has uninterruptible power supplies on each building that will keep you imaging during power outages for an hour or two. You can send your own UPS for backup, or if you want to be able to respond in a graceful way to power outages via a USB connection from your own UPS.
Data Transfer
You’re going to go from imaging once or twice a month to imaging more nights than you’re not. You’ll need a way to transfer files off the remote computer or ASIAIR to your local drive or cloud storage, and you’ll need more storage than you currently have. I’ve used Dropbox in the past — I just drag FIT files to my Dropbox folder on the remote machine and they get copied to the cloud and to my local machine automatically. But as the amount of data you have increases, you’ll outgrow a personal Dropbox account. My current solution is a 14TB NAS in my basement. I can mount the NAS on my remote machine and drag/drop files to the NAS. This could be automated, and I’ll do that eventually, but for now it works well to just do it manually.
See? It's Easy
If you’re already imaging at home, imaging remotely isn't about learning a completely new way to do astrophotography. It’s about removing yourself from the process. Anything that used to require you to be physically present — focusing, switching filters, managing power — now has to be handled automatically. Once that's in place, the experience becomes simpler, not more complicated. Your scope is still "in your backyard." You just don’t have to go outside to use it.