Play

Neurodesk Play provides instant access to our neuroimaging analysis environment directly through your web browser. This service allows you to:

• Start using Neurodesk immediately without any installation.
• Access a wide range of pre-installed neuroimaging tools.
• Try out the platform before setting up a local installation.
• Collaborate with colleagues using a consistent environment.

Note: Neurodesk Play is free but comes with resource limits. For more intensive workloads, consider installing Neurodesk locally or using one of our other hosting options.

Launch Neurodesk Play

The tool below automatically detects the fastest server for your location. Click the Recommended card to start.

Data Transfer

We provide several methods to transfer your files in and out of Neurodesk Play, including drag-and-drop and cloud storage integration. View Data Transfer Documentation →

SSH connection

It is possible to connect to Play instances using SSH, including from VS Code Remote SSH. Neurodesk Play uses jupyter-sshd-proxy to proxy SSH over the authenticated JupyterHub connection.

1. Install websocat on your local computer

The SSH client connects through a WebSocket proxy, so websocat must be available on the computer where you run ssh.

On macOS:

brew install websocat

For Linux and Windows, install websocat from your package manager or download a binary from the websocat releases.

2. Start your Neurodesk Play session

Launch one of the Play servers above and wait until JupyterLab has started. Keep this browser session running while you use SSH.

You will need three values:

• Play domain: for example play-america.neurodesk.org, play-europe.neurodesk.org, or play.neurodesk.cloud.edu.au.
• JupyterHub username: copy this from the browser URL. In a URL like https://play-america.neurodesk.org/user/myname/lab, the username is myname. If the URL contains encoded characters such as %40, use the URL value exactly as shown.

3. Create a JupyterHub token

In JupyterLab, open File > Hub Control Panel, then select Token and create a new token.

Treat this token like a password to your play instance. Set an expiry date for best practice and not the expiry date in your calendar.

4. Add your SSH public key inside Play

Open a terminal in JupyterLab and add the public key that matches the private key on your local computer. If your public keys are available from GitHub, you can use:

mkdir -p ~/.ssh
wget https://github.com/<YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME>.keys -O ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Replace <YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME> with your GitHub username.

5. Configure SSH on your local computer

Add an entry like this to ~/.ssh/config on your local computer:

Host neurodesk-play
    HostName <PLAY-DOMAIN>
    User jovyan
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    ProxyCommand websocat --binary -H="Authorization: token <JUPYTERHUB-TOKEN>" asyncstdio: wss://%h/user/<JUPYTERHUB-USERNAME>/sshd/

Replace:

• <PLAY-DOMAIN> with the server you are using, for example play-america.neurodesk.org.
• <JUPYTERHUB-TOKEN> with the token you created.
• <JUPYTERHUB-USERNAME> with the username from your JupyterHub URL.
• ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 with the private key that matches the public key you added to authorized_keys.

6. Connect

From your local terminal:

ssh neurodesk-play

You can use the same SSH host in VS Code Remote SSH by connecting to neurodesk-play.

You can also copy files with scp or sftp, for example:

scp local-file.txt neurodesk-play:~/
sftp neurodesk-play

Usage Acknowledgments

When using these services for research, please include the appropriate acknowledgment:

🇺🇸 US (Jetstream2 / NSF)

“This research was supported by Jetstream2 (NSF award #2005506), which is supported by the National Science Foundation. Jetstream2 is a cloud computing resource managed by the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute and part of the ACCESS project.”

🇪🇺 Europe (EGI / CESNET-MCC)

“Enabled through services and resources provided by the EGI Federation with the dedicated support of CESNET-MCC. Computational resources were provided by the e-INFRA CZ project (ID:90254), supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.”

🇦🇺 Australia (ARDC / Nectar)

“This research was supported by use of the Nectar Research Cloud, a collaborative Australian research platform supported by the NCRIS-funded Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).”