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Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi

(mtlynch.io)
756 points mtlynch | 1 comments | 23 Jul 20 13:56 UTC | HN request time: 1.249s | source
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dukoid ◴[23 Jul 20 15:27 UTC] No.23928345[source]▶
I have given up on KVMs altogether and I am using the following approach now:

- Most monitors have multiple digital inputs. Connect each computer to one of them

- Use a USB switch keyboard and mouse

- Before switching the USB switch, press the "lock screen" key combination and make sure locking the screen drops the video signal

- After switching the USB switch, pressing shift should bring up the login dialog and re-activate video output. Since the monitor has just lost the signal in the previous step, it will scan the inputs and switch to the desired signal.

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_1qd4 ◴[23 Jul 20 15:32 UTC] No.23928396[source]▶
I did this for a while, the problem is that there's really no such thing as a high-quality USB switch. They are all garbage and mess with USB devices in some way (at least at the consumer level).
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1. hakfoo ◴[25 Jul 20 23:57 UTC] No.23953292[source]▶
The USB side always worked fine for me. The problems tended to be mostly video related.

I have a HDMI KVM switch that's supposed to be 4k@60. One PC won't detect it as such; I can make a custom 1440p at 42Hz mode but nothing higher. The other will send 4k/@60, but the monitor will do one of 4 or so failure modes:

* Entire screen compressed to half width: 50% * Correct behaviour: 20% * Correct display, occasionally flipping to black screen: 10% * Gatbled screen: 5% * No synch: 15%

Switching input is a game of toggling back and forth until it synchs correctly.

None of this happens with a direct connection.

The switch also doesn't seem to detect when I set up a keyboard macro for the switch-input sequence (control-control-1/2/3/4) but that's not nearly the dealbreaker.

I'm not sure if it's the switch or the monitor being relatively intolerant of the switch's behaviour, but I don't want to toss around $100-300 on spares to diagnose this.