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Ask HN: Advice for creating a USB device linking 2 computers

20 points WorldDev | 1 comments | 25 Oct 25 19:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.269s | source

I want to build a little device that connects two computers together via usb, and send keystrokes from one to the other.

(I would use it to use a laptop keyboard on a headless computers).

I am looking for an easy solution, it does not have to be the cheapest.

ChatGPT points me to Arduino, but as far as I can see, there's no arduino with 2 usb ports. It also points me to Raspery pi zero, but that's a computer, not a microcontroller, so not sure if it's suitable.

If anyone with experience can give me some pointers, it would be greatly appreciated!

1. anonymousiam ◴[26 Oct 25 01:06 UTC] No.45708252[source]▶
You could do this with a couple of TI MSP-EXP430F5529LP boards (<$16 each from Digikey). They include demo code with HID features. I've used this platform extensively, but I never used the USB features for anything other than a JTAG interface for development. I once recommended it to a friend with no embedded development experience, and he had his own custom "mouse jiggler" up and working in one day.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments...

Alternatively, the newer ESP32-S3 boards (<$6 each) have dual USB-C interfaces, so you could do it with only one (smaller) card instead of two. Development might take longer though.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN4789XC

If you want to allow a network connection between the two computers, you could load soft-KVM software on each, and go from there.

https://goinglinux.com/open-source-cross-platform-kvm-softwa...