Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by swsieber » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

wojciii wrote: post #17

mtlynch wrote: post #2

Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback about this post.

Cool project, but what about power management? What happens if the PC being controlled crashes and does not let you reboot it using keyboard shortcut? I'm might be damaged by testing and working with embedded development.

If you can plug stuff into it, just use the KVM from a laptop and sit by it.

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

#32

Post by mtlynch » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

cmer wrote: post #10

This is a game-changer! Thanks for all your work on this. Do you have any plans to allow controlling more than 1 computer remotely? I'd love to implement this in my homelab.

>This is a game-changer! Thanks for all your work on this.

Thanks for reading!

>Do you have any plans to allow controlling more than 1 computer remotely? I'd love to implement this in my homelab.

Right now, I can't think of a way to do this. The Pi only has one USB OTG port, so I don't know of a way to share that among multiple machines.

A friend suggested an interesting solution of chaining TinyPilot together with a "dumb" multi-machine KVM that supports switching via hotkey. So it would go:

TinyPilot -> legacy KVM -> server1, server 2, ...

You could still use a web interface and hop between servers using keyboard shortcuts that the legacy KVM understands.

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

#33

Post by EvanAnderson » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:21 PM UTC

This looks great. To be useful in the datacenter environments I work in such a device would need VGA capture, though. Most servers don't have HDMI ports in my experience.

Anybody know of a good, cheap V4L2 USB-based VGA capture dongle?

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

#34

Post by mtlynch » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:22 PM UTC

grosswait wrote: post #21

I just finished building a Pi KVM about a month ago using project https://github.com/pikvm . Has been great so far.

Yeah, I'm really impressed with that project and love Max's work! There's a bit of a barrier to entry though, as it requires you to compile the OS yourself. My goal with TinyPilot was to create something that's easier for newcomers to install and simpler for me to reason about.

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

#35

Post by C1sc0cat » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

Oh nice I will have to look into this as I was considering Using a dual pc set up for streaming and this would be great for controlling the second pc (mac mini)

I want to have main pc for running ROLLd20 and a daw - then use a mac mini to run the processed audio from my DAW into hangouts.

This is so I can properly play in audio and , music cues as well as altering my voice to suit the character eg a galdos style for a robot

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

#36

Post by NietTim » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:25 PM UTC

Great little project! I had no idea capture cards got that cheap

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

#37

Post by dukoid » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

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.

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

#38

Post by znpy » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

the best thing in this article is the immediate link named "I don’t want your life story; just tell me how to build it "

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

#39

Post by mmastrac » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #4

That MacroSilicon MS2109 capture is super interesting! $11 shipped for 1080p30 capture is unbeatable. I wonder what kind of host SBC is going to be necessary to build a clone BlackMagic ATEM Mini without choking up USB bandwidth.

A USB 2.0 device can use up to 480Mbps and MJPEG is on the order of 10s of Mbps (estimated), so I don't think you're anywhere near needing to worry about bandwidth.

Your biggest complication will be real-time re-encoding and compositing with effects.

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

#40

Post by mtlynch » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

NietTim wrote: post #36

Great little project! I had no idea capture cards got that cheap

Thanks for reading! Yeah, my understanding is that these capture cards are fairly recent. I think my timing was pretty lucky because a lot of earlier projects had to do HDMI->S-Video and S-Video->USB[0] to keep costs down because there weren't any inexpensive HDMI->USB options at the time.

[0] https://github.com/Fmstrat/diy-ipmi#setting-up-the-hardware