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

#111

Post by numpad0 » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

mmastrac wrote: post #39

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.

I can't believe it until I see it. I've seen USB EHCI choke up from just three webcams.

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

#112

Post by RealStickman_ » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

swiley wrote: post #22

RealStickman_ wrote: post #14

Funnily enough I'm waiting for my hdmi to usb capture card to arrive so I can play on my PS3 while also having the option of switching back to the desktop instantly.

That has to add a lot of latency. Although honestly I think some of the latency complaints by gamers are a little much. Personally I have a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard connected to my desktop with a super duper cheap projector pointed into the living room and can play FPS games on it just fine.

It probably won't work. Though I think it could still be a fun project. Maybe I'll use it in the same way the author does in the end.

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

#113

Post by gyrgtyn » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #53

simlevesque wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you remotely connect to something like this ? using something like ngrok ?

Yeah, I haven't looked into that much because everything is on my local network. ngrok looks like it would work. One of my users is looking into remote.it, which seems like a similar service.

zerotier

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

#114

Post by AaronFriel » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

rob-olmos wrote: post #106

AaronFriel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say cloud VMs have removed the need, they've just made infra admins have to live without it. For the most part it's fine on well supported and tested OSes but before the container/kubernetes revolution I managed some personal VMs with esoteric distros in various clouds and so many things have to go right for that to work. A bad update or install of grub, initrd, dhclient, a handful of system services and m…

Google Cloud also provides read/write serial ports over SSH: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/interacting-... -- but I think AWS still doesn't. One thing I've ran into was root not having a password since the cloud images are typically SSH key auth only. That was annoying when trying to fix something simple like iptables or entering maintenance mode for a disk check.

Thank you! I wasn't aware this was possible back then. I'm glad they implemented this.

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

#115

Post by monadic2 » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #68

dukoid wrote: post #37

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-a…

I feel like the ideal here would be for there to be a Thunderbolt/USB4 display which has multiple Thunderbolt "source" ports, and also USB-C connectors for peripherals, where the display itself is acting as a USB controller available over Thunderbolt-PCIe, with the USB-C sockets attached to said USB controller. Change the input on the monitor, and the USB-controller PCIe card in the display would be hotplugged out of…

I've just given up on Bluetooth for rapid device switching. It's too time consuming to be figuring out which device your headphones are attached to & disconnecting/reconnecting to resolve, especially e.g. when someone calls you. Wires are very, very easy to read and debug.

I have AirPods but will only pair them to my phone.

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

#116

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #91

Hey OP, I was reading your linked HomeLab article and you mentioned you'd rather have gotten a mobo with integrated GPUs next time. Actually, motherboards do not include integrated graphics, it's all in the CPU/APU. The mobo you linked would not provide graphics either. AMD unfortunately does not have a high end APU released to consumers right now (there are some 4000 series, but only to OEMs I believe). However, for…

> Actually, motherboards do not include integrated graphics, it's all in the CPU/APU.

You should probably qualify that as current generation. There's plenty of last gen Intel and AMD solutions with onboard dedicated graphics.

I think the advent of GPU acceleration in servers and APUs for low end machines has impacted demand for these motherboards in current gen products.

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

#117

Post by mudkip » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #108

mudkip wrote: post #64

This is pretty cool (for managing servers cheaply), but I remain disappointed that remotely controlling computers over a network with low latency is still a difficult task. I've been trying to find a way to use a bunch of machines remotely over my LAN (for gaming / media playback on multiple devices), and have been somewhat disappointed at the quality / latency of the various options I've played around with. It's esp…

Have you tried out https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-qt ? If all your host machines are Windows 8+, then Parsec is fantastic and has clients for every major OS other than iOS.

I looked into Moonlight, but don't have any nVidia cards laying around here to test with.

I tried Parsec on one machine and was super disappointed. Video quality and latency were fine, but audio sounded like crap, despite streaming at 512kbps. Since there's no option to stream uncompressed audio, and no debug options to figure out why it sounded so terrible, I had to write off their entire product as unusable.

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

#118

Post by wojciii » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

mtlynch wrote: post #45

wojciii wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for reading! > 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? Yeah, that's one of the limitations. TinyPilot can't control power for the target computer. I don't know of any way to manage power without connecting the Pi to the target machine's motherboard, but that increases complexity significantly. I'm usi…

APC produces (or rebranded) power control modules you can control over Ethernet. They are probably expensive.

There are most likely cheaper products which would work. You should probably implement some kind of power control interface that could be used. Calling a shell script would be enough and some example implementations provided by your users. :) It doesn't need to be complicated.

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

#119

Post by btown » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #110

dannyw wrote: post #91

Hey OP, I was reading your linked HomeLab article and you mentioned you'd rather have gotten a mobo with integrated GPUs next time. Actually, motherboards do not include integrated graphics, it's all in the CPU/APU. The mobo you linked would not provide graphics either. AMD unfortunately does not have a high end APU released to consumers right now (there are some 4000 series, but only to OEMs I believe). However, for…

For years and years, many motherboards did have graphics sets integrated in. These days, you'll still see that on a lot of server-class motherboards. e.g. https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/M11SDV-4C... -- the line about AST2500 BMC graphics? That runs a VGA port.

I'm guessing the rationale for this is that even if the server's CPU can support onboard graphics, you wouldn't want to change the CPU's load profile just by plugging in a monitor to debug something? Or even to support CPUs that have no onboard graphics support?

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

#120

Post by crypt1d » Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

KVMs have been a the bane of my existence over the last 10 years. Almost 99% of the time they come with some ancient Java dependency that breaks on any modern OS and is barely usable. Not to mention the nightmare-ish KVM experience big players like OVH and Hetzner provide.

This is a superior solution to all of them.