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

mtlynch.io

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

#161
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…

I have MSI 450 MITX board and a Ryzen 3600 that is doing NAS/homeserver duty and it refused to POST without a GPU plugged in. Given its MITX and it only has a single slot needing it for PCI-E is a real pain, I intended to use it for SATA ports so it hurt my plans quite a bit.

Its motherboard dependent but its definitely something to check with AMD Ryzen motherboards.

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

#162
post #2

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

Have you looked at a solution for controlling the power on/off yet? This was something I was considering to do with a Raspberry PI and a relay and I figure it is the final part of the solution for when the machine inevitably crashes. Admittedly if its just across the room it was less of a concern but I have had the need to restart while I was away before and it would be nice to be part of the solution.

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video capture part should work, but I don't believe they support USB OTG, so they wouldn't be able to impersonate the keyboard. The official documentation[0] says all Pi devices have USB OTG, but I'm not sure if there's something else about the Pi 4 and Pi Zero W that allows USB gadget mode because I've never found anyone talking about using it before recent generations of Pi. This StackExchange answer says the A…

I'd expect the Pi Zero W to be fast enough to pass through the MJPEG stream and impersonate the keyboard, which should cut the cost by $20+ plus however much you save on not needing a fancy case.

Yeah that's true. I stopped thinking about the Pi Zero W early in the project because I assumed it would choke on video encoding. When I discovered that the HDMI dongle was doing the heavy lifting, I forgot to revisit that assumption. I'm going to order an USB to micro-USB adaptor to test it out because it would slim things down significantly.

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

#164
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work for remote.it. If you or your users need any help setting up remote access to the TinyPilot let us know. This looks like a great application. We can make ssh/VNC/http on the Pi available remotely over internet as a free service no problem.

Oh, that's awesome. Thank you!

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

#165
post #2

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

Really nice, exactly what I need just now as I'm setting up a remote workstation/part-time server at my families farm, but did not have a motherboard with IPMI/iKVM at hand. Oh, and thanks for using Proxmox VE! Was positively surprised when I saw our installer flash up out of nowhere :)

Wow, thank YOU for making Proxmox! I'm switching over after three years of Kimchi[0], and Proxmox does everything so much better.

[0] https://github.com/kimchi-project/kimchi

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

#166
post #2

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

Any thoughts on how this could work with VGA for example?

I believe it should work with a VGA to HDMI adaptor, as another commenter suggested[0], though I haven't tested this personally.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23928401

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

#167
post #2

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

If this just requires USB and HDMI, it should theoretically work identically a for Mac Mini or even something like a Fire TV, yes? Is there an upper limit on resolution and frame rate for the dongle?

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

#168
I tried something like this, but instead of a KVM, a remote "terminal" for multiseat in Linux. usbip worked fine, but I couldn't get video to work for a damn. The idea was to have the main computer stream video from one seat to the RP and act as a client for the keyboard and mouse attached to the RP using usbip. Had I been able to get the video portion to work, then next step would have been setting the RP to boot to a fullscreen vlc (or what have you) which displayed the gdm login screen from the main computer.

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

#169
post #2

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

I love how this is a project which puts together several different projects which are themselves the product of significant amounts of effort: RPi, the HDMI-USB dongle, the browser, and uStreamer. I think we are in for an interesting decade or so of people plugging things together like this.

I'm curious why you use the browser instead of ffplay for decoding and display. I'd guess ffplay would be faster - but maybe not?

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