Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 284 posts

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

#241

Post by fulafel »

parliament32 wrote: post #193
fulafel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This fail-open "should" is bad besides for the obvious reasons, also because it'll be extra ops complexity compared to a secure kvm widget that you don't have to handle with kid gloves. (And thirdly because of the sibling comment noted footgun.. or silent foot-boobytrap more properly)

The problem is BMC has an astounding array of features[1] that are worth the operational complexity. This isn't just KVM like in OP's post... being able to remote mount images is a godsend when you're provisioning a server or diagnosing hardware issues or doing a BIOS update on the other side of the globe (with your other alternative being shipping a flash drive[2], then paying $200/hr for DC remote hands to plug it…

I think you can do all those with iPXE, works well over wan. As a bonus you can get your images over https and not insecure tftp.

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

#242

Post by dev-zero »

iron2disulfide wrote: post #143

This is cool. Any chance this would scale for many machines? I have a ~15 machine lab with no KVM setup right now, and could really use something like this if it works for a large number of devices.

Maybe a bit of an overkill, but if one would use an RPi ZeroW, you could simply stack multiple of them (together with a video-grabber) in one case, each providing KVM for one host. If you only want to use one network port, add an internal network switch to the package, have one the RPis doing the frontend to it (requires a second network port on it).

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

#243

Post by test1235 »

monadic2 wrote: post #115
derefr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just got a bluetooth filco keyboard which you can swap between four devices using ctrl+alt+fn, [1-4] ... I've currently got my work laptop, rpi, ipad and home laptop all programmed in.

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

#244

Post by ianlevesque »

Bnshsysjab wrote: post #219
EvanAnderson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used virtually all of the iDRACs. They're probably in that 200ms area (based on my gut feeling w/ no empirical measurements). They've been fairly responsive in my experience.

Out of curiosity do they bring any functionality that this device does not?

It can one-click update all firmware for bios, network cards, storage controller etc

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

#245

Post by wolfhumble »

alias_neo wrote: post #215
wolfhumble wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a machine/server doesn't have built in IPMI, I am using an Adderlink Digital ipeps and control it that way 1). Apart from the built in RealVNC server, it also has HDMI video, USB and virtual media support among other things. I have no relationship with Adderlink, but I am a happy user of this product. Not cheap, but worth the price IMHO. 1) https://www.adder.com/en/kvm-solutions/adderlink-digital-ipe...

At the ~$700 price tag I found for it, I feel like you're missing the spirit of the post. You could build ~7 devices for as many machines using the article's method.

I was commenting on this thread, where the commenter said: "This looks awesome. I was looking for a solution like this last year. I budgeted a few hundred bucks but couldn't find anything."

So I only wanted to point out that there are good solutions out there, even though they might not be cheap. The solution have saved my bacon, and has been worth the money.

Looking at the original project, authentication, mouse support and audio are not supported (maybe in the future?), so if those things are important; a solution like the ipeps might be worth it as well.

But your mileage may of course vary . . . :-)

Edit: Grammar

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

#246

Post by hasperdi »

lxe wrote: post #147

Oh man, the video latency woes. I've been going through the same motions trying to get minimal-latency stream-to-browser from an Amcrest (Dahua) IP camera. Their app and cloud services leaves much to be desired, so I tried to roll my own. They cameras send h264-encoded stream over rtmp but also through some kind of custom HTTP protocol which their browser app (requiring a scary binary native plugin) decodes, but it's…

From experience trying to minimise latency of Raspberry Camera stream, two biggest factors of latency are H264 encoding (maybe because it's temporal) and RTMP.

MJPEG and UDP/TCP streaming work better (for me at least).

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

#247

Post by tokenk »

boring_twenties wrote: post #236
PaulKeeble wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm, I guess I lucked out then. I bought the cheapest motherboard I could find (at the time) for my 3600, an ASRock B450M Pro4. It makes a bunch of annoying beeps, but doesn't stop booting.

Second this. I got an unraid server working headless with an ASRock B450M ITX board (Fatal1ty) but it's still a real pain having to put in a GPU to boot into BIOS. Was hoping this could fix that for me :(

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

#248

Post by punnerud »

Love this! Startet building the same in 2018 with LKV373A and RPi Zero, and figured out that a better solution (for my need) was to host multiple virtual machines (11 x Ubuntu) under Windows Pro.

One of the VMs is used for remote connection with SSH and reverse port forwarding, so i easily can connect, use RDP to Windows ++

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

#249

Post by tlamponi »

mtlynch wrote: post #165
tlamponi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Glad to hear that you like it!

For (integrated) mouse support you could take a look at a project from a good friend and colleague: https://github.com/Blub/netevent

Allows passing along arbitrary input events over the network and more.

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

#250

Post by Bnshsysjab »

DrPhish wrote: post #221
Bnshsysjab wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity do they bring any functionality that this device does not?

The most interesting stuff is generally: -Remotely mounting images (ISO/FS/IMG/etc) on the host for bare-metal installs or any other purpose -Hard power options for unresponsive servers or emergencies -Heavily integrated diagnostics (fan RPMs, thermals, RAID status, etc etc) with eg. snmp output

Cool, I assume with enough willpower those first two could be solved with a pi too ;)
Post reply on HN