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In all this, I've not seen any mention of what "KVM" means...
What's the latency like on these? Almost imperceptible? I find that the delays on VNC/RDP are noticeable enough to be annoying, even on LAN.
You can get it down to sub-100ms using a few hacks, but honestly, this kind of setup is not optimal if you need remote real-time control (e.g. for gaming or video production monitoring).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to design one that takes VGA in as that's what servers come with. An LTE modem is trivial to add.
COTS VGA to HDMI adaptors are readily available.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to design one that takes VGA in as that's what servers come with. An LTE modem is trivial to add.
So is a VGA digitizer that plugs into a USB port, presumably?
TinyPilot founder here. Happy to answer any questions about TinyPilot or KVM over IPs.
General microcontroller questions if you don't mind. Lets say that I prototype something on dev board like something from Raspberry Pi, or ones from STM. Now I want to do a full product, (like the Tiny Pilot) with the microprocessor on a custom PCB board with just the necessary hardware. I understand that you have to design the schematic and then get the PCB layout done, but in terms of figuring out which pins to con…
Worth noting that your typical STM32 MCU is quite different class of device compared to the Broadcom SoC on a RPi. From a architectural point of view, the big difference is that MCUs typically have both flash and ram integrated in the package, while SoC requires external ram and flash. Designing PCB for high-speed DDR memory is not trivial. Modern SoCs come in high-density BGA packages usually sporting close to thousand pins (or more!), while MCUs usually come in more easy to work with packages with order of magnitude less pins.
Specifically the Broadcom chip in current RPis is custom made and not generally available.
I want one of these with an LTE modem on it so that I can drop it in the rack (non-datacenter) and remote-in regardless of the WAN condition.
You'd have to figure out how to get inbound connections - perhaps something like tailscale would do the trick.
What's the latency like on these? Almost imperceptible? I find that the delays on VNC/RDP are noticeable enough to be annoying, even on LAN.
In my testing and my Dad's, about 100-300ms. Very noticeable, but you kinda get used to it. You can get it down to sub-100ms using a few hacks, but honestly, this kind of setup is not optimal if you need remote real-time control (e.g. for gaming or video production monitoring).
In all this, I've not seen any mention of what "KVM" means...
"Keyboard, Video, Mouse" is what the acronym means for anyone wondering. Some IT workers will have one at their desk to switch a single set of monitors, keyboards and mice between multiple computers. In this context, however, there's an additional expectation that these devices make this happen over a network, so that you can handle things like BIOS configuration fully remotely.
Yeah, the important distinction here is that these devices somewhat fulfill the role of a standalone IPMI[1] device. IPMI is typically built into server motherboard (SuperMicro) which allows an administrator to reboot a machine or configure BIOS over a network. Your typical KVM does not feature this.
However, where these lack is that they still require a video card. IPMI built into a motherboard can run on an entirely headless system.
There are also commercial versions of this, such as the Lantronix Spider KVM over IP[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Platform_Managemen...
PiKVM v3 HAT on Kickstarter right now. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mdevaev/pikvm-v3-hat // I'm the author ;)
It says PiKVM has support to press power buttons etc. Does PC hardware also have means for health checks, to determine if this is needed? Could be a useful feature
Maybe for some context - although Jeff Geerling does provide it too in his video - most 'server' motherboards have build-in KVM. I will make the bet that build-in KVM is more responsive and those interfaces are now HTML5 based, so no nasty Java applet stuff. Motherboards / servers with KVM will consume around 8-10 watt extra, even when powered off, as the KVM solution is basically a tiny computer running Linux + prop…
Mainboard-built-in KVMs provided by server vendors are usually buggy as hell closed-source horrors, with regular full-compromise holes that make running them over the Internet a complete gamble.
This is why open-source KVMs that are just as secure as other normal Linux servers, and auto-upgradable, are very desirable.