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

Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

crastinator-pro.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 270 posts

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#211

Post by alias_neo »

distantsounds wrote: post #197
ekimekim wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do use it occasionally - mostly when Windows has thrown up some issue stopping Steam from working properly. eg. I need to dismiss a dialog that is invisible over remote play, or it won't finish logging in until I close a "finish setting up your windows install" screen.

consider a different remote access option i.e. sunshine + moonlight instead of using steam remote play

Can confirm, Sunshine + Moonlight are a killer combination.

I run a Windows VM on one of my servers for some gaming because I don't run Window's otherwise, and with Sunshine on the VM, I can play with moonlight from my TV, laptop, desktop, phone, ROG Ally (Bazzite), tablet, basically anything that can support Moonlight.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#212

Post by alias_neo »

rincebrain wrote: post #156
withinrafael wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA GPUs still require "dummy" HDMI plugs. They won't be fully usable without something plugged in; it's not clear why.

This always seemed to be a very deliberate design choice by them to avoid you being able to use their consumer cards headless versus paying them a large amount on the Quadro or DG cards, since the big problem we saw at $OLDJOB was always that you couldn't use CUDA on them headless. At said $OLDJOB, we ended up soldering dummy VGA plugs that had resistors across the right pins when we wanted to experiment with buildin…

Would bet that this is exactly why. I run Tesla GPUs in my server rack which don't even have display ports, but they run any OS just fine with the vGPU drivers, which Nvidia make an absolute pain to obtain.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#213

Post by alias_neo »

genewitch wrote: post #194
papichulo2023 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A then you can use lossless scaling on moonlight for a real amazing distrubed gaming experience.

Okay this all sounds great, what specs do I need on the machine connected to the TV? Will a Raspberry Pi 3 work? Pine64? Atomic Pi? (That's x86_64, intel Celeron) Anything more than that and the value proposition goes way down. For every 50 grams lighter I am willing to lose 1fps. For every fan removed I will drop an entire resolution (4k -> 2k -> FHD...) Change "lighter" to heavier if it makes sense. My comfort and…

It doesn't take too much compute, the networking is the key.

I've run Moonlight on a bunch of things from my TV, crappy old Android TV box, phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, ROG Ally; don't recall if I ever tried a Pi, but I might give it a go.

My advice is, whatever you use, make sure it has wired ethernet for a consistent experience. That said, a more powerful device on the receiving end (Moonlight) with good high-speed wifi should also work fine, but almost always try to keep the PC end (Sunshine) hard-wired.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#214

Post by PhasmaFelis »

esperent wrote: post #93
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've wanted this for ages, Laptop ergonomics are horrible. When traveling I use a portable monitor, keyboard, mouse. Yes it's annoying to travel with all that but worth it not to end my work days with neck pain and a migraine. Have you considered dropping the portable monitor for an angled laptop stand that will elevate the screen to eye level? I've got one that collapses down small enough to fit in a reasonably de…

I do actually use the laptop as a second screen in this way most of the time. However, it's amazing how many hotels lack any table deep enough to place a 15" laptop on a stand with a keyboard in front of it.

Wow, that's obnoxious. You may be able to call down and ask for a folding table of some kind. But yeah, you shouldn't have to.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#215

Post by nullify88 »

genewitch wrote: post #194
papichulo2023 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A then you can use lossless scaling on moonlight for a real amazing distrubed gaming experience.

Okay this all sounds great, what specs do I need on the machine connected to the TV? Will a Raspberry Pi 3 work? Pine64? Atomic Pi? (That's x86_64, intel Celeron) Anything more than that and the value proposition goes way down. For every 50 grams lighter I am willing to lose 1fps. For every fan removed I will drop an entire resolution (4k -> 2k -> FHD...) Change "lighter" to heavier if it makes sense. My comfort and…

At a minimum anything with h264 hardware decoding. H265, and VC1 hardware decoding supported but optional. It depends on what your output is. Networking wise, cabled is the best latency and bandwidth wise but wireless also works but can be unpredictable depending on usage and environment.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#216

Post by qwytw »

dynamite-ready wrote: post #98
geoffpado wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history is a bit more complicated than that. Valve themselves never released a “Steam Box” that could run games on Linux. They partnered with a few different companies (Alienware, Gigabyte, etc.), who released co-branded “Steam Machines” which were just those companies’s normal hardware design, but with a common set of specs ideal for running SteamOS. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_%28computer%29…

I suppose the missing part of the story is why they held back on pursuing this market. At the time, the console market was wide open, with little innovation in terms of hardware, until Nintendo released the Switch. Even now, I'd be quite happy to own a Valve branded, small form PC that plugs into a TV. The Steam Link was a kop out to me.

I guess Proton/Wine/Linux gaming wasn't mature enough back then. Also a handheld wasn't really an option because there weren't any powerful enough yet energy efficient and cheap x86 chips available either.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#217

Post by hinkley »

geoffpado wrote: post #63
spacemarine1 wrote: post #50

Interestingly, Steam’s first hardware product was a Steam Box: a little computer brick that could boot Steam on linux and let you play all your games on your TV (with a Steam controller or game controller of your choice). The cycle is now complete.

The history is a bit more complicated than that. Valve themselves never released a “Steam Box” that could run games on Linux. They partnered with a few different companies (Alienware, Gigabyte, etc.), who released co-branded “Steam Machines” which were just those companies’s normal hardware design, but with a common set of specs ideal for running SteamOS. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_%28computer%29…

I’m using the controller I got with my Steam link for the Steam deck.

Had to find a friend with a Windows box to run a firmware update to make it entirely Bluetooth compatible. But it works.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#219

Post by robertlagrant »

There are two types of technical blog post. One explains to you from a great towering height of immense knowledge how good it felt to use to use npm install and here's why that's exciting, and this is the other type. Written with many apologies for barely being able to do anything while doing everything better than I ever could.

Re: Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, just a power button and a USB port

#220

Post by mncharity »

esperent wrote: post #93
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've wanted this for ages, Laptop ergonomics are horrible. When traveling I use a portable monitor, keyboard, mouse. Yes it's annoying to travel with all that but worth it not to end my work days with neck pain and a migraine. Have you considered dropping the portable monitor for an angled laptop stand that will elevate the screen to eye level? I've got one that collapses down small enough to fit in a reasonably de…

I do actually use the laptop as a second screen in this way most of the time. However, it's amazing how many hotels lack any table deep enough to place a 15" laptop on a stand with a keyboard in front of it.

Fwiw, with my 15", unfolding flat and standing vertical, with keyboard etc in front, gave a plausible screen position. So I just kludged vertical-ish stands (and fretted over an eventual tip and crash). I considered hanging a portable monitor off the side (brick of a thinkpad, accustomed to gaff taped extensions), but didn't get to it.
Post reply on HN