Display-switch: Turn a $30 USB switch into a full-featured multi-monitor KVM

> The project's description is shit.

I dunno man, this worked pretty ok for me:

> This utility watches for USB device connect/disconnect events and switches monitor inputs via DDC/CI.

And then a couple lines latter, a sample config that makes it pretty obvious how simple this goes:

> usb_device = "1050:0407" \ on_usb_connect = "Hdmi1" \ on_usb_disconnect = "Hdmi2"

Plug in a device & switches to hdmi1. Unplug & it switches to hdmi2. A USB switch is optional, one could just move where they plug their mouse into by hand, for example. But you don't seem to be interested in helping fill yourself in on anything here, on learning, on using search engines to find anything out. Honestly filling in the neophyte knowledge like that is not what project descriptions are for, in my book.

Generally, dude: relax, chill out. Most everything on this planet could use better description. But this seemed pretty clear & simple to me, at least. I think it'll work for a lot a lot of people as is. No need to be aggressively rude. Have you ever dealt with any kind of soft-kvm like technology before? Perhaps people would more self-select into this kind of project, versus rando's walking in on the street. I think that's ok.

Yes, this is exactly what it is. Basically a KVM switch without the V. I've been using the display-switch software for months and it's fantastic. Using the inputs on the monitors to do the video switching instead of an external KVM switch means that you don't have to worry about finding a KVM switch that can handle the signal bandwidth required (in my case, three 4K60 HDR DisplayPort monitors, which is not a use case for which most KVM switches are designed).

This is the USB switch I use with it: https://www.iogear.com/product/GUS402/

from a purely software perspective and sort of the inverse of this, everyone should be aware of barrier, the fork/continuation of synergy

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

the general concept is you could have 2, 3, 4 or more individual desktop PCs at one desk, each connected to their own displays, and one keyboard and one mouse. The keyboard and mouse are on the primary workstation, you can roll the mouse off the edge of one screen and onto another.

The secondary and tertiary workstation PCs have no keyboard/mouse i/o plugged into them, just power, ethernet and display.

I have a similar setup, but unfortunately I'm stuck with it because my Acer monitor doesn't support the necessary DDC commands

I was pretty shocked that most of the ddcutil & other similar programs on Linux weren't working for two of my monitors. The utils couldn't even detect the DDC display. But I told it what i2c bus to send to & what commands to issue, and it turns out my monitors had a pretty wide range of commands.

Reminds me of an i2c motor controller I bought years ago, based off some avr microcontroller. I spent an afternoon trying to understand how I'd hooked things up wrong, trying to understand why I couldn't read the control values. Turns the soft i2c interface just didn't implement reading values off the controller at all, but served ok if I treated it as a write-only device. Frustrating tricky devices. Sometimes they lie.

But yeah, also a >15% chance your monitor doesn't support switching inputs via DDC/CI. Would be so nice if review sites would cover this sort of thing. As it is, it's just a tech-secret, something invisible to the market, no push to include it, no points deducted for getting it wrong/bad. It leaves a lot of room for the situation to sit & not improve. Better reviewing would help move things along.