This seems to be extremely similar to what I've been working on writing up (which I'm slightly salty about :D) and it's great to see this stuff finally getting affordable. My design using the same capture card and a 3D-printed enclosure set me back just under 25€ shipped, which includes KVM, as well as USB/IP, CD emulation and power control (not to mention that you can program it to do basically anything else).
I don't even know if anything like it exists on the market, let alone how much it might cost. Despite how buggy and horrible this kind of strange Chinese hardware is, it is absolutely incredible what you can accomplish with it.
Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
261–270 of 284 posts
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha, I am kind of the opposite: I work on electronics, and am not much of a sys admin. One of the problems I've run into is that I haven't found a single switch solution with enough connections. I could build a multi-level multiplexer with many switches, but that's too much effort. If TinyPilot can support multiple KVM-over-IP connections, it would be a perfect fit for me.
> If TinyPilot can support multiple KVM-over-IP connections, it would be a perfect fit for me. RPis only have 1 OTG port, though. A device that could get it to handle more machines with that single port would functionally be a KVM-switch. I don't think there's a way around that, at least not one that'd be cheaper or more practical.
Couldn't you just connect a usb-hub?
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#263Earlier 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
> -Remotely mounting images (ISO/FS/IMG/etc) on the host for bare-metal installs or any other purpose
For what it's worth, that stuff has always been incredibly unreliable for me. Enough so that old school PXE booting was the only way to maintain a server pool, couldn't get them to consistently reimage through the proprietary stuff.
The remote power control is very nice, and I didn't see anything on this page about that. (Though now I'm just imagining the "useless PC" [1] that just tells a smart power plug to turn itself off.)
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#264Interesting! I wonder if it'd be possible to skip the capture card and have the pi act as a USB graphics adaptor. Most firmware environments probably don't support them I guess.
I fear that's gonna end up as one of those "we transport HDMI over an USB-C cable without making it actually be USB" things that require hardware support.
(And the "USB monitor" projects meant to be a second display need drivers, seem to all be way too proprietary, and won't work for early boot.)
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :(
Yeah, it's a real pain in the ass. I miss the workstations of yesteryear where you could do everything with just a serial console. Another example of technology actually getting worse over time.
Even hardware that is made to be run headless ("server-class") is hopelessly broken. They give you a proprietary graphical console that isn't even just a VNC server but has to be accessed with a web browser. And, if the server is more than a few years old, some deprecated, unsupported plugin like Java or .NET will be required. I have an old Dell R710 whose remote console I will never be able to access, because it only works with Java 6 (or so I'm told, I'm certainly never trying that; I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to set that shit up.)
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If TinyPilot can support multiple KVM-over-IP connections, it would be a perfect fit for me. RPis only have 1 OTG port, though. A device that could get it to handle more machines with that single port would functionally be a KVM-switch. I don't think there's a way around that, at least not one that'd be cheaper or more practical.
Couldn't you just connect a usb-hub?
I don't think there are usb-hubs that can work with the idea of one slave to multiple masters. Do you know of a USB hub that would work to connect one keyboard to multiple computers? That'd simply be against USB protocol. KVM switches are the devices that allow you to connect one slave to multiple masters by giving you a control of what master the slave should engage with at any one time.
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Woops, forgot the major issue-- the Pi Zero only has one USB port (the other is just for power), so you couldn't get video frames in at the same time as you pretended to be a keyboard.
The Pi Zero's power port is actually a USB OTG port. I used it in my precursor project to forward keystrokes: https://mtlynch.io/key-mime-pi/
On the web page you explicitly say to connect it to the port labelled "USB", which is not the power port.
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#268Hey 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.
you might want to upgrade your bios to get headless support.
https://www.msi.com/blog/with-upcoming-amd-processors-and-co...
if you are kind enough to report back whether it works with the newest bios, that will be helpful to others
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#269Earlier 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.
for some asrock mobo, headless is supported. my Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac is one of them.
Re: Show HN: TinyPilot – Build a KVM over IP using a Raspberry Pi
#270fantastic tutorial