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Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

github.com

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Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#61

Post by zanecodes »

avidiax wrote: post #53
zanecodes wrote: post #39

I can't install Barrier on my work laptop for policy reasons, but I don't want to buy a KVM, so a project I've been interested in building when I have time is porting enough of the Barrier/Synergy protocol to the Particle Photon [1] or BeagleBone Black [2] I've had lying around for a while, and then configuring it to emulate a keyboard and mouse via its USB gadget driver, allowing it to control my work laptop over US…

The annoying/challenging part is that you need to drive the 2nd machine using relative motions, but place the cursor accurately and keep track of it. If the 2nd OS skips frames or has acceleration, you are pretty quickly implementing a Kalman filter.

According to the Particle Photon docs [1] it's actually capable of moving the mouse to absolute coordinates, but I haven't tried that yet.

[1] https://docs.particle.io/reference/device-os/firmware/#movet...

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#62

Post by djrogers »

superkuh wrote: post #32
0des wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only just recently heard about the synergy -> barrier transition and got everything dialed in on barrier... sigh . The aristocrats!

Barrier and input-leap are nice and all, but they're written for only modern OSes using modern library versions and language features. If you want to share a mouse with an OS older than a decade or so you'll still have to use the original Synergy 1.x. It works on both old machines/OSes (all the way back to the 90s) and on the very newest released OSes. Given that, I don't really see a need for barrier or input leap.…

> if you have an abnormally high DPI screen in your span.

Like any MacBook Pro post 2015?

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#64

Post by djrogers »

thebeardisred wrote: post #58
checker659 wrote: post #50

Just an FYI for mac users: Universal Control is a native macOS alternative to barrier that's about to debut with macOS 12.3 (currently in beta). As an ex-synergy user, let me just say how awesome the implementation is. What's crazy is you can share your mouse and keyboard not only between two or more macs but also between your mac and an iPad (if you have one, obviously). And the latency is crazy unnoticably low (eve…

I'm assuming though this will be macOS only? I ask because the best use I had for Synergy was around 20 years ago: one Linux desktop (my daily driver) and other ones for non Linux applications (or ones I didn't want to pollute my system with). Over the years I've used it for Outlook (connecting to Exchange), Lotus Notes, Xcode, Adobe tools, etc.

MacOS and iPadOS.

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#65

Post by djrogers »

weikju wrote: post #23
mjlee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Universal Control (in the current MacOS 12.3 Release Candidate, should be public next week) will do what you want.

"older macbook" might imply that one of the two machines will not support UC though

Considering that 12.3 is supported on MacBooks going back 7+ years, that's not necessarily the case.

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#66

Post by wyager »

zackmorris wrote: post #56

Barrier looks great, but does anyone know why KVM switches with DisplayPort or HDMI are so outrageously expensive? It should just be a switch, no complex electronics, so I truly can't figure out why any KVM should cost more than say $30-50 US. I suspect DRM or patents for rent seekers are involved somehow. Or maybe they're playing on the naivety of the business community towards this stuff. I'd sure like to know, and…

> It should just be a switch, no complex electronics

For any high-bandwidth thing like HDMI, you need to do clock recovery and copy over the bitstream at the very least. You can't just use relays or whatever. Doing this at 10gbps+ is going to cost a bit.

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#67

Post by parentheses »

zackmorris wrote: post #56

Barrier looks great, but does anyone know why KVM switches with DisplayPort or HDMI are so outrageously expensive? It should just be a switch, no complex electronics, so I truly can't figure out why any KVM should cost more than say $30-50 US. I suspect DRM or patents for rent seekers are involved somehow. Or maybe they're playing on the naivety of the business community towards this stuff. I'd sure like to know, and…

IMO KVM Switches with display support are luxury items.

Who has 2 computers? People who can afford them.

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#68

Post by Rebelgecko »

jasonjayr wrote: post #24
durazabu wrote: post #15

Barrier has been forked to https://github.com/input-leap/input-leap which has a hundred more commits by the same devs. The name is still barrier though, has anyone more info about this fork?

Isn't barrier a fork of the original synergy2 as well? That went closed-source/commercial ?

I don't know if this is still the case, but for a while it was both commercial and open source. You could change the license check to just "return true" and compile it yourself to get things like the SSL plugin. IIRC there was also a comment that detailed the algorithm for generating keys, so you could come up with one in your own name.

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#69

Post by wlesieutre »

wyager wrote: post #66
zackmorris wrote: post #56

Barrier looks great, but does anyone know why KVM switches with DisplayPort or HDMI are so outrageously expensive? It should just be a switch, no complex electronics, so I truly can't figure out why any KVM should cost more than say $30-50 US. I suspect DRM or patents for rent seekers are involved somehow. Or maybe they're playing on the naivety of the business community towards this stuff. I'd sure like to know, and…

> It should just be a switch, no complex electronics For any high-bandwidth thing like HDMI, you need to do clock recovery and copy over the bitstream at the very least. You can't just use relays or whatever. Doing this at 10gbps+ is going to cost a bit.

How many plugs and unplugs is HDMI rated for? At the prices we're talking it would be cheaper for me to build a robot that physically swaps cables at the back of my computer.

Of course then Windows gets confused by the lack of monitor and rearranges all the windows, so it's not a perfect solution.

Re: Barrier: Share mouse and keyboard between computers

#70

Post by spicybright »

wyager wrote: post #66
zackmorris wrote: post #56

Barrier looks great, but does anyone know why KVM switches with DisplayPort or HDMI are so outrageously expensive? It should just be a switch, no complex electronics, so I truly can't figure out why any KVM should cost more than say $30-50 US. I suspect DRM or patents for rent seekers are involved somehow. Or maybe they're playing on the naivety of the business community towards this stuff. I'd sure like to know, and…

> It should just be a switch, no complex electronics For any high-bandwidth thing like HDMI, you need to do clock recovery and copy over the bitstream at the very least. You can't just use relays or whatever. Doing this at 10gbps+ is going to cost a bit.

I don't see that much of a reason you can't do a relay to "disconnect" one hdmi and plug in another.

The computers would see the HDMI cable/USB cords unplugging and re-plugging.

Obviously this can be problematic, but I can't see it being that expensive.

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