Closed source binary firmware? No thanks. I probably would not deploy it for a server with sensitive data, but if it was really really cheap, it might be ok for air-gapped system for testing servers, but other than that, I'm not sure.
Shouldn't be hard to make opensource one. CSI capture under Linux is fairly simple with v4l2 API, SG2002 SoC has HW accelerated JPEG codec, and that's exposed as mem2mem v4l2 API too, usually. USB HID gadget emulation is fairly easy under Linux, too, via /dev/hidg# device. It's basically just shuffling some buffers around in userspace in video->net direction, and translating between browser input events and HID in the other direction.
It's probably 2-4 weekends worth of work for someone who already worked with all of this in the past to combine it together and add a basic web interface. (Assumming they will use sophgo's Linux kernel branch and will not try to mainline kernel support, first)
"CSI capture under Linux is fairly simple with v4l2 API" but there have no v4l2 support.
I'm the maker of NanoKVM, we also want use PiKVM/openBMC, but bsp sdk don't support V4L2, most IPC SOC SDK use something like MPP API, not V4L2 API.
We have to build software from scratch，it takes about 2~3month.
Also other community developers have get NanoKVM samples 3month ago to port PiKVM, but still not finished(seems will finished few month later).
We want make it as a serious product, not a protype tool. 80% function will finished in 20% time, but rest 20% function/bug need 80% time.
> but bsp sdk don't support V4L2 .... use something like MPP API
Well that sucks then. I hoped it's in similar state like Rockchip, where the required things already work over V4L2 API (in both BSP and upstream).
But that just means that Linux upstreaming will have to come first. I personally don't see why anyone would want to waste time with some random vendor's media API and its quirks when it will get replaced by v4l2 in the future.
To me 20/80 also means that I need 20% of the features of a serious product and prototype is often enough, as long as it's reliable. :)
"the GitHub repo for the project provides English documentation and the binary for the closed-source NanoKVM firmware that runs from the microSD card."
I was very excited until I saw this. I think I'd rather pay more for a device with this level of access to be running software that isn't completely unknown. I hope it's possible to have PiKVM support this at a future date.
Their phrasing makes it sound like they would pay more for open source.
So would I. I've used several of the standard ones for 20 years, and the closed nature universally makes it suck.
They always require some ancient java install or a license of one form or another, I have one that needs IE 6 with ActiveX! (AMI MegaRAK, standalone unit not built into a motherboard) And of course that thing only has ancient ssl and ssh and neither can be updated. Sure it's old, but there's nothing about it's job that changed or got harder requiring new hardware. I don't use it any more only because of things that are the result of it's closed nature. I actually really like the hardware. If I could replace the firmware I would still use it. Nothing about the job it does has changed, and so it doesn't matter how old the hardware is.
When I discovered PiKVM a few years ago before he was selling a product yet, I built one and it replaced a $600 Lantronix immediately.
This was a personal one not one work paid for, I already owned a spiderlinx, actually 2, one for vga & ps2, and one for dvi & usb, I already own these and I had paid the 500-600 retail for them, and a PiKVM built myself from a pi and a capture board from aliexpress and hacked into a generic aluminum box style pi case that I cut and drilled, is better. It's worth more in that it provides more functionality and flexibility.
Then I donated $500 to him, because that was still less than the cost of an equivalent, and now I get to have as many as I want for just the cost of the hardware, which I am free to scrounge up out of anything if I have to, and I'd wanted something like that for years and here it finally was. It was a real pain point for years and I was grateful and want to reward the things I want to exist.
And now that he sells a product with custom pcb, the entire kit including the pi is still about 1/2 of a spiderlinx.
You're right that it's normal that none of them disclose their firmware, or let you replace it, and it absolutely sucks all day every day every minute you have to use any of those normal ones.
For work before cloud times when we had all colo, what actually worked the best was serial consoles. You set up a little serial port server which you can ssh in to (and keep updated with current ssh) and it provides a serial connection to each machine in the rack. No java, no atvivex, no special browser, no licence manager, no software or platform requirements at all. Anything that can ssh can do a bare metal reinstall. And it works fine over a crappy cell connection.
But if you're forced to deal with a Windows box, or something else with only a screen & keyboard like a security camera console or a mac or something, or just any random non-server pc without serial console support in it's bios, if you do need a kvm, pikvm or equivalent is the only way to go.
A free punch in the nose is still a punch in the nose.
You can make a pikvm for almost free if you want, because it doesn't care what hardware you use. You probably either already own or at least have access to everything necessary for free. That fact is 100x more valuable even aside from the price, simply the fact that you can source the necessary hardware from anywhere at any time on zero notice. When things go wrong, you are far more likely to be able to lash up a solution immediately if all you need is any kind of computer and any kind of capture device, and you can even tell a remote customer what to buy at their local Walmart if you had to.
But even the full finished productized package with custom hat pcb and case is still 1/2 of the equivalent single port Lantronix, and is more convenient and more useful.
And even the proprietary code in something like a Lantronix which is a long standing industry name with accountability and a reputation to protect, is still a 100% different proposition than the proprietary code from an unknown nobody.
It would be crazy, today, completely grossly negligent irresponsible, to use such a device in a high consequense role as remote server administration.
An ip-kvm is fundamntally literally a man in the middle and a keylogger, which you use to access all the most critical things that everthing else happens on. No big.
pikvm solution is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W + HDMI CSI cable + pi pico for atx control + usb c splitter. It's actually cheaper. And once you put it together, you run stock pikvm image with smooth upgrades, etc.
IP KVM is the best use I've found for a Pi so it's good to see other options. Price wise it looks like I can get 10 of the nanoKVM full for the price of a single PiKVM v4 plus. My only complaint on the hardware is maybe that went a bit too cheap and now I need to make sure wherever I plug it in supports 100 Mbps (tricky on some 2.5G+ switches or 1G+ Ethernet adapters. Always fixable, just a nuisance).
Edit: and it looks like the image for this is not open source.
> now I need to make sure wherever I plug it in supports 100 Mbps (tricky on some 2.5G+ switches or 1G+ Ethernet adapters. Always fixable, just a nuisance).
I'm pretty sure all my 10G equipment goes down to 100M; 10M support is often dropped or at least not documented as available though. I'd be surprised if many switches dropped 100M support, because most tvs and set top boxes are 100M, and there's a huge amount of other still useful devices that didn't get gigE. OTOH, i think I've only got three devices that are 10M only: my gate controller, my dreamcast LAN adapter, and a really old dev sbc (rabbit something).
I’ve only had a couple of times where it would have been nice to have some kind of out of band management for my homelab. So the value of this kind of hardware was pretty low to me personally. Which is why I couldn’t justify pikvm/tinypilot $300+. But for ~$50 with shipping, I couldn’t hit order on this fast enough!
I recently built an simpler kvm/ip using a few pi pico's and ms2130 chips. https://www.modularkvmip.com doesnt matter what server you use. Its not opensource but its just usb device passthrough at the core.
why hdmi and not DisplayPort? Every machine in the past couple of generations of my small lab, used DisplayPort. I went through four or five different HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapters before I found one that mostly (but not always) worked with PiKVM.
Does this work without a functioning network? I just spent the weekend debugging an issue on my router, which involved unplugging my router and setting it up in my room for the monitor, and then running a lengthy ethernet cable to the modem.
I'd much rather be able to attach something like this, have it spin up its own wifi or ethernet network (that understandably wouldn't have internet access) and then connect from my laptop. The other solution I was considering is a portable monitor (one of those hand-held tablet-sized ones) which absolutely would work without a network but the NanoKVM seems less wasteful in terms of future e-waste generated.
I imagine it would require a network, otherwise how do you connect to it? That said, it might work if you setup a wifi hotspot on your laptop and the KVM is configured to connect to it.
It could broadcast its own wifi network sans internet, or do the same over ethernet. Chromecast devices do this whenever the wifi network they're configuring to use disappears.
Looks great!
The one issue i have is my Proxmox server runs OPNsense and all my hosted apps. It has an APC UPS. Some of the apps gracefully close down when UPS is low and power is lost. If UPS power fails completely, then PC is obviously off.
Is there a foolproof way that the server will restart when UPS receives power again?. I see a "restart on power loss" in BIOS but is this the proper way to do it?
Server class hardware will let you choose. Other varies. Some will let you choose to always start on power, some won't. "Restart on power loss" should cover your use case, since you don't shut down the computer gracefully on low power.
If it was a pikvm instead of proprietary, you could script it to do anything you want if some other user with the same common wish didn't already build it in.
Restart on power loss in the bios is usually the right way if the machine is a server that you know you always want it to be on or trying.
It only gets complicated when you have say, a full backup clone of that machine that you actually want to be a cold spare not a hot spare. So it exists, is plugged in, but turned off, and you want it to stay off unless you explicitly turn it on because it would conflict with the primary, and yet want to be able to do that remotely or even automatically but by some more complex logic than merely the fact that power went from off to on.
That's not super common, but it would take something weird like that to not want simple bios always-on.
Usually it should be easy enough to have a machine always try to turn on, and decide for itself that it should shut back down.
That's what you should use, yes. It's a bit different in enterprise because you want to stagger the restarts of all your servers to avoid browning out the recently restored power, but for an at-home system that's fine.
Sorry I don't get this at all. I have 2 PCs running headless on Proxmox, I can control them remote through any browser. What's the difference here? What's the point of the HDMI connection if it's through IP?
I've been anxiously waiting for this product to be launched since it was announced a couple months (I think) ago.
My use-case is, I have some computers I use for a home lab. If I'm outside of the house and something happens to those computers that requires manual intervention, there is nothing I can do. With this, I can power the computer off and on (via a smart plug, not the KVM), then see and interact with the entirety of the boot process, including accessing BIOS, select OS on GRUB, etc. As long as the KVM has network connection, it serves as a remote interface to the phisical computer.
So basically what would be a BMC on a server? I saw that the SFF PC I use as a server has intel Active Management support, I am thinking to just use this if I can get it to work.
Yeah, that's the basic idea. I even use my PiKVM on boxes with a proper BMC just because it's so much :
- Higher encoded framerate
- Loading bootable ISOs directly via the IP KVM isn't a per-BMC model dance (if the BMC does it at all, without begging for you to hack the BMC license)
- Similarly, loading drivers doesn't require making a compatible image file or finding another USB
- The web interface doesn't have any legacy crap (java/.net/activex) left in the menus
- I can cold boot a server and not lose my session
- You can paste large blocks of text and it will type it out
- You can text extract large blocks of text from the framebuffer
- You can just load standard linux packages for whatever you need in a pinch (on the PiKVM at least)
- You can actually update and secure this thing vs hoping your BMC either receives real updates or someone hacks it so you can load an open source one instead.
I'd say the main downside is the ATX power control isn't something you just "plop in". You either wire it up and use the device with the same server over long periods of time or you don't use the ATX power control.
I use two PIKVMs to remotely manage machines and troubleshoot them, set BIOS settings, etc.
It can also be really handy (with storage support) to quickly install a set of machines in a rack - either have them boot off the internal USB storage or go into the BIOS to monitor PXE boot progress and handle any input required.
Often digital nomads use such a product to evade detection of employers. It's not just about VPN's because corporate IT can also use location services to determine location.
You mean there are people daily-driving KVM as a remote desktop solution? That seems like it would be remarkably painful; https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/08/20-nanokvm-is-a-tiny... says 100-160 ms latency, and I'm assuming that's over local network rather than trying to remote to it.
* Evading corporate IT: I do not recommend doing this.
* Normal[0] remote access to a machine: Yeah, running a remote desktop in software on the machine[1] is almost always going to be easier, cheaper, more performant, and more flexible than anything you tack on externally.
[0] Where "normal" remote access means it doesn't need to work when the machine is kernel panicked or in the firmware setup screens.
[1] The machine itself can be whatever you want. It can be an always-on desktop, but it can also be a laptop that sits in the corner and that only boots up when you poke it with a Wake-on-LAN packet, or a VM on an ESXi cluster, or a (carefully secured) Hetzner Cloud VM. That part is dealer's choice depending on your needs.
Closed source binary firmware? No thanks. I probably would not deploy it for a server with sensitive data, but if it was really really cheap, it might be ok for air-gapped system for testing servers, but other than that, I'm not sure.
Shouldn't be hard to make opensource one. CSI capture under Linux is fairly simple with v4l2 API, SG2002 SoC has HW accelerated JPEG codec, and that's exposed as mem2mem v4l2 API too, usually. USB HID gadget emulation is fairly easy under Linux, too, via /dev/hidg# device. It's basically just shuffling some buffers around in userspace in video->net direction, and translating between browser input events and HID in the other direction.
It's probably 2-4 weekends worth of work for someone who already worked with all of this in the past to combine it together and add a basic web interface. (Assumming they will use sophgo's Linux kernel branch and will not try to mainline kernel support, first)
"CSI capture under Linux is fairly simple with v4l2 API" but there have no v4l2 support. I'm the maker of NanoKVM, we also want use PiKVM/openBMC, but bsp sdk don't support V4L2, most IPC SOC SDK use something like MPP API, not V4L2 API. We have to build software from scratch，it takes about 2~3month. Also other community developers have get NanoKVM samples 3month ago to port PiKVM, but still not finished(seems will finished few month later). We want make it as a serious product, not a protype tool. 80% function will finished in 20% time, but rest 20% function/bug need 80% time.
> but bsp sdk don't support V4L2 .... use something like MPP API
Well that sucks then. I hoped it's in similar state like Rockchip, where the required things already work over V4L2 API (in both BSP and upstream).
But that just means that Linux upstreaming will have to come first. I personally don't see why anyone would want to waste time with some random vendor's media API and its quirks when it will get replaced by v4l2 in the future.
To me 20/80 also means that I need 20% of the features of a serious product and prototype is often enough, as long as it's reliable. :)
This article has some more details: https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/08/20-nanokvm-is-a-tiny...
"the GitHub repo for the project provides English documentation and the binary for the closed-source NanoKVM firmware that runs from the microSD card."
I was very excited until I saw this. I think I'd rather pay more for a device with this level of access to be running software that isn't completely unknown. I hope it's possible to have PiKVM support this at a future date.
I'd be willing to bet its just a barebones Linux image with pretty similar code.
Kinda confused here, most KVM appliances don't provide you with their firmware code either?
There are a few around, but your phrasing makes it sound as if closed source/binary isn't the default for these kinds of devices
pikvm is open source
https://pikvm.org/
https://github.com/pikvm/pikvm
tinypilot is open source (but they kind of restrict "pro" binary availability)
https://tinypilotkvm.com/
https://github.com/tiny-pilot/tinypilot
Their phrasing makes it sound like they would pay more for open source.
So would I. I've used several of the standard ones for 20 years, and the closed nature universally makes it suck.
They always require some ancient java install or a license of one form or another, I have one that needs IE 6 with ActiveX! (AMI MegaRAK, standalone unit not built into a motherboard) And of course that thing only has ancient ssl and ssh and neither can be updated. Sure it's old, but there's nothing about it's job that changed or got harder requiring new hardware. I don't use it any more only because of things that are the result of it's closed nature. I actually really like the hardware. If I could replace the firmware I would still use it. Nothing about the job it does has changed, and so it doesn't matter how old the hardware is.
When I discovered PiKVM a few years ago before he was selling a product yet, I built one and it replaced a $600 Lantronix immediately.
This was a personal one not one work paid for, I already owned a spiderlinx, actually 2, one for vga & ps2, and one for dvi & usb, I already own these and I had paid the 500-600 retail for them, and a PiKVM built myself from a pi and a capture board from aliexpress and hacked into a generic aluminum box style pi case that I cut and drilled, is better. It's worth more in that it provides more functionality and flexibility.
Then I donated $500 to him, because that was still less than the cost of an equivalent, and now I get to have as many as I want for just the cost of the hardware, which I am free to scrounge up out of anything if I have to, and I'd wanted something like that for years and here it finally was. It was a real pain point for years and I was grateful and want to reward the things I want to exist.
And now that he sells a product with custom pcb, the entire kit including the pi is still about 1/2 of a spiderlinx.
You're right that it's normal that none of them disclose their firmware, or let you replace it, and it absolutely sucks all day every day every minute you have to use any of those normal ones.
For work before cloud times when we had all colo, what actually worked the best was serial consoles. You set up a little serial port server which you can ssh in to (and keep updated with current ssh) and it provides a serial connection to each machine in the rack. No java, no atvivex, no special browser, no licence manager, no software or platform requirements at all. Anything that can ssh can do a bare metal reinstall. And it works fine over a crappy cell connection.
But if you're forced to deal with a Windows box, or something else with only a screen & keyboard like a security camera console or a mac or something, or just any random non-server pc without serial console support in it's bios, if you do need a kvm, pikvm or equivalent is the only way to go.
No open source firmware is definitely a no-go
The price is amazing though $43+$20 shipping. A Pi-KVM v4 Mini is $274 with free shipping in the US.
A free punch in the nose is still a punch in the nose.
You can make a pikvm for almost free if you want, because it doesn't care what hardware you use. You probably either already own or at least have access to everything necessary for free. That fact is 100x more valuable even aside from the price, simply the fact that you can source the necessary hardware from anywhere at any time on zero notice. When things go wrong, you are far more likely to be able to lash up a solution immediately if all you need is any kind of computer and any kind of capture device, and you can even tell a remote customer what to buy at their local Walmart if you had to.
But even the full finished productized package with custom hat pcb and case is still 1/2 of the equivalent single port Lantronix, and is more convenient and more useful.
And even the proprietary code in something like a Lantronix which is a long standing industry name with accountability and a reputation to protect, is still a 100% different proposition than the proprietary code from an unknown nobody.
It would be crazy, today, completely grossly negligent irresponsible, to use such a device in a high consequense role as remote server administration.
An ip-kvm is fundamntally literally a man in the middle and a keylogger, which you use to access all the most critical things that everthing else happens on. No big.
pikvm solution is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W + HDMI CSI cable + pi pico for atx control + usb c splitter. It's actually cheaper. And once you put it together, you run stock pikvm image with smooth upgrades, etc.
I built 2 PIKVMs with Pi Zeros. It's not cheaper.
Price is irrelevant because open firmware is a requirement.
IP KVM is the best use I've found for a Pi so it's good to see other options. Price wise it looks like I can get 10 of the nanoKVM full for the price of a single PiKVM v4 plus. My only complaint on the hardware is maybe that went a bit too cheap and now I need to make sure wherever I plug it in supports 100 Mbps (tricky on some 2.5G+ switches or 1G+ Ethernet adapters. Always fixable, just a nuisance).
Edit: and it looks like the image for this is not open source.
> now I need to make sure wherever I plug it in supports 100 Mbps (tricky on some 2.5G+ switches or 1G+ Ethernet adapters. Always fixable, just a nuisance).
I'm pretty sure all my 10G equipment goes down to 100M; 10M support is often dropped or at least not documented as available though. I'd be surprised if many switches dropped 100M support, because most tvs and set top boxes are 100M, and there's a huge amount of other still useful devices that didn't get gigE. OTOH, i think I've only got three devices that are 10M only: my gate controller, my dreamcast LAN adapter, and a really old dev sbc (rabbit something).
I've definitely run into gear that does not support anything below 1G.
Pre-order page: https://sipeed.com/nanokvm
Wants me to scan a QR code and chat via WeChat to continue. That's a no go.
Did we visit different sites? I didn't see a qr code and no WeChat ...
It will be on Aliexpress in their store (not available yet) https://sipeed.aliexpress.com/store/911876460
I’ve only had a couple of times where it would have been nice to have some kind of out of band management for my homelab. So the value of this kind of hardware was pretty low to me personally. Which is why I couldn’t justify pikvm/tinypilot $300+. But for ~$50 with shipping, I couldn’t hit order on this fast enough!
I recently built an simpler kvm/ip using a few pi pico's and ms2130 chips. https://www.modularkvmip.com doesnt matter what server you use. Its not opensource but its just usb device passthrough at the core.
why hdmi and not DisplayPort? Every machine in the past couple of generations of my small lab, used DisplayPort. I went through four or five different HDMI-to-DisplayPort adapters before I found one that mostly (but not always) worked with PiKVM.
Because DP almost always also supports outputting a HDMI signal, while converting a HDMI signal to DP is complicated and requires an active adapter.
Also, there are loads of cheap HDMI-CSI bridges.
There's plenty of cheap HDMI to CSI or so chips, haven't seen one for DP.
I guess that's because consumers want HDMI capture cards so that they can record their PS5 gaming session, but not DP capture cards?
Does this work without a functioning network? I just spent the weekend debugging an issue on my router, which involved unplugging my router and setting it up in my room for the monitor, and then running a lengthy ethernet cable to the modem.
I'd much rather be able to attach something like this, have it spin up its own wifi or ethernet network (that understandably wouldn't have internet access) and then connect from my laptop. The other solution I was considering is a portable monitor (one of those hand-held tablet-sized ones) which absolutely would work without a network but the NanoKVM seems less wasteful in terms of future e-waste generated.
I imagine it would require a network, otherwise how do you connect to it? That said, it might work if you setup a wifi hotspot on your laptop and the KVM is configured to connect to it.
It could broadcast its own wifi network sans internet, or do the same over ethernet. Chromecast devices do this whenever the wifi network they're configuring to use disappears.
VAT should be added for EU. This would make importing less of a headache.
Looks great! The one issue i have is my Proxmox server runs OPNsense and all my hosted apps. It has an APC UPS. Some of the apps gracefully close down when UPS is low and power is lost. If UPS power fails completely, then PC is obviously off. Is there a foolproof way that the server will restart when UPS receives power again?. I see a "restart on power loss" in BIOS but is this the proper way to do it?
Server class hardware will let you choose. Other varies. Some will let you choose to always start on power, some won't. "Restart on power loss" should cover your use case, since you don't shut down the computer gracefully on low power.
If it was a pikvm instead of proprietary, you could script it to do anything you want if some other user with the same common wish didn't already build it in.
Restart on power loss in the bios is usually the right way if the machine is a server that you know you always want it to be on or trying.
It only gets complicated when you have say, a full backup clone of that machine that you actually want to be a cold spare not a hot spare. So it exists, is plugged in, but turned off, and you want it to stay off unless you explicitly turn it on because it would conflict with the primary, and yet want to be able to do that remotely or even automatically but by some more complex logic than merely the fact that power went from off to on.
That's not super common, but it would take something weird like that to not want simple bios always-on.
Usually it should be easy enough to have a machine always try to turn on, and decide for itself that it should shut back down.
That's what you should use, yes. It's a bit different in enterprise because you want to stagger the restarts of all your servers to avoid browning out the recently restored power, but for an at-home system that's fine.
> I see a "restart on power loss" in BIOS but is this the proper way to do it?
Yes, it is.
That option works, but only if the UPS was truly off and no power on the socket.
Sorry I don't get this at all. I have 2 PCs running headless on Proxmox, I can control them remote through any browser. What's the difference here? What's the point of the HDMI connection if it's through IP?
This is not for VMs. This is for computers that doesn't comes with built-in IPMI/iLO/iDRAC/XClarity or something similar.
For you it would be for re-installing Proxmox, not the VMs.
Or fixing a borked update that left the Proxmox node unbootable, for instance.
How would one use such a device?
I've been anxiously waiting for this product to be launched since it was announced a couple months (I think) ago.
My use-case is, I have some computers I use for a home lab. If I'm outside of the house and something happens to those computers that requires manual intervention, there is nothing I can do. With this, I can power the computer off and on (via a smart plug, not the KVM), then see and interact with the entirety of the boot process, including accessing BIOS, select OS on GRUB, etc. As long as the KVM has network connection, it serves as a remote interface to the phisical computer.
So basically what would be a BMC on a server? I saw that the SFF PC I use as a server has intel Active Management support, I am thinking to just use this if I can get it to work.
Yeah, that's the basic idea. I even use my PiKVM on boxes with a proper BMC just because it's so much :
- Higher encoded framerate
- Loading bootable ISOs directly via the IP KVM isn't a per-BMC model dance (if the BMC does it at all, without begging for you to hack the BMC license)
- Similarly, loading drivers doesn't require making a compatible image file or finding another USB
- The web interface doesn't have any legacy crap (java/.net/activex) left in the menus
- I can cold boot a server and not lose my session
- You can paste large blocks of text and it will type it out
- You can text extract large blocks of text from the framebuffer
- You can just load standard linux packages for whatever you need in a pinch (on the PiKVM at least)
- You can actually update and secure this thing vs hoping your BMC either receives real updates or someone hacks it so you can load an open source one instead.
I'd say the main downside is the ATX power control isn't something you just "plop in". You either wire it up and use the device with the same server over long periods of time or you don't use the ATX power control.
Yeah, I was just doing this last week with an old HP Elitedesk 800 G2.
This Youtube really helped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhq0bsWJEOw
And there's more here: https://www.meshcommander.com/meshcommander/tutorials
I use two PIKVMs to remotely manage machines and troubleshoot them, set BIOS settings, etc.
It can also be really handy (with storage support) to quickly install a set of machines in a rack - either have them boot off the internal USB storage or go into the BIOS to monitor PXE boot progress and handle any input required.
Often digital nomads use such a product to evade detection of employers. It's not just about VPN's because corporate IT can also use location services to determine location.
You mean there are people daily-driving KVM as a remote desktop solution? That seems like it would be remarkably painful; https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/08/20-nanokvm-is-a-tiny... says 100-160 ms latency, and I'm assuming that's over local network rather than trying to remote to it.
What would you recommend for that use case? Just remote into an always on desktop?
Depends on exactly which usecase:
* Evading corporate IT: I do not recommend doing this.
* Normal[0] remote access to a machine: Yeah, running a remote desktop in software on the machine[1] is almost always going to be easier, cheaper, more performant, and more flexible than anything you tack on externally.
[0] Where "normal" remote access means it doesn't need to work when the machine is kernel panicked or in the firmware setup screens.
[1] The machine itself can be whatever you want. It can be an always-on desktop, but it can also be a laptop that sits in the corner and that only boots up when you poke it with a Wake-on-LAN packet, or a VM on an ESXi cluster, or a (carefully secured) Hetzner Cloud VM. That part is dealer's choice depending on your needs.
This is cute and I want couple of them! Any plans for crowdsupply.com?