Hey All, I have a small rack in the office with older systems which do some small tasks that are okay to go offline here and there, and we don’t want to push into the cloud. The systems are old enough so they all require some outdated version of Java Applets to allow the IPMI access, and while the rack is on wheels the cabling makes it impractical to roll around to a monitor and keyboard when needed. I also don’t wish to add a monitor, keyboard, mounting, and a real KVM switch to the closet, though if my question comes up empty its a possibility.
I do have a old thinkpad that I use for IT janitorial work as its the only laptop with an Ethernet port in the office, and I was wondering if there exists a USB cable where on one end is a USB-A I could attach to my host thinkpad, and the other a VGA input with some basic capture over USB functionality, with an output USB-A that acts like a keyboard and mouse device I can control from the host. I know it would be technically possible to make a cable like this, however I can’t find what I’m looking for and don’t know if there is one that’s recommended, with software support from this decade, seems like a bit of a niche.
I was very interested in the Pi KVM, however all my servers are VGA so an HDMI input requires me to buy an active adapter. It does have a really good feature set however so maybe I should keep it in the back of my head.
I’d add that I’ve used the piKVM v3 with just such a VGA output-to-HDMI adapter successfully. I’ve sourced these on aliexpress cheaply, of course this requires still the pi kvm. (maybe refer also, to tinypilot - similar project).
I’d love a keyboard/mouse emulator for a usb cable connection - but I’m not aware they exist as cable/software solution alone. Clearly it’s possible to construct, as the pi KVM’s do just that.
Video adapters do exist for - HDMI input to USB ‘webcam’ - (also cheaply) and with which you can view the display output on the laptop via any app that can access the usb ‘webcam’.
For purpose of a crash cart thus - a laptop with a hdmi-webcam adapter, and a small separate USB keyboard (you can find them with integrated trackpads) will work, for the parts I bought I’d guess in the $30 range total.
Thanks for the reply, a cheap USB HDMI capture device is a good idea.
And yeah the GPD Pocket 3 is the perfect solution for me, I plan on billing one to my company when I can, I love the concept with that KVM and RS-232 module.
I would also like to add to this thread for any onlookers, what I was asking about to start seems to be referred to as a “USB crash cart adapter”, but they seem to have painful price and software constraints.
Thank you for both of those suggestions, that docker image is really quite interesting, it won’t work for my current situation but its an cool solution for when I’m back to normal operation. I saw devices like the Spider but that certainly seems more polished.