TinyPilot
Infrastructure
remote kvm over ip
SHOW HN2020
756points
279comments
#13of 3,028 in 2020
Top 1%of 2020 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
42 positive, 75 neutral or asking, 5 mixed, 13 critical, out of 135 comments about the project. Thread score +0.27.
Idea: 20 for, 6 againstPerformance: 4 for, 3 againstExecution: 2 for, 3 againstPricing: 5 for, 0 againstDesign: 2 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Well-written and a practical tool
From 2 comments
Fantastic project. Amazing how you overcame each obstacle, and very well written to boot. Kudos. Quite funny how you brought 1000 ms latency down to 200 ms. I wonder how this…
cerberusss on HNKVMs have been a the bane of my existence over the last 10 years. Almost 99% of the time they come with some ancient Java dependency that breaks on any modern OS and is barely…
crypt1d on HN
Simpler install than Pi-KVM
From 1 comment
Thanks for reading! I'd say, in short, Pi-KVM is more feature rich, while TinyPilot is simpler and more approachable with less functionality. Pi-KVM has several nice features…
mtlynch on HN
Objections
No power management for the target computer
From 1 comment
Thanks for reading! >Cool project, but what about power management? What happens if the PC being controlled crashes and does not let you reboot it using keyboard shortcut? Yeah,…
mtlynch on HN
Cannot share one device across multiple machines
From 2 comments
>This is a game-changer! Thanks for all your work on this. Thanks for reading! >Do you have any plans to allow controlling more than 1 computer remotely? I'd love to implement…
mtlynch on HNThanks for reading! I don't think there's a way to get the Pi to capture video or impersonate keyboards for more than one computer at a time. A neat idea a friend proposed to me…
mtlynch on HN
Requests
Support for VGA capture
From 1 comment
This looks great. To be useful in the datacenter environments I work in such a device would need VGA capture, though. Most servers don't have HDMI ports in my experience. Anybody…
EvanAnderson on HN
Power control and virtual media mounting
From 2 comments
Brilliant idea. I have an idea to extend this! 1. A relay to reset the PC like iDRAC/iLO 2. 2 dual pole relay to move a USB flash drive to and from the PC it's connected to, in…
naggie on HNThe Pi is capable of remote mounting images.[0] I haven't implemented support for it in TinyPilot yet, but it should be possible. [0] http://www.isticktoit.net/?p=1383
mtlynch on HN
Questions
Can it scale to many machines?
From 1 comment
This is cool. Any chance this would scale for many machines? I have a ~15 machine lab with no KVM setup right now, and could really use something like this if it works for a…
iron2disulfide on HN
Does it work with Pi Zero W?
From 2 comments
Would a Pi Zero W work for this, or do you need a full-size Pi 4? I would think that with the HDMI dongle doing the hardware MJPEG encoding, a Pi Zero might suffice. It'd be…
ghaberek on HNThanks for reading! >Would a Pi Zero W work for this, or do you need a full-size Pi 4? I tested Key Mime Pi (the keyboard-only version) on the Pi Zero W and it worked great. I…
mtlynch on HN
Alternatives named
Pi-KVM
From 2 comments
I just finished building a Pi KVM about a month ago using project https://github.com/pikvm. Has been great so far.
grosswait on HNNot tried anything like this before: looking at TinyPilot and Pi-KVM which one should I use? I'm happy doing some soldering. Is there anything that TinyPilot has that Pi-KVM…
wjdp on HN
Intel AMT / iDRAC / Raritan
From 2 comments
This looks awesome. I was looking for a solution like this last year. I budgeted a few hundred bucks but couldn't find anything. Ideally would have a way to handle a few…
x87678r on HNFantastic project. Amazing how you overcame each obstacle, and very well written to boot. Kudos. Quite funny how you brought 1000 ms latency down to 200 ms. I wonder how this…
cerberusss on HN
Barrier
From 1 comment
The hardest part of this seems to be the V in the KVM and the solution of the author's is pretty neat. But I think things could still be improved by dropping his keyboard/mouse…
superkuh on HN