[HN Gopher] Pilo: Raspberry Pi-Powered Lights-Out Remote Server ...
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       Pilo: Raspberry Pi-Powered Lights-Out Remote Server Management
        
       Author : gilad
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2020-08-21 04:46 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (zach.bloomqu.ist)
 (TXT) w3m dump (zach.bloomqu.ist)
        
       | Normal_gaussian wrote:
       | A few things to note about the video capture device:
       | 
       | - it hardware encodes to MJPEG at some ok but not great quality.
       | Text becomes somewhat fuzzy but readable.
       | 
       | - a version with HDMI passthrough is available. It also has an
       | extra _optional_ power supply (micro usb) which is useful if you
       | chain a dozen to one pi zero.
       | 
       | - the usb only ones can be as low as PS5 on ebay ($6.55) and PS10
       | for passthrough.
       | 
       | - it featured in an artcile by Micael Lynch which featured here
       | on HN, where he explored the latency involved with such video
       | caprure devices (https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/)
        
       | 1MachineElf wrote:
       | Very impressive project, and I'm especially grateful for a
       | detailed example of ps2dev. I was looking at ps2dev last year,
       | wondering what it would take to create a PS/2 input device.
        
       | xuhu wrote:
       | If you give up the video capture part, a smart plug and a
       | Raspberry Pi that can send Wake on Lan packets and can act as an
       | SSH gateway should work, without extra parts. My beige Linux
       | boxes currently use a $20 8-port switch and a Pi that's reachable
       | via port forwarding.
        
         | folmar wrote:
         | Then you can also live without the raspberry pi. Buy you can't
         | help a stuck-at-boot server, change bios settings, repair
         | broken network config etc.
        
       | oarsinsync wrote:
       | Similar concept (TinyPilot) discussed in
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23927380 (and v2 at
       | https://tinypilotkvm.com/blog/v2-design)
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | This one is particularly interesting because they spent the
         | time to drastically improve the latency of the remote video.
         | 
         | I'm interested if anyone has applied the same concept to vga
         | capture instead of HDMI. A lot of servers only have vga
         | available.
        
           | mtlynch wrote:
           | TinyPilot author here.
           | 
           | You can capture VGA using all the same tools by adding in a
           | VGA to HDMI adaptor. I haven't measured the impact on
           | latency, but a few users have confirmed that it works.[0]
           | 
           | [0] https://github.com/mtlynch/tinypilot/issues/76#issuecomme
           | nt-...
        
       | blensor wrote:
       | If you are already using and arduino, couldn't you the use it as
       | a HID device and send the keyboard (not sure if it does mouse as
       | well) directly without going through a PS/2 emulation?
        
         | flotwig wrote:
         | Looks like it's not supported on the Nano, Trinket, or Uno,
         | which were the only devices I had laying around:
         | https://arduino.stackexchange.com/a/39638
         | 
         | Otherwise, that would work fine, but not all motherboards
         | support power-on via USB HID, most support PS/2 though.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | woliveirajr wrote:
       | > IBM was using the PS/2 standard (not to be confused with the
       | PS2) to connect mice and keyboards to PCs
       | 
       | Oh my. I would never expect someone taking PS/2 for PS2. It made
       | me wonder that many communication problems that I have with some
       | of my team is caused because I'm a bit dated...
        
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       (page generated 2020-08-22 23:01 UTC)