He likes JetKVM. However, they appear to be sold out. The Mini seems great but I have yet to receive a preordered item on the advertised timeline.
That article pointed to ArkKVM which is a hardware clone of JetKVM but they have now released their own software stack as open source which has Tailscale support
* https://store.arkkvm.com/blog/detail/arkkvm-fully-open-sourc...
* https://store.arkkvm.com/blog/detail/arkkvm-ota-release-note...
It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems. Previously I had to rely on a janky solution with booting into BusyBox so that the system can be accessed remotely and using that to enter the password. Now it's just plain FDE set up during Debian install - I reboot, use JetKVM to enter the password and that's it.
One note though - I don't use their online cloud service access thingy and connect to those using my Wireguard deployment. The hardware is nice, open source is nice, but I wouldn't trust that level of access to any cloud solution by any vendor.
I've fixed that with secure boot (my own keys, not Microsoft's) and TPM2. From that host I can run a program named Tang, which operates in conjunction with another program named Clevis.
On hosts without secure boot such as RPis and other ARM SBCs, Clevis will contact Tang at boot time and decrypt the disk.
Incidentally my x86 with secure boot has intel vPro so the KVM is not needed. The remaining sisters have a piece of lost technology used for decades to solve the KVM problem: serial (UART specifically) connections.
Some seasoned sysadmins might have memories of dialing their Sun servers serial ports for remote administration.
TPM based unlock does at least still fulfill the goal of ensuring data stored to disk is encrypted so that it can't easily be recovered from a discarded drive.
It is either on my LAN with that server available, or you will need to enter a key.
It am only trying to prevent casual snooping if it goes missing from my garage though. Anybody more sophisticated can have my garage YouTube browsing history.
At least the new ones dropped the splitter and put 2 separate ports it seems.
I learnt this first myself from HN, a few months ago.
(I agree that they should spell it out on the website.)
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-dev-kits/en/latest/e...
I can't find much, and what I find is a bit bonkers.
I ended up buying a license to Orion, using USB-C→HDMI capture card with a Startech VGA→HDMI converter (which requires USB-A power)... in order to achieve a semi-passable KVM (but, without the K and the M...).
I paired with a USB-A Hub and a keyboard and mouse and it kinda works but it's an incredibly janky setup...
... the fact that many servers still output VGA is baffling.
I use it to switch between my work laptop and my personal PC, and for this situation 4K is a must have. That, and the choice of HDMI instead of DisplayPort, and things that would keep me from getting a JetKVM.
[1]: https://www.aten.com/gb/en/products/kvm/desktop-kvm-switches...
https://nascompares.com/2026/06/26/gl-inet-comet-x-kvm-early...
It used to be a time that any proper geek/hacker would obviously know what a KVM is. More the normal KVM than the IP-KVM that could be considered a marvel of our time in the end.
Because it was so common to have just a single screen and keyboard but multiple tower desktop computers. Especially at school and home. Nowadays we mostly all use laptops so it is well irrelevant and I guess only a few young reader ever saw one in the field.
The big “tail” on the original gives you something to build an enclosure around, and the ports are all on the face opposite the display. That shape makes it easy to 3d print a mount for a 10” rack.
This one has stuff on four out of six surfaces (display, button, card slot, ports), and the two free surfaces are at a right angle to each other instead of being on opposite sides, so this gives you little to no leeway for mounting semi-permanently without some adhesive.
Which solutions perform well?
Don't even need the HDMI or video the AI will prefer serial console.
I looked at making a solution myself, but for some reason, simulating a USB client device in software is extremely annoying, and requires specialized hardware that is also very expensive. So at that point, why not just get a KVM...
I frequently switch between 1080p and 4K for gaming since I don't like resampling artifacts. Never found a KVM that can handle 4K properly even for productivity. The mistake can be as basic as assuming a 100% scale factor.
Pretty much any off-the-shelf SBC can present itself as a USB HID device like a keyboard. You can buy a very capable rp2040-based board for <$5.
What part of this equation requires expensive hardware?
In that case the path of least resistance becomes something like a $22 NanoPi NEO (has onboard ethernet, widely used in PiKVM setups)
Maybe I'll look into that, wouldn't require messing around with the picoprobe. Thanks!
For high refresh 4K you also need HDMI 2.1 or DisplayPort with DSC support, and a lot of "4K" KVMs don't have it.
Also, 1080p divides evenly into 4K, so turn on integer scaling in the Nvidia or AMD settings and 1080p will look sharp instead of blurry.
An annoying quirk is that I have to use the Nvidia control panel specifically to get Windows to send a 1080p signal as otherwise, it will just upscale 1080p to a 4K signal. It makes no fucking sense to me why that would be the default but whatever.
I agree that it's insane it works this way though.
Not high frequency though, tops out at 45Hz