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- Hacker News
- Wait, do I understand correctly that you can only boot ISOs off a microSD card that I have to pre-load? I can’t just put in a card and load ISOs over the web interface? That makes the use case of full remote control (after plugging it in for the first time, of course) kinda moot… Otherwise, this seems to be a great product for homelab stuff :)by hofiflo
- they allow you to upload ISOs from the web interface as wellby igniuss
- PiKVM allows you to load ISOs to the onboard sd card via the web interface. It just needs to be on the local disk.by greggsy
- or make one yourself: https://github.com/espkvm/espkvmby skolos
- Maintainer (espkvm) here. :) Thanks for the mention ;)
It started as a firmware for myself: I wanted a KVM, but not a Linux system inside one. A colleague talked me into publishing it and it grew from there. It runs on ESP32-P4 dev boards, no custom hardware.
I am not saying it is better than JetKVM. What I find more interesting is that the Mini landed on the same chip. Their stack is completely different from the Linux JetKVM, so it must be a rewrite from scratch - a sign the idea of a KVM without an OS holds up.
by dexif - i am not sure i would trust a two month old project "based on a three month old proof of concept" over a product that has been around for years, but it is good to know it is there
- I have an ATEN KVM [1] that gets a solid "it does the job" from me. Occasionally a connected computer won't pick up the K, V, or M, and I'll have to reconnect a few times.
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...
by noelwelsh - The GL-iNet Commet X is a 4-port IP KVM. It does 4K, albeit at 30fps.
https://nascompares.com/2026/06/26/gl-inet-comet-x-kvm-early...
by fmajid - I use Aten KVM switches too, but they are a different type of product. JetKVM is for remote KVM access, not for switching between multiple computers. Both are orthogonal to each other. You can in principle combine a JetKVM with a KVM switch (and some people are doing that, though there are some technical pitfalls).by layer8
- The most groundbreaking aspect of this product is its MCU-based solution, and it uses software encoding on the controlled machine to achieve 4K@60. 4K is not needed in BIOS scenarios.by gainsurier
- There are a lot more devices being released built on esp32s lately. e-readers are another example. I suspect with current hardware prices we might see a significant rise in consumer compute being limited to these types of devices, and a corresponding push to make software efficient enough to run on them. Could be interesting.by apitman
- I have an OG JetKVM and it works solidly but the thing that prevents me from using it is no video pass through. The awkwardness of an ‘invisible’ monitor connected to windows at all times is hard to live with - windows and apps open there and I’m constantly having to pull them back to an another monitor. My next KVM will be pass through for this reason, but the consumer ones seem to top out at 4k30, which is not great either.
- Would a splitter fix this?
- Look at the nanokvm pro. 4k@45 with pass through.by gunalx
- The higher-end GL-iNet Comets have passthrough. I have the 5G cellular equipped one connected to my OpenBSD home router so if I lose Internet connectivity at home while I am traveling, I can still debug and do something about it.by fmajid
- why not just configure Windows to mirror the displays? That seems a lot cheaper and more flexible than pass through. And you wouldn't need to worry about matching resolutions and refresh ratesby kllrnohj
- How do you reboot the target machine and stay powered?
I know some ipkvm can interface with the ATX header, but that's usually an extra addon. It also requires have some access to the ATC header during installation.
I have a tiny "NAS" where the mobo is the size of credit card and very difficult to access. The power supply is external. The USB doesn't stay powered when turned off.
I cobbled together a bare NanoKVM running debian, a relay normally closed to interrupt mains power to the target, and a tiny little power supply into a 3D printed case. I have also added a diode so that the ipkvm can also be powered by the target USB for flexibility. Note that the sg200x boots with its pin pulled high with a ~50kΩ resistor (pullup). So you need to pull it down with a 1kΩ resistor. This also renders the system more robust to transient voltages anyways.
https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/kvm/NanoKVM/introduction...
by bombela - The original ones came with a USB C Y cable that allowed you to connect to the computer but get power from an alternate USB source. They also have beards on the board for DC power.by dfc
- It may be worth noting that this is not _that_ KVM, but this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch
I learnt this first myself from HN, a few months ago.
- What KVM were you thinking of, the virtualization?
- My first thought was “ah, this must be a JVM for Kotlin by the creators of Kotlin (Jetbrains)!”by herrherrmann
- Depending on one’s computational upbringing, it is exactly _that_ KVM.
(I agree that they should spell it out on the website.)
by layer8 - It not exactly a KVM switch, which allows you to have one set of keyboard, mouse, monitor connected to multiple PCs and switch between them. This is an IP KVM, which lets you send keyboard and mouse inputs and view display output remotely over the network.by yonatan8070
- I am amazed that there is an ESP that can handle this and with just 32MB of RAM:
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-dev-kits/en/latest/e...
by teruakohatu - looks nice but seems to be rather expensiveby sugarkjube
- The ESP32-P4 is a beastby apitman
- a 1280*720 frame, 16 bit, ping-pong buffer uses only 3.6MB of ram, still plenty of ram left for compression. The Keyboard/mouse component use like 512KB ram at most(even less, HID is cheap).by mrheosuper
- That board still requires an HDMI module. The pi zero will support PiKVM fine with an HDMI module too.by greggsy
- The only reason it had been difficult was video capture and compression. Even 32MB would be overkill if you didn't need remote screen.by numpad0
- That was my first thought too, but it seems like they're using two of them in the wireless version, with a C5 for wifiby MPSimmons