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
I own 3 JetKVMs, of which two of them stopped working, one of which doesn't boot at all and the other that never connects to network. The third I took out of service because the keyboard wouldn't send input when it was connected for more than a couple months. I'm sure the newer hardware is better, but I'm very unhappy with my JetKVMs.
FWIW, I have two JetKVMs from the original Kickstarter campaign, and both have been in continuous use since the day I received them without a single issue. So the experience definitely varies.
I have two and one stopped working, but they were great and sent me a replacement motherboard and a toolkit to swap it over. Did you try reaching out to them?
I've had good experiences with mine, only thing is that wifi and ethernet claims the same IP which causes my Unifi controller to freak out and send alerts
I have 4 of the old ones in service and they're great. Whenever I need to remotely reboot a server those come in handy just great, no more fear of what I'm going to do if the server doesn't come back online.
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.
>It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems
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.
To me, it is a feature to have a password required at boot to unlock the drive. Relying on TPM for keymatter is convenient but comes with caveats I don't like. I don't personally trust that the boot chain and OS on a modern system are secure enough for this model to be similarly secure to using a passphrase properly. And if I care enough to try to secure something in this way, I definitely care enough to pick something that I believe would be at least truly secure at rest with a decent degree of certainty.
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.
I am using Tang and Clevis without a TPM on an Orange Pi 5. The key is stored on my Tang server. No TPM required.
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.
I like jetkvm a lot but the splitter with the dual USB-c’s is really, really finicky and will say it’s not connected for seemingly no reason. They don’t even send you all the cables you need (which I’m sorry, but jetkvm team if you’re reading this, that’s ridiculous) so you’re just kind of rotating through your pile until you find one that it arbitrarily accepts. Power in particular just refuses to work with many cables for some odd reason. Kind of annoying, I would rather just pay the extra cost and have all the exact cables I need out the box.
At least the new ones dropped the splitter and put 2 separate ports it seems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 rates
In that case I’d need a 1080 physical display on the machine mirrored to the KVM. For the type of stuff I’m doing that’s a bad use of monitor / desk real estate.
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.
I might buy one of these for remote family tech support. "Hey $relative, plug the remote support box into the USB port of the computer you're having trouble with so I can take a look"
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
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.
There are really two types of KVMs... classic ones were used by consumers to plug multiple computers into one screen, keyboard, and mouse and flip back and forth between them.
Networked KVMs let you remotely access a computer or server. It's like VNC except by physically plugging into the ports. This is useful because it allows you to have remote access to a server when its OS is offline, tweak bios settings, watch it boot, reinstall the OS, etc.
Most true servers have this functionality and more built in (ipmi, idrac, redfish, etc are terminology for the feature). These plugin ones allow you to add that functionality to any machine. You're not likely to see tons of them in an actual data center, but they are incredibly useful for systems without remote management built in.
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 :)
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.
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).
It is really hard to find on the site what kvm stands for. Guess people going there knows what it stands for but think it could be spelled out once at least.
Agreed, except for "just". To me a KVM is a physical switch for 2 computers to share the same wired peripherals. It took me 4 different tries to find a page which explained what this one is.
Warning: Don't browse their documentation site, it's filled with domain-specific jargon like FPS, BIOS, LAN, HDMI and other things, and not a single one is explained first! They should clearly read "Product Websites for Dummies" again.
The worst part is that there's two different KVM concepts that are pretty different. One is to bridge keyboard/video/mouse over the network to a target computer (IP KVM), and the other one is to quickly switch keyboard/video/mouse between multiple computers (KVM switch).
Not to be taken in a bad way but, so many people wondering "what is a KVM" is telling a lot about HN reader base evolution.
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.
At the beginning of my career, it was typical to have servers in the office, either in a server closet, or in a proper server room. Even if we had servers off-site, the development infrastructure was often still local. It was typical for experienced developers to know how to do basic "physical" maintenance. I was a system administrator before I was a developer, so often I was the one who ended up doing it. I imagine many HN readers remember those days. I miss it a bit!
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.
I was thinking the point was it was so light to have it hanging on the cables themselves, as I'm certain absolutely no one does in any of their installations...
Using one for couple of months so far. I need it once a month for a couple of hours or so, but it saves me 3x more time, so money well spent. But wow, at 3x less price tag it a deal!
I do this for porting things to DOS. Was swapping a CF card back and forth between a 486 PC and my laptop that was running Claude and it was extremely tedious and required me to physically be at the system.
Automated it entirely by giving Claude hands/eyes/ears so it can take complete control of the 486 using a raspberrypi 5, a usb4vc HAT for PS/2 and a VGA capture device. Adding an ethernet card and a tcp/ip boot profile for FTP, Claude then can update binaries, test them, and gather logs. Now I just steer Claude and it handles interfacing with the machine for me.
I had no idea KVMs existed until an agent filled me in last night (I had the idea of building one with an fpga so an agent could drive os installation). Lo and behold the next day KVMs are on the front page of Hacker News!
What’s a decent quality IP KVM solution that’s not too expensive? We’re looking to put a dozen of mac minis in a collocation, and currently investigating solutions for remote access.
I don't quite trust this class of devices to be programmed in China by who knows who. KVMs are among those things that need authentic, business-registered suppliers that hold a trackable reputational responsibility.
I totally agree with you, but where are those trustworthy companies? It seems every household names in the consumer electronics space are hell-bent on abusing their customers in every conceivable way. Just look at the LG scandal, and that is standard practice across the entire industry. It has to start with strong consumer protection laws and strong enforcement of those laws.
I really just wish I had a USB-C KVM I could use with my laptop (or even better: tablet)...
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.
Not really related to this, but are there good non-IP KVM's left? I'm in the market for one so we can move two home office desks into 1, but all the ones I find seem kinda shit. Asking for USB-C + 2 hdmi or displayports is apparently unreasonable
The cheap alternative I use is based on a USB switch hub and a monitor that has enough inputs for all of the computers I want to switch between.
The hub is a very simple and inexpensive device that essentially just lets you change USB devices between computers. It has 4 ports for USB devices, and 4 input ports for USB hosts. There is a wired remote control that allows you to switch between the hosts.
The way you turn this into a KVM-like device is by having each host connected to the monitor/s indepentently. In my case, I have only two hosts, and each one is connected via HDMI cable to my single monitor. Each host is set up to detect when the USB hub is connected, and then send a DDC command to switch the monitor input over to itself.
The end user experience is: I press a button on the wired remote, which is mounted on my keyboard tray, and then after a short delay the corresponding computer is on my screen and everything works normally.
On linux, this is trivially accomplished with a udev rule + a script calling ddcutil.
On my work machine, a Mac, I could not find a simple solution that worked reliably on my specific Macbook Pro model that I would recommend, so I had an AI write a custom daemon for this purpose.
The major benefit of this "poor man's KVM" is that you do not need an expensive and finnicky piece of KVM hardware. You do not need to worry about the video chip supporting your setup, or firmware bugs. You buy one cheap, commodity product. The downside is the reliance on the hosts, and on monitor features, and having to set up the functionality manually. In my case, this is the sort of thing I basically just set up and then never touched again, so it was a fine trade-off. If I get new computers, or a new monitor, or I change which porta the computers are attached to, then I have to change the code.
Are there any good KVMs for gaming? Right now, I use a capture card for video, connect the mouse directly to the destination, and use a piece of software called Deskflow to transmit my keyboard. But Deskflow occasionally crashes, so it'd be nice to have a hardware solution (also that can be used for BIOS/etc). And Deskflow also won't work if I install SteamOS, once Nvidia works.
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.
The practical answer for right now is that I don't want software screen capture, but it also does not do any of the things I wanted to be able to do by having remote inputs directed to the hardware rather than simulated in software. Namely it requires software installation on the server, which means OS support becomes a thing, you can't use it in BIOS/firmware, etc.
Sunshine works on linux and windows, screen capture uses parts of the gpu meant to do that as result you get lower latency than separate capture and encode.
Windows behaves badly during screen capture. I don't care if the gpu has a dedicated encoder and it is absolutely not lower latency than the gpu's native display output.
KVM is useful for when you need to be able to control earlier stuff in the boot process too, or even simple stuff like entering the password for full-disk encryption, or choosing a boot entry in GRUB, or changing BIOS settings... Many use cases for KVM and remote KVM.
KVMs are for rebooting and recovering servers without needing physical access. Maybe you would have some chance with HDMI splitter connected with an EDID dummy plug and an HDMI-Ethernet capture encoder thing, and some dedicated KVM for just keyboard and mouse, but idk.
For me, I want to access my physical desktop without having to keep a physically separate monitor and keyboard than my MacBook. I have the physically separate monitor and keyboard, and I actually kept it co-located with my laptop for the longest time, but it's just more convenient to not have to swap it out with the laptop to maintain good posture, etc. (I use the laptop in bed due to chronic pain/disability)
The part where I want wired ethernet to that SBC, not some funky proprietary wireless chip as in ESP32. I almost found a solution, but I've been unable to get my picoprobe to properly flash and reset the board for some reason, so I haven't been able to use it for development. I'll have to troubleshoot that again sometime if I enter another bout of caring.
I don't really understand your setup, but if you throw enough money at ATEN they will be happy to give you a KVM that handles 4K @ 240Hz. Supporting high refresh rates is the main thing that would keep me from using most KVMs for gaming.
Ah, I neglected to mention that my keyboard isn't separate hardware. I'm using the built-in keyboard and display of my laptop, and would like to continue doing so. So hardware switches that depend on dumb monitors and keyboards don't work for me (and that's why I said KVM, not switch).
Most KVMs that fail at 4K get the EDID wrong. They either send their own fixed one (often maxing out at 1080p or 4K30), or they reconnect the display on every switch, so the OS thinks it's a new monitor and resets your scaling. Look for one with EDID emulation.
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.
I do use integer scaling. That's what makes 1080p bearable on my 4K display, and not other resolutions that don't divide evenly into 4K.
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.
Can't you do the same thing in Windows' own Advanced Display Settings, by toggling the resolution in list of modes? (I might be remembering the naming wrong). That seems to work to change the "Active Signal Resolution" or whatever it is. But perhaps the Nvidia method is faster.
I agree that it's insane it works this way though.
Meh. The challenge is 4k+ at high display frequency that doesn't cost the same as a small boat. There are gazillions of KVM switches that do 1080. That's easy.
It is 4K, just not the 120Hz or higher gaming grade the parent was asking for, and better than the 1080p of the JetKVM Mini. The JetKVM Mini does offer Ethernet, however (not sure if it can be powered by PoE, however, which would be a huge plus).
I think that's mostly marketing waffle, but I suspect the argument is that this will allow a LLM or agent to remote control your phone, tablet or computer in a format that is a bit more directly accessible for them than the VNC-like UIs most of this new crop of PiKVM-derived IP KVMs offer.
This author has tested a lot of IP KVMs and compares them in this post: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/i-tested-every-ip-kvm...
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’s 3x the cost of jetKVM though. For someone with 8 machines in their home lab this is a big commitment.
It's not though.
JetKVM typically $100-120 ArkKVM $99-115
I own 3 JetKVMs, of which two of them stopped working, one of which doesn't boot at all and the other that never connects to network. The third I took out of service because the keyboard wouldn't send input when it was connected for more than a couple months. I'm sure the newer hardware is better, but I'm very unhappy with my JetKVMs.
FWIW, I have two JetKVMs from the original Kickstarter campaign, and both have been in continuous use since the day I received them without a single issue. So the experience definitely varies.
Same. Have a Kickstarter one that’s been going strong ever since.
Likewise no issue, I also have the gl-inet which is nice because it supports audio but the interface is not as well designed as jetkvm
I have two and one stopped working, but they were great and sent me a replacement motherboard and a toolkit to swap it over. Did you try reaching out to them?
I've had good experiences with mine, only thing is that wifi and ethernet claims the same IP which causes my Unifi controller to freak out and send alerts
Have you tried hooking an LLM up to them to see if it can figure out what's wrong?
At least you got them. I'm still at the "We will send you an email to do a final shipment confirmation once ready" stage.
I have 4 of the old ones in service and they're great. Whenever I need to remotely reboot a server those come in handy just great, no more fear of what I'm going to do if the server doesn't come back online.
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.
>It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems
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.
To me, it is a feature to have a password required at boot to unlock the drive. Relying on TPM for keymatter is convenient but comes with caveats I don't like. I don't personally trust that the boot chain and OS on a modern system are secure enough for this model to be similarly secure to using a passphrase properly. And if I care enough to try to secure something in this way, I definitely care enough to pick something that I believe would be at least truly secure at rest with a decent degree of certainty.
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.
I am using Tang and Clevis without a TPM on an Orange Pi 5. The key is stored on my Tang server. No TPM required.
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.
I like jetkvm a lot but the splitter with the dual USB-c’s is really, really finicky and will say it’s not connected for seemingly no reason. They don’t even send you all the cables you need (which I’m sorry, but jetkvm team if you’re reading this, that’s ridiculous) so you’re just kind of rotating through your pile until you find one that it arbitrarily accepts. Power in particular just refuses to work with many cables for some odd reason. Kind of annoying, I would rather just pay the extra cost and have all the exact cables I need out the box.
At least the new ones dropped the splitter and put 2 separate ports it seems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Right, I was confused when it has the wifi/ethernet port
Depending on one’s computational upbringing, it is exactly _that_ KVM.
(I agree that they should spell it out on the website.)
My first thought was “ah, this must be a JVM for Kotlin by the creators of Kotlin (Jetbrains)!”
What KVM were you thinking of, the virtualization?
Probably Kernel-based Virtual Machine, yeah.
Yes
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.
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 rates
In that case I’d need a 1080 physical display on the machine mirrored to the KVM. For the type of stuff I’m doing that’s a bad use of monitor / desk real estate.
Would a HDMI dummy plug work?
Same complaint. The 1080p cap when mirroring is annoying and when it acts like a third screen it becomes a real nuisance.
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.
Yeah that’s what I have my eye on but 4k@30 is just shy of the full 4k@60 goal.
This comment thread has made me and my LanTronix Spider feel super old. :D
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...
The ESP32-P4 is a beast
That was my first thought too, but it seems like they're using two of them in the wireless version, with a C5 for wifi
That board still requires an HDMI module. The pi zero will support PiKVM fine with an HDMI module too.
The only reason it had been difficult was video capture and compression. Even 32MB would be overkill if you didn't need remote screen.
....that's kinda the feature KVM is for, remote screen
looks nice but seems to be rather expensive
Bummer to not see the atx control support. Its the main use i have from my ipkvm to do fde decryption and boot the machine once wake on lan fails.
I might buy one of these for remote family tech support. "Hey $relative, plug the remote support box into the USB port of the computer you're having trouble with so I can take a look"
or make one yourself: https://github.com/espkvm/espkvm
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
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.
Main issue with these things -- clipboard support?
I feel like I should know this, but can anyone ELI5 what a KVM is in this context?
A keyboard/video/mouse switch.
I've never entered a datacenter before – what does that mean / what is it for?
There are really two types of KVMs... classic ones were used by consumers to plug multiple computers into one screen, keyboard, and mouse and flip back and forth between them.
Networked KVMs let you remotely access a computer or server. It's like VNC except by physically plugging into the ports. This is useful because it allows you to have remote access to a server when its OS is offline, tweak bios settings, watch it boot, reinstall the OS, etc.
Most true servers have this functionality and more built in (ipmi, idrac, redfish, etc are terminology for the feature). These plugin ones allow you to add that functionality to any machine. You're not likely to see tons of them in an actual data center, but they are incredibly useful for systems without remote management built in.
Future Personal computers become unreasonable... Shifts to remote machines, mainframes
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 :)
PiKVM allows you to load ISOs to the onboard sd card via the web interface. It just needs to be on the local disk.
they allow you to upload ISOs from the web interface as well
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...
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...
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).
It is really hard to find on the site what kvm stands for. Guess people going there knows what it stands for but think it could be spelled out once at least.
Just click the “docs” button at the top and the concept is explained in the first paragraph.
Agreed, except for "just". To me a KVM is a physical switch for 2 computers to share the same wired peripherals. It took me 4 different tries to find a page which explained what this one is.
Warning: Don't browse their documentation site, it's filled with domain-specific jargon like FPS, BIOS, LAN, HDMI and other things, and not a single one is explained first! They should clearly read "Product Websites for Dummies" again.
Actually yes, why not? All the professional documentation has glossary in it, btw.
If you click the “docs” button on this page the definition of KVM and the purpose of the product explained immediately.
It's an aposematism. Everything working as intended
Even if not intended, it is a good method of keeping support levels to a reasonable minimum.
Keyboard Video Mouse... It's such a weird TLA that it's not felt to be worth explaining or remembering
Well I came here thinking this would be about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine .
The worst part is that there's two different KVM concepts that are pretty different. One is to bridge keyboard/video/mouse over the network to a target computer (IP KVM), and the other one is to quickly switch keyboard/video/mouse between multiple computers (KVM switch).
TLA ?
Three Letter Acronym
Except it’s an initialism
TLI
Three Letter Acronym
It’s a YABA
Three Letter Acronym
LMGTFY
Not to be taken in a bad way but, so many people wondering "what is a KVM" is telling a lot about HN reader base evolution.
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.
At the beginning of my career, it was typical to have servers in the office, either in a server closet, or in a proper server room. Even if we had servers off-site, the development infrastructure was often still local. It was typical for experienced developers to know how to do basic "physical" maintenance. I was a system administrator before I was a developer, so often I was the one who ended up doing it. I imagine many HN readers remember those days. I miss it a bit!
The original one is shaped weirdly and hard to use in my unordered stack of machines and wires. I like the new shape here better.
I was actually thinking the exact opposite.
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.
I was thinking the point was it was so light to have it hanging on the cables themselves, as I'm certain absolutely no one does in any of their installations...
But then why bother with having a display at all?
Using one for couple of months so far. I need it once a month for a couple of hours or so, but it saves me 3x more time, so money well spent. But wow, at 3x less price tag it a deal!
On a related note, I came across this USB-C KVM on pre-order the other day. It ostensibly supports Tailscale, which would be really useful.
https://sipeed.com/nanokvm-go
Was posting "Now make it join Tailnets." to the comments then saw your remark.
TY for link.
I have the predecessor at home, it's solid and the tailscale support is great!
Missed marketing opportunity : Let AI Agents control any computer
I do this for porting things to DOS. Was swapping a CF card back and forth between a 486 PC and my laptop that was running Claude and it was extremely tedious and required me to physically be at the system.
Automated it entirely by giving Claude hands/eyes/ears so it can take complete control of the 486 using a raspberrypi 5, a usb4vc HAT for PS/2 and a VGA capture device. Adding an ethernet card and a tcp/ip boot profile for FTP, Claude then can update binaries, test them, and gather logs. Now I just steer Claude and it handles interfacing with the machine for me.
https://github.com/ecliptik/vcctrl/tree/main/
I had no idea KVMs existed until an agent filled me in last night (I had the idea of building one with an fpga so an agent could drive os installation). Lo and behold the next day KVMs are on the front page of Hacker News!
Unironically, yes. Easy to connect an AI to any device that supports (adapted) USB input.
Don't even need the HDMI or video the AI will prefer serial console.
I don’t mean this ironically at all. I have a few serial to IP bridges I use to let agents help me debug stuff.
What’s a decent quality IP KVM solution that’s not too expensive? We’re looking to put a dozen of mac minis in a collocation, and currently investigating solutions for remote access.
I've had zero problems with my Gli.Net KVMs
GL-iNet has really nice KVM. Maybe the worst thing is the company name, difficult to write it down correctly.
I suggest to take a look at the reviews on Amazon.
Could you be more specific? I just skimmed through the reviews on the one I use, seems fine?
This one for example: https://www.amazon.com/portal/customer-reviews/srp/-/RCCFLFK...
Chris Siebenmann: "Our options in remote server installation and management" https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/RemoteServerMa...
That article seems to arrive to the same conclusion as I did (“we need IP KVM”) without offering any solid choices?
Which solutions perform well?
Would be curious what the power draw is (in use or idle).
Kickstarter = never in stock. What's the point in all these PR pieces when there is no product?
Why even bother when these things (of another make) can be had for less than $20 on Chinese market. This artificial scarcity bullshit need to die.
I don't quite trust this class of devices to be programmed in China by who knows who. KVMs are among those things that need authentic, business-registered suppliers that hold a trackable reputational responsibility.
I totally agree with you, but where are those trustworthy companies? It seems every household names in the consumer electronics space are hell-bent on abusing their customers in every conceivable way. Just look at the LG scandal, and that is standard practice across the entire industry. It has to start with strong consumer protection laws and strong enforcement of those laws.
Am I missing something? I don't see Kickstarter mentioned in the post
They started off as a Kickstarter thing and had stock issues in previous rounds too.
Ah you're referring to the original and not the Mini
I really just wish I had a USB-C KVM I could use with my laptop (or even better: tablet)...
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.
Comet Q works well, if the usb c port supports DP-ALT
That looks like an interesting device.
I'm more talking about being able to attach a normal laptop to another computer though, without any IP/Networking requirements.
Not really related to this, but are there good non-IP KVM's left? I'm in the market for one so we can move two home office desks into 1, but all the ones I find seem kinda shit. Asking for USB-C + 2 hdmi or displayports is apparently unreasonable
The cheap alternative I use is based on a USB switch hub and a monitor that has enough inputs for all of the computers I want to switch between.
The hub is a very simple and inexpensive device that essentially just lets you change USB devices between computers. It has 4 ports for USB devices, and 4 input ports for USB hosts. There is a wired remote control that allows you to switch between the hosts.
The way you turn this into a KVM-like device is by having each host connected to the monitor/s indepentently. In my case, I have only two hosts, and each one is connected via HDMI cable to my single monitor. Each host is set up to detect when the USB hub is connected, and then send a DDC command to switch the monitor input over to itself.
The end user experience is: I press a button on the wired remote, which is mounted on my keyboard tray, and then after a short delay the corresponding computer is on my screen and everything works normally.
On linux, this is trivially accomplished with a udev rule + a script calling ddcutil.
On my work machine, a Mac, I could not find a simple solution that worked reliably on my specific Macbook Pro model that I would recommend, so I had an AI write a custom daemon for this purpose.
The major benefit of this "poor man's KVM" is that you do not need an expensive and finnicky piece of KVM hardware. You do not need to worry about the video chip supporting your setup, or firmware bugs. You buy one cheap, commodity product. The downside is the reliance on the hosts, and on monitor features, and having to set up the functionality manually. In my case, this is the sort of thing I basically just set up and then never touched again, so it was a fine trade-off. If I get new computers, or a new monitor, or I change which porta the computers are attached to, then I have to change the code.
Level1Techs make their own high end KVMs. They’re expensive but reasonable if you need high refresh support and other such niceties.
LTE support?
Are there any good KVMs for gaming? Right now, I use a capture card for video, connect the mouse directly to the destination, and use a piece of software called Deskflow to transmit my keyboard. But Deskflow occasionally crashes, so it'd be nice to have a hardware solution (also that can be used for BIOS/etc). And Deskflow also won't work if I install SteamOS, once Nvidia works.
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.
https://www.store.level1techs.com/products/kvm do some that might be suitable, they produce some of the highest end desktop-spec KVMs I know of. They're not cheap though.
Why are these so expensive?
Why do you need to use a KVM rather than Sunshine+Moonlight? That's pretty much the gold standard for remote gaming.
Perhaps one wishes to remote KVM consoles.
The practical answer for right now is that I don't want software screen capture, but it also does not do any of the things I wanted to be able to do by having remote inputs directed to the hardware rather than simulated in software. Namely it requires software installation on the server, which means OS support becomes a thing, you can't use it in BIOS/firmware, etc.
Sunshine works on linux and windows, screen capture uses parts of the gpu meant to do that as result you get lower latency than separate capture and encode.
Windows behaves badly during screen capture. I don't care if the gpu has a dedicated encoder and it is absolutely not lower latency than the gpu's native display output.
KVM is useful for when you need to be able to control earlier stuff in the boot process too, or even simple stuff like entering the password for full-disk encryption, or choosing a boot entry in GRUB, or changing BIOS settings... Many use cases for KVM and remote KVM.
KVMs are for rebooting and recovering servers without needing physical access. Maybe you would have some chance with HDMI splitter connected with an EDID dummy plug and an HDMI-Ethernet capture encoder thing, and some dedicated KVM for just keyboard and mouse, but idk.
For me, I want to access my physical desktop without having to keep a physically separate monitor and keyboard than my MacBook. I have the physically separate monitor and keyboard, and I actually kept it co-located with my laptop for the longest time, but it's just more convenient to not have to swap it out with the laptop to maintain good posture, etc. (I use the laptop in bed due to chronic pain/disability)
> simulating a USB client device ... requires specialized hardware that is also very expensive
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?
The part where I want wired ethernet to that SBC, not some funky proprietary wireless chip as in ESP32. I almost found a solution, but I've been unable to get my picoprobe to properly flash and reset the board for some reason, so I haven't been able to use it for development. I'll have to troubleshoot that again sometime if I enter another bout of caring.
> The part where I want wired ethernet to that SBC,
In that case the path of least resistance becomes something like a $22 NanoPi NEO (has onboard ethernet, widely used in PiKVM setups)
Oh, you were talking about SBC, not embedded. I even echoed it, should've noticed. Whoops.
Maybe I'll look into that, wouldn't require messing around with the picoprobe. Thanks!
I don't really understand your setup, but if you throw enough money at ATEN they will be happy to give you a KVM that handles 4K @ 240Hz. Supporting high refresh rates is the main thing that would keep me from using most KVMs for gaming.
Ah, I neglected to mention that my keyboard isn't separate hardware. I'm using the built-in keyboard and display of my laptop, and would like to continue doing so. So hardware switches that depend on dumb monitors and keyboards don't work for me (and that's why I said KVM, not switch).
Most KVMs that fail at 4K get the EDID wrong. They either send their own fixed one (often maxing out at 1080p or 4K30), or they reconnect the display on every switch, so the OS thinks it's a new monitor and resets your scaling. Look for one with EDID emulation.
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.
I do use integer scaling. That's what makes 1080p bearable on my 4K display, and not other resolutions that don't divide evenly into 4K.
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.
Can't you do the same thing in Windows' own Advanced Display Settings, by toggling the resolution in list of modes? (I might be remembering the naming wrong). That seems to work to change the "Active Signal Resolution" or whatever it is. But perhaps the Nvidia method is faster.
I agree that it's insane it works this way though.
Meh. The challenge is 4k+ at high display frequency that doesn't cost the same as a small boat. There are gazillions of KVM switches that do 1080. That's easy.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zepan/nanokvm-go-worlds...
Not high frequency though, tops out at 45Hz
Well, if neither 4K or high frequency is actually a requirement, then https://jetkvm.com/blog/introducing-jetkvm-mini would maybe fit.
It is 4K, just not the 120Hz or higher gaming grade the parent was asking for, and better than the 1080p of the JetKVM Mini. The JetKVM Mini does offer Ethernet, however (not sure if it can be powered by PoE, however, which would be a huge plus).
Why does it need AI?
I think that's mostly marketing waffle, but I suspect the argument is that this will allow a LLM or agent to remote control your phone, tablet or computer in a format that is a bit more directly accessible for them than the VNC-like UIs most of this new crop of PiKVM-derived IP KVMs offer.