I got covered I'm better now mostly but
I was stranded in a hotel for two weeks with absolutely nothing to do but watch
YouTube and stick cotton swabs up my nose at least that's what I would say if
not for this this unassuming little box let me
connect back to my test bench at the office and do actual work from the
comfort of my hotel room I can do crazy things like use my smartphone over 5G to
power on this completely ordinary computer without wake on land it's not
even plugged into the network and it's not just power I can also see the screen
interact not only with Windows but even the BIOS as if I were sitting right in
front of the computer right I could even overclock this PC
completely remotely how does it work
I'm glad you asked and I'm glad you asked about our sponsor G skill their
Trident Z5 Neo ddr5 memory is built for AMD ryzen 7000 series processors and one
click memory overclocking learn more at the link below
meet Pi KVM V3
is it open source hat for Raspberry Pi that launched as a Kickstarter and
started shipping about a year ago let's try it on a laptop plugged in via
Ethernet the delay actually isn't too bad like the cursor is skipping around a
little bit but as good as it kind of is with their claim of 100 milliseconds at
best like for a device like this that's amazing that's before you consider your
network latency you're not going to want a game on it at all plus 1080p 60 is the
absolute most you're going to get now if you're tied on bandwidth you can
actually limit the frame rate by yourself in the system menu here and set
the bit rate you'd like to use for h.264 encoding which I can switch to right
there of course none of this requires anything special from the host PC here
because it's completely out of the loop all we have is HDMI and USB plugged into
the motherboard here for control and that's it with an inexpensive HDMI
splitter you'd never know it was there oh and that reminds me the USB
connection here that's for more than
just the keyboard and mouse you can use it as a network bridge you could use it
for a Serial port and even this one is really cool as a USB drive for
connecting up disk images I could install an entire operating system
without ever needing to physically touch this PC just upload the iso to Pi KVM
choose the mode you want to use click connect and you're done it can even
download images from the internet if you give it an address for you family it
gurus out there that means you could remotely diagnose and repair just about
any problem you're less Savvy relatives might have without having to guide them
through the scary outside of Windows stuff that they've never seen before and
I can't tell you how many times I've had to do that especially as a Geek Squad
guy like trying to talk to somebody on the phone who had no idea what anything
was I I didn't know who they were and yeah of course that might bring up some
privacy concerns so maybe you could have them leave it disconnected until they
need you to make a house call you can always configure it with tailscale vpn's
free personal plan so you can access it as soon as it connects without having to
worry about networking Shenanigans like static IP addresses or port forwarding
but okay we've seen what it can do how
does it work inside this unassuming little box is a
Raspberry Pi 4 and a specialized hat that provides not only a USB connection
and HDMI output but also three total
RJ45 Network Jacks the one on the pi itself is to connect to your local
network via Ethernet as you'd expect and Wi-Fi is also available though the steel
chassis you have here is a little bad for signal strength but the other
Ethernet ports on the hat are special the one directly above the pies can
connect to a Serial port with a converter cable if for example you
wanted to be able to directly control the pi KVM from the machine it's connected to or communicate with a
battery backed UPS or other serial control device the port on the other
side this is meant for this optional breakout
board called the ATX adapter as you can
probably tell by the lack of electronics on the adapter itself it's not truly
Ethernet but instead it's breaking up the wires in an Ethernet cable to
directly hook up to the motherboard's front panel connectors so you've got your power your reset and the power in
HDD lids this secondary board has two
sets of pins one set goes to the front panel header itself as you see here and
the other goes to the cables from your case so you don't lose out on any
functionality depending on how neat you want it to be there's enough length on
these cables that you can actually use a 3D printed PCI bracket to mount the ATX
adapter directly inside your case or you can just let it dangle and fish
the Ethernet cable through a suitable opening like a PCI slot though some BHB
tape will probably go a long way to both insulating the bare contacts on this
thing and keeping it safely in place but all this is wired up you've got a
perfectly functional normal PC that can be controlled anywhere
or at least we're part way there if you bought the whole kit like this then
you're already good to go but if you just have your pie in a hat you'll need
to do some setup first flashing the memory card is a simple matter of
downloading the image using our PI imager or your favorite Imaging tool
inserting the SD card and hitting right pop the SD card into the pie attach the
hat if you haven't already plug it into your network and power it up once it's
booted you'll see um well not much while you might be able
to get away with connecting your web browser to Pi kvm.local you'll probably
have to find out what IP address the pi KVM grabbed the easiest way to do that
is if you've got the whole kit or picked up the OLED display it'll save right on
it but the next best thing is to take a look at your router's DHCP assignments
if you don't have access to that or you're not sure how you can instead use
this command to Output a list of devices on your network look for one with a Mac
address containing these patterns and you'll find the IP address next to it
punch it into your browser and you're Off to the Races you'll definitely want
to change these default admin passwords before you go any further though and you
can do that by going to the web terminal and entering these commands
now comes the real magic from the main menu click on KVM and you'll be whisked
away to a streamlined interface that might make it admins think of ipmi which
is fitting because that's basically what we got here if you click on the ATX menu
here you can see that you have power and
reset buttons as if you were right next to the PC I can turn it off just like
this and that it goes if you've connected
everything right and you hit that button while it's all off you'll see the boot
sequence right in your web browser it's pretty cool but what did it cost if you
don't care for fancy things like a case but you also want everything all in one
you can get just the custom hat for your pie for 160 us buckaroons
but if you do want the whole package you can get them pre-assembled like this
with the case cooler OLED display 2gig Raspberry Pi 4 and a 32 gig pre-imaged
SD card for an extra 90 bucks for a total of 250 dollars is that a good
price kind of feels like it to me commercial
options from the big boys run between 500 and a thousand dollars US
the only obvious comparison is the also open source tiny pilot Voyager 2. a
similar Pi powered concept wrapped in a more polished commercial package with
some extra features that sells for 360 dollars for the it manager looking for
something for their server racks the commercial tiny pilot claims to have a
superior support system and while I haven't used either support system
I degree in principle Discord servers are great for building communities but
bad for searchability and you can fight me on that the best part about all of
this though you're not shy about getting your hands
dirty you can build your very own Pi KVM
or tiny pilot and if you don't care about bells and whistles like Ethernet
support or the ATX power control you can
actually build it with a Raspberry Pi zero two w with no soldering for around
fifty dollars unfortunately Raspberry
Pi's are still tough to find right now and the DIY route is significantly less
polished than either of the other options which are still available
so if you're not looking to DIY the full Pi KVM package here for my money anyway
strikes an excellent middle ground it takes nearly every box just like our
sponsor Squarespace if you want to build a brand online you need a website but
Learners I just learned how to turn on the little flashlight on my phone how am
I going to build a whole website with Squarespace Squarespace is your One Stop
No Frills all in one platform for expanding your presence on the internet
with Squarespace you can build a beautiful website engage with your
audience and sell anything and everything from products to content
without needing to attend the techworts school of tech Wizardry we love
Squarespace so much we use it here at Linus Media Group it's custom templates
make it easy to stand out with a plethora of themes and customization
options to fit your needs and you can maximize your visibility thanks to a
suite of integrated SEO features there's also analytic insights to help you
optimize your performance so you can see what's working well and What needs
tweaking don't wait get started today and head to Squarespace com forward
slash LTT to get 10 off your first purchase thanks for watching guys this
was a little bit different but it is technically networking and server
related so maybe check out the last time we updated our server room or one of our
servers or maybe the million dollar server there you go go check that out
the troubleshooting processes pretty fun