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Comment by grw_ | Hacker News Reader

If anyone wants to add remote access capability to machines without IPMI you can try with something like the $30 RISC-V NanoKVM[1][2]. It provides HDMI capture (and encoding), Ethernet/Wifi, ATX power control, and runs a normal linux distribution.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007369816019.html [2] https://github.com/sipeed/NanoKVM

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I'm playing with one now (the full kit) attached to my toy mini PC. It's a little RISC-V device consuming a couple watts. No WiFi yet, but it attaches to PC and emulates 4 things in addition to capturing HDMI output to a web UI:

1. A USB keyboard.

2. A USB mouse.

3. A USB flash drive (using a partition on its internal SD card) for storing bootable ISO to install/rescure systems.

4. A USB NIC which is very neat. I can use it on the PC to expose management SSH port just on that instead of the primary NIC, so that the PC has a sorta dedicated IPMI interface.

Newer versions of the device software come with WireGuard and Tailscale support, so I can just connect to it over VPN.

Still have some minor issues, but the developers are working fast to fix them.

Notably, you need the $60 “full” version to get the ATX power control breakout that attaches to the perverse physically-USB-C connector that has the ATX signals (why? why did they make this abomination?..). Or make your own, I guess, that’s always an option (if only USB-C connectors weren’t absolute ass to solder).

Probably because USBC connectors are really cheap. If this was 5 years ago, they probably would be doing something terrible with a usb 3 A connector instead.

I didn't use the ATX aux board because my mini PC does not have such headers. I just use Wake-on-LAN from NanoKVM web UI to power up my PC :P

There's no Reset-on-LAN though, sadly…

I use a Zigbee plug to toggle the power off and on, and the bios is configured to boot when power is restored.

Yeah I have this setup too just in case :p

OT: What emotion/message are you trying to convey with ":P" in your comments? I never really get these.

I don't know if it's common but for me ":p" is basically the text version of this emoji

[edit]: oops HN does not allow emoji … go here https://emojipedia.org/winking-face-with-tongue

"my computer is better than your computer" i'm guessing...

No no definitely not that… it's more like "my stuff is a bit weird"

Do we know why AliExpress doesn't have the device available for sale to US customers?

The software side is not OSS, it's no better than the alternatives.

Yet another KVM that cannot be trusted.

Is this not the software side?

https://github.com/sipeed/NanoKVM

Link copied from another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41432060

I was mistaken it seems. Only the front end is open ATM.

> the backend will be open-sourced soon (after the GitHub repository reaches 2K stars).

https://en.wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/kvm/NanoKVM/system/in...

Looking forward to the open sourced code. When and if it gets out, this KVM will become a workable solution.

Heh Heh Heh

Wonder if they're serious about that?

Do they know places are around (or at least used to be) which will inflate the # of stars for a repo for some minimal amount of cash? Like $20 per thousand(?) or so when I was reading an expose about that years ago... ;)

A closed source $30 external network KVM is less expensive (and less featureful) than closed source onboard IPMI which typically increases board price by $100-$200.

I think there are some open source IPMI products, but that involves talking to an ODM about a run of thousands of boards which is a bit much for me; I just want two servers at home. I'm tempted by the Gigabyte MC12-LE0 boards that are low cost in Germany right now, but getting dedicated server boards disrupts my pattern of upgrade a desktop, and give the old board to my oldest server.

I guess the best choice would be something built on Raspberry Pi? Like PiKVM, or TinyPilot (both frequently discussed on HN)?

I've been interested in (but haven't yet tried) the BliKVM devices that are a for of PiKVM but are on a PCIeb card to put the device in the server. First generation from them used Pis the second switched to some other Linux SoC.

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