Declutter your desk by sharing your mouse and keyboard across multiple computers at once, including your Raspberry Pis, with Barrier. Raspberry Pi Director of Software Engineering, Gordon Hollingworth, shows you how.[...]
Last time I looked - back in the noughties - Windows didn't provide SSH support out of the box, so you had to install an SSH implementation, usually PuTTY. However, a quick search shows that its now a Windows 10 standard package, enabled by default from April 2018: well done M$. Welcome to the 21st century.
However, but that some people, i.e. those who installed Win 10 before April 2010 and have just been applying upgrades since then or who have never updated their windows box at all, may still need to explicitly install it.
That is probably worth mentioning the latter when somebody asks about accessing an RPi from Windows, especially when you realise how many people never apply updates and patches and/or are still using older Windows versions.
The Barrier has the same flaw as many other remote access packages: It does not handle international keyboard layouts correctly. I just tried, and Barrier fell back into the US keyboard layout.
Pardon me for asking, but /why/ would you want to use a GUI to a Raspberry Pi buried behind your company's VPN? Perhaps some Skonkworks development effort? Inquiring minds (should mind their own business :-) ) ...
It doesn't matter what the machine is. The point is that you can not use X or whatever like ssh, VNC etc. to access two devices that are in different networks, which do not see each other. The only way is a KVM and I can recommend looking closely at the chipset inside and not saving on that one.
Software solutions such as this, RDP or VNC work well most of the time, but there situations where you need directly display accelerated graphics, or provide direct input to a particular computer when selecting the OS for dual booting.
4 port HDMI/USB KVMs are still pretty expensive, a cheaper solution as long as you don't mind pressing two buttons instead of one, are separate USB switches and HDMI switches.
My main 27" 1440p monitor is connected to 4 other computers and a DVR via a 5 port HDMI switch with remote control. The monitor also has a built in USB hub, so I connect the keyboard and mouse to that, and the USB from the monitor goes in to a 4 in 1 out USB switch, so I can switch between the 4 computers (the DVR doesn't need a keyboard or mouse).
the point is you can have a screed dedicated to your workstation & another dedicated to your Pi & just move the mouse from one to the other just like in a multi monitor setup on a single pc.
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Not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Machine A is connected to monitor A, next to it is machine B connected to monitor B, the mouse is connected to machine A and controls machine A on monitor A, but the pointer can seamlessly jump to monitor B by going over the edge, it then controls machine B while the mouse is still connected to machine A. So, like he said, just like having a dual monitor setup on one machine.
That scenario didn't come up in a quick google of Xnest.
It would be neat to use a collection of Pi Zeroes, one for each host machine acting as a USB keyboard/mouse gadget device. Then a master Pi has the real keyboard and mouse, and selects which Pi Zero is going to send the keystrokes to. They might be able to drive the selector on an HDMI switch too. That would expand to as many outputs as you wanted.
Or the equivalent thing with USB arduinos instead of Pi Zeroes might be easier.
The advantage of this approach is no USB devices get hotplugged when the output is changed, which can cause issues with hosts (eg continual 'you plugged in a new USB device' popups).
There are some Pi KVM projects out there - this one looks interesting as it does HDMI capture too:
Back when I still had a Windows machine, I installed x2vnc on the machine with keyboard and mouse attached and a VNC server on the Windows box. That had the effect described.
From what I can see of it, mobaxterm looks good. A bit (intentionally) limited in some areas, and certainly closed source, but apparently capable enough for home use. And, moderately inexpensive for use in a business environment. It'll work.
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