As many here I am waiting for the uConsole. One of my usage would be for remote access of servers and I think it can be very useful in a server room environment.
I was thinking that an expansion with HDMI capture input and a USB host (to emulate keyboard and even mouse) would be a cool thing. That would make it a portable KVM device, a nice server console.
I did find a device that has this particular feature as a replaceable module, the GPD Pocket 3 Mini, a bit too expensive though.
Anybody here might interested in such an expansion?
I definitely would be interested in something like this. In addition to being the ultimate crash cart, it would make working on small headless projects like raspberry pi boards or test machines much easier.
I’ve had my eye on Openterface for a while now and it’s really cool that they’re making an expansion module for the uConsole.
As someone who has been searching for a “single cable” KVM/Crash Cart solution, I’m not sure what to make of the implementation, though. Their original KVM module is cheap enough to leave plugged into the target machine permanently, and this gives me the single-cable solution I desire. The expansion module is functionally the same as the KVM, just embedded in the uConsole, which means needing HDMI and USB connections run to the target machine – not a single cable.
I do want to state that this is me wanting to have my cake and eat it – The concept is amazing, and I’m definitely not dismissing it. I’m probably still going to buy both versions, along with a plethora of other expansion modules that anyone comes out with. Give me all the expansions
Oh yeah, you totally made a great point! With the regular Mini-KVM, you can just leave it plugged into each headless device, and whenever you need to jump in and troubleshoot, just connect via USB-C. Super handy!
That’s actually how I’ve set things up for my own headless devices. And the host doesn’t have to be a uConsole. It can be a MacBook, Windows laptop, Linux box (even something rack-mounted acting as a “master” KVM), or even an Android tablet or phone.
The uConsole KVM extension, on the other hand, is more about turning the uConsole into a portable KVM console, perfect for sysadmins or makers who like tinkering with different boards and devices. It’s not exactly a true single-cable setup since you still need both HDMI and USB from the target… but you can kinda cheat it
If the target supports it, you can use a USB hub with a built-in video capture card. That way both video and input go through a single USB cable. I’ve actually got that working with an Android phone (photo below),
but the software still need to improve its K/M control by supporting this kind of resolution better.
The catch is, this only works on modern devices that support that kind of hub. Legacy stuff like older servers probably won’t play nice.
Does the Openterface expansion module come with an IO shield for the expansion bay? I’ve been looking over the various pieces of information about it and I can’t seem to see one in any of the photos.
