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by quailfarmer 361 days ago
Add to this list: small portable HDMI/VGA monitor for checking on headless machines.
2 comments

I use an iPad (that I have with me anyway) + cheap USB HDMI capture dongle for this.
What kind of dongles are compatible with iPad? Does it need some crappy proprietary app to view?
Pretty much anything – I just bought a random cheap one from Amazon, though you might get better latency for more money. The dongles show up as USB cameras (ie UVC) which is supported since iPadOS 17.

I use the (free) Orion app, but it's basically just a fullscreen camera preview so there are plenty of other options.

It is nice but I wish there would be just a dongles of some kind that is like a network monitor, you i.e. VNC into from another place to see what error machine is spewing.
When we attain that technology we can call it RS232.
Do you often connect a monitor with keyboard via serial? Obviously I meant seeing boot errors of some linux machine, which is what usually monitor is for, but you have to be there, on site, with the monitor and keyboard to hook it up and see what the problem is. This is sometimes not possible and NanoKVM or JetKVM would be very helpful. I do not see relevance of you comment here. I hope you at least had a nice time writing it because it was otherwise a waste of time.
I got one of these which does the job pretty well

https://www.crowdsupply.com/techxartisan/openterface-mini-kv...

Nice. Was going to mention TinyPilot but this seems even more portable.
Yes, although NanoKVM is probably a product with most caveats out of competing ones to recommend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plJGZQ35Q6I. I'd recommend JetKVM instead, but unfortunately it is still only available to obtain through late pledges on Kickstarter.
Seems interesting. To bad you cant buy it yet.
This is incorrect, I am currently using both nanoKVM USB and PCI models today
Website says 'preorder'. Is it available or not then? Preorder usually means it is not ready. Where did you buy it?
it looks like you can order the cube one on amazon right now.