1 USB device to control minimum 32 machines?

[Reciever]

Good Afternoon ladies and gents,

 

I grow tired of re-training people all the time who basically quit a week later at work, so I have been trying to think of ways to accomplish this goal of lowering my labor time when it comes to production at work. 

 

Naturally, you cant just hook up 1 Keyboard to 32 systems even if you had spliced the wires up due to how Serial operates. Best I have been able to determine is would just not do anything. This sadly is exactly what I am trying to do for image deployments since a lot of configurations I run through are the same config over many systems often 48-300 per order, if I could run through all the systems at the same time as well as post Image QC it would free me up to handle other clients.

 

Do you guys have any ideas? Maybe certain KVM's could do this? Or perhaps a ProxMox scenario to send the signal to the individual machines via USB? 

 

I cant change the overall process I have with this client, nor do I have any Admin access to their servers or client end user machines due to the regulations surrounding this client. 

 

Any help is wholly appreciated! 

 

Reciever

 

 

[saturnotaku]

Doing it over a network or with software like Synergy would probably be the best way, but it doesn't sound like this would be possible.

[Reciever]

Cant do anything to the client systems for local software so thats out. 

 

Over the network? Is it possible to inject keyboard commands that way?

 

I was also thinking maybe I can build a dedicated box with just USB expansion cards, single them out via VM to passthrough to the client systems?

 

Not my everyday type of request to be certain...

 

@saturnotaku

 

Just came across what will have to suffice. Was hoping for 2x 16 but the largest is 8. It looks to be able to support cascading (daisy chain) so in effect the result I want (assuming it works)

 

https://www.newegg.com/p/1DJ-0033-00085

 

Other companies sell them under different names and such.

[Ishayin]

On 3/2/2022 at 9:47 PM, Reciever said:

 

Over the network? Is it possible to inject keyboard commands that way?

 

 

Just came across this software which might do what you're after:
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Quote

Barrier is software that mimics the functionality of a KVM switch, which historically would allow you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers by physically turning a dial on the box to switch the machine you're controlling at any given moment. Barrier does this in software, allowing you to tell it which machine to control by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen, or by using a keypress to switch focus to a different system.

 

[Reciever]

On 8/4/2022 at 4:27 PM, Ishatix said:

 

Just came across this software which might do what you're after:
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

 

Interesting, I might look more into that for home use. 

 

I will also need to look into Linux for its Gadget Mode, perhaps as a long term solution might be in that aspect, not sure yet. 

 

For now it looks like the only "ready-made" solution would be the USB Synchronizers that I had linked above. The issue with them is they are not designed for use in a production environment, some of them had already started to break down physically. I will likely need to resolder them coming up here soon.