KVM Switch recommendations

cjd1965

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Apr 2007
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UK
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Hi I have a touchscreen mounted onto an enclosure. There are no keyboard or mouse available (only touch screen)


I need to interface to 2 thin client boxes which are within the same enclosure but are on 2 different domains


Any ideas? I was looking to find a din rail mount kvm with hard wired switching so i could mount a selector switch or some similar idea


Thanks
 
you may need to consider your target machines ability to take the drivers necessary for any KM or KVM you choose.

for windows based machines i use Belkin Secure KMs. they allow seamless flow of the mouse and keyboard across the connected machines (no button pushing to select machines). Just slide the mouse across the screens and the KM picks up the ports as you go. The "secure" part of the name is due to the fact that one port cannot pass any data across other ports, so connecting multiple domains is no issue.

http://www.belkin.com/us/Products/business/cybersecurity-secure-kvm/c/secure-km/

note that these KM's are not din rail mountable.
 
Don't know any DIN mounted KVM switches unfortunately. However normally you don't need any drivers on the KVM switches. They are software agnostic. Thin clients often run some version of linux and I've run KVM switches on them in the past.
 
thanks for replies, maybe i was too vague with the question



The idea is to have a single touchscreen hmi mounted on an enclosure. within the enclosure is 2x dell wyse thinoOS clients which connect back to 2x vm machines running windows, on seperate domains



The kvm switch needs to share the touchsreen across the 2 wyse clients without a keyboard or mouse
 
The idea is to have a single touchscreen hmi mounted on an enclosure. within the enclosure is 2x dell wyse thinoOS clients which connect back to 2x vm machines running windows, on seperate domains

Sounds complicated, especially making the KVM switch between the thin clients with a touchscreen.

How about one touchscreen, one wyse thin client and a firewall router instead? Then you can connect the thin client to two VMs on separate domains and on separate networks without the domains being connected together.

Or just put two touchscreens in the enclosure?
 
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More details

I'm working with the OP on this project, and want to provide some more information.

Back in the DOS/PC era, a KVM had a mechanical selector switch to toggle between two PCs. What we had hoped to find was a panel-mountable version of that (NEMA 4x); or at least something that we could solder an AB 800T switch where the desktop switch is/was.

Unfortunately, modern KVMs seem to monitor their keyboard input for the "switch" command -- something like "hold down the <CAP LOCK> while simultaneously pressing <CTRL>."

Unfortunately, our monitor is a touchscreen and there is no physical keyboard, so we can't do multiple simultaneous keypresses.

The two thin clients are on different networks, running different ArchestrA galaxies, so the have no way to pass data to each other (well, without more of an effort than the bosses will allow (validation)). But the two systems each control independent vessels that both feed into the same filling line (at different times), and the desire is to monitor/control the one that is feeding the filler at a common station.

Due to space constraints, a second monitor is out. We could possibly get a NEMA keyboard, just to give the KVM something tangible to switch by.

Another option would be to add a button to the two systems' ArchestrA screens that could send the proper signal to the KVM, but I believe the InTouch scripting language is limited as to being able to do that.

The ideal would be to find a KVM that has a physical selector rather than a logical one.

Any ideas?
 
i purchased the following in Australia some years ago (maybe 4 years ?) not sure if they are still available. the toggle button for changing mouse/keyboard is seen at lower right in first pic. pics attached


"Edimax" Brand Model EK-2U2CA

Capture 1.JPG Capture2.JPG
 
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