Posted by Remote Desktop is an excellent way to manage your computer or provide support to someone else when its not possible to be on site. However there are limitations to the level of access you actually have on the remote computer.
It usually requires special software to be installed, both on the local as well as the remote computer and needs configuration prior to establishing a connection.
If you are connecting to a machine outside your local network you may require to setup things such as Port Forwarding, Static IPs or even Wake on LAN if you need access to a powered off machine.
Sure you could use an off the shelf application such as TeamViewer to overcome some of the above issues but where is the fun in that?
Also whatever application you choose to use still has the same limitation. You can only access the remote computer only when the OS is loaded and the application is running. and there is significant latency while remotely managing the machine
What if there was an easier way? What if there was a way you could access the remote machine and gain bare-metal like control even when the machine is rebooted or in Bios with minimal latency?
Well there is! Using a Raspberry Pi as a KVM over IP device.
An OpenSource project was created to provide an alternative to the super expensive KVM over IP devices that offer such functionality. You no longer need business grade equipment. You just need a Raspberry Pi configured with TinyPilot.
An excellent video was release on YouTube from Craft Computing which explains this project in detail.
As noted in the video you can purchase the complete solution provided by the creator of the project as a plug & play hardware bundle or since this is an Open Source project build one yourself using a Raspberry Pi and some additional hardware.
If you are a tinkerer and a DIY kind of person the creator of the project also made available an excellent step-by-step guide on how to accomplish the same result on your own. You can find the guide here.
