PiKVM and laptop dock power button
I have a locked down company laptop that I would rather leave at home on personal trips, but have to use for short amounts of time. I want to get a pikvm to use it, but the thing is, after some research, I don’t know how I will turn it on:
-laptop BIOS is completely locked down, I can’t turn on wake on LAN
-Laptop will go to sleep/shut down at a certain time at night that I can’t change (company “green” power saving policy)
-Of course I will not risk asking company IT to make exceptions for me since this is probably a security risk to them and I don’t want them to know
-at the office there is a USB C dock (Lenovo) with a power button on the dock
-this power button is most likely proprietary as I have seen from my research and no way of software implementation in pikvm
Short of making a separate device to push the power button, and before sinking in the money for a pikvm (500+ with the dock), here is my plan:
-buy second hand dock on ebay
-take apart the dock and locate connections for power button
-cut the ATX power button connector from pikvm and connect the wires to the dock power button wires (solder or just twist wires together and cover with electrial tape)
-of course the dock might be permanently borked
Anyone with experience here to see why this would not work?
Comments Section
I’ve done this myself, exactly the same scenario. I opened up the docking station and soldered two wires onto the contacts for the dock power button then connected those to the atx pins on the pi atx breakout. It works like a charm.
One thing to be aware of is I’ve had issues with a separate laptop (same scenario) where the bios prevents any external keyboards from working with the bitlocker password entry screen. It’s a real pain so I would make sure your laptop allows externals before taking the plunge.
Thank you!
A cheaper option rather than ripping apart a dock is buying a cheap usb numpad keyboard and wiring the two contacts of a key to the atx power pins on the breakout board. That way you can just let the pc sleep the wake it by using the atx button which simulates a physical keystroke.
Do the same thing and mounted a SwitchBot to the laptop power button. Works great ;)
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Does the laptop still go to sleep/shut down if you are "working" on it at night? If not, install mouse jigger to PiKVM
Not necessary. I just record a 10 second macro in PiKVM, move the mouse a few times, then play it back with the "infinite loop" switch turned on. This way, my own computer can go to sleep, or even lose internet connection, and the computer I'm working on stays wide awake all night.
Do you buy a preprogrammed PiKVM or program it yourself to work on your work laptop which is at home while you are traveling? Are you able to take video calls on your laptop while traveling on your work laptop via PiKVM on your personal laptop?
I bought a preprogrammed prebuilt one, and yes, I want to access it while travelling and the laptop stays home. Don’t plan on taking video calls though, I can do that with my phone. It’s more some small things that I may have to do in Excel and I don’t want to do bring my laptop just for that. Would rather bring my personal laptop and connect to my work laptop, at least with my personal laptop I can do other things with it.