A few weeks ago I broke the internet connection of a server and with that my remote access. No monitor or keyboard was nearby, I only had my Laptop. My thought: it would be great if I could use the Laptop itself as monitor and keyboard but the HDMI port can only act as output.

In my research I came across KVMs (Keyboard Video Mouse), a separate device that can do this exact job. The problem is these are usually very expensive. Projects like PiKVM are cheaper when assembled manually. A friend suggested something a lot simpler: the AURGA Viewer.

How it works

The Aurga Viewer is a small HDMI-and-USB dongle that plugs directly into whatever machine you need to control. It pairs wirelessly with a client device running the Aurga app, and the host machine itself needs no software at all so it works even on a PC with no operating system installed. It’s hardware-agnostic, drawing power straight from USB 2.0, so there’s no separate power brick to carry around.