How I Control My Main PC & Homelab NAS With Just One Monitor & Mouse

Owning more than one computer/server/Raspberry Pi is great, but it also presents a problem: how should you control all of them?

I was asking myself this question after building my Debian-based Homelab NAS, and I quickly got tired of running around with a second monitor and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo.

Soin this videoI cover HOW I control both my Windows 11 workstation PC and my Debian NAS, and I also show some of the problems I faced along the way.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone! I now have two computers: my Homelab NAS, which is over there, and then my workstation PC, which is down there. Overall, this works really well for me. I have all my video content on my Homelab NAS, and then I do all my video editing on my computer over the network, and that works well. But it does present a problem if I want to actually control both systems. How should I do that?

Well, in general, my Homelab NAS is runningDebian, so I can just SSH into it like some dodgy hacker from CSI Miami. But I also dual boot Windows on there for benchmarking and things like that, which ideally needs a graphical user interface with a monitor and a keyboard and mouse. So what’s the best solution for that?

What I first tried was running around with a separate keyboard and mouse, but that gets really junky and really annoying really quickly. So what I ended up doing was actually running a HDMI cable and a USB 3 cable up from my networking corner. I ran it all the way up into my attic, then I found where I wanted to run the cable, which was up there somewhere, and then I ran a cable all the way down, making a mess of the wall in the process. Ishow that off in another video, but it was actually kind of a fun project, to be honest.

I now have a really smart solution where some cables pop out of a little switch there, and it works really well. Well, I say it works really well… The reason, as you might have guessed, that I run a HDMI cable and a USB 3 cable from my Homelab NAS down the walls is so that I can actually use the same monitor and keyboard and mouse to control bothmy Homelab NASand my Windows machine, which I wanted to show off in this video and also talk about some of the problems I faced along the way.

Problems With KVM Switches

So firstly, I bought a hardware KVM switch, which is the standard solution when you want to use one monitor, keyboard, and mouseto control everything. But that KVM switch was a budget one, which is my own fault, of course. It didn’t support EDID emulation or anything like that. What I was finding was that while Windows was sort of working okay with that, my Homelab NAS was not. Debian just really didn’t like all the display switching, and often it just refused to give any display output. Like, I could hear the keyboard or mouse control working, but the display output just wasn’t working very well.

Plus,my Windows machineended up getting some really annoying issues where every so often it would switch down to 1080p resolution, and I could easily get it back to the 4K resolution that my monitor supports. In one case, I actually had to reinstall all the display drivers to actually get it back to a normal state, which was really annoying.Now, this was partly my fault for buying a cheap KVM switch, as I mentioned earlier. I could have bought one with EDID emulation support, and that would have made things a little bit better. But I came up with a perfect solution, or should I say, a perfectly janky solution.

Anker USB3 To The Rescue?

I’ll show it more in a minute, but basically, I have an old Anker USB 3 Hub. It’s got four ports on it and then the output as well, and I realized I can just use my monitor and my Anker USB 3 Hub, and that would probably work well.

In terms of consumerism, I’m not going to rant, but often I have the temptation to go out and buy loads of new products every time there’s a problem. Also, I think there’s a problem when actually the solution, even if it’s slightly manual and janky, is right there in front of me. So the fact thatmy monitorand my Anker Hub could do the job, I thought, “Why not?”

USB3 Extension & Cable Management

So what I ended up doing was, in addition to the USB 3 extension cable that came from my Homelab NAS, I also got a really small 2m extension cable for my workstation PC and ran that up the wall to the same sort of level as the other one. I cable managed everything, as you can see, just by putting in PVC trunking. Some people aren’t a massive fan of PVC trunking, but I actually really like it. It’s just a simple solution here. So all of my cables are going up the wall, including my USB 3 extension cable.

And this is where the perfectly janky solution comes in. When I want to switch from controlling my workstation PC to my Homelab NAS, I firstly go onto the monitor and I switch the output from HDMI 1 to HDMI 2. And then, and this is the really clever part, I take the extension cable out for my workstation PC and I plug it into my extension cable for my Homelab NAS instead. And every while, all of a sudden, my monitor output and also my keyboard, mouse, and my webcam instantly switch over to run my Debian Homelab NAS. But then, because I dual boot, I can also freely go into Windows on my Homelab NAS and do all my benchmarking there from the same keyboard and mouse.

Easier Solutions?

Yes, there are other solutions here. I know there’s loads of software likeMouse Without BordersorSynergythat allow you to share your keyboard and mouse between two computers, but they are software solutions that only work when the operating system is actually booted up. In other words, if I wanted to reboot the system on my Homelab NAS and then choose something on the GRUB bootloader or modify something in the BIOS, I wouldn’t be able to do that with any of the software-based solutions I mentioned or using something like Logitech Unifying.So yes, I have quite a janky way of actually controlling bothmy Homelab NASand my workstation PC, but I’m actually kind of happy with it because I already have the Anker USB 3 Hub. I think it cost me like £9, and then I bought an extension cable for another £5 from my workstation PC. So in total, for £14, I can easily switch the output just by taking one cable out and putting in another one.

Now, you might argue that’s a silly approach, it’s better to just have a proper KVM Hub and just click a button. But to be honest, I quite like cheap, effective solutions. Any KVM switch will have some element of bugginess, especially if you get into FreeSync or G-Sync configuration, or you’ve got a 240Hz monitor and then you find out your KVM switch doesn’t support that, for example.

So I’m kind of happy with what I have just by using the wall cables. It’s actually a much better solution. It is very janky, though, but I kind of like it. I do actually prefer the extra reliability I have from pressing three buttons on my monitor, which is Menu, Down, and then Menu again, I think it’s something like that, and then taking one cable out and putting it in with my USB. I actually prefer that to having a KVM switch.

Is This Too Janky?

But what do you think? Is my solution really janky? Could I be doing something better? Let me know down in the comments. And then up this video, I’m kind of happy that I’ve gone through all the extra effort of running USB 3 cable and HDMI cable up my walls, through my attic, because while it is a lot of extra effort, it gives me a really neat solution. There are no cables here, and I can use the same keyboard and mouse to easily control them, and then I don’t get all the bugginess of a KVM switch.

Tristan has been interested in computer hardware and software since he was 10 years old. He has built loads of computers over the years, along with installing, modifying and writing software (he’s a backend software developer ‘by trade’).Tristan also has an academic background in technology (in Math and Computer Science), so he enjoys drilling into the deeper aspects of technology.Tristan is also an avid PC gamer, with FFX and Rocket League being his favorite games.