[GRLUG] what's the opposite of a KVM?

[john-thomas richards]

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 01:41:11PM -0500, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 1:17 PM, john-thomas richards <jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
> > I'm looking for a piece of hardware that is kind of like a KVM but more
> > of its opposite.  Whereas a KVM enables one keyboard, monitor, and mouse
> > to control multiple boxes, I want to be able to flip a switch that moves
> > control of my laptop on my desk to a keyboard, monitor, and mouse on my
> > table in my office.  Any ideas?  I've tried googling for this multiple
> > ways but my searches keep ending up with KVMs.
> 
> With the exception of the display, it's easy enough to accomplish by
> just plugging in a second keyboard and mouse. That's what I have going
> on in my home-theater setup at home.
> 
> As for the display, I have each display show up as a different screen.
> (The TV is at :0.1, the desk is :0.0)  If you enable xinerama, both
> displays become part of :0.0, which has conveniences as far as
> dragging windows around. (I don't use it that way, though, because it
> breaks vdpau, which I need for hardware-accelerated h264 decoding.)

I use my laptop on my desk.  I have an external monitor plugged into it.
If I didn't, I could easily run a wireless mouse and keyboard on the
table with an external monitor on the desk.  It's trivial to have both
monitors (the laptop display and the external) be the same desktop.
Perhaps some sort of video splitter is all I need.  When I want to work
from the desk I could plug in the keyboard and mouse transmitters and
flip the video splitter.
-- 
john-thomas
------
I hold that gentleman to be the best dress whose dress no one observes.
Anthony Trollope, novelist (1815-1882)