Valid concern. My PETG bracket has a 40mm Noctua, but it's on the buck converter, not the Pi. The Pi itself is in a passive aluminum case, thermally taped to the bracket. Heat sinks into the rack metal.
Overengineered? Yes. Silent? Also yes.
This thread convinced me. Ordered Pi Zero 2 W, HDMI-CSI bridge, and a cheap buck converter. Total 58 EUR with shipping to Tallinn. Will print Carl's bracket when STL is posted.
My third method remains "call the guy who owns the building and hope he answers." Not great. Need to think about that.
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I have been that guy. Neighbor colo customer called me at 3am because his IPMI died and he knew I had a key. I was nice about it once. Second time, I gave him the number for a local tech who charges 150 EUR/hour night rate.
Build the PiKVM. Don't be the guy who calls.
I was the guy who drives. 40 minutes each way, at night, for a reset button. Never again.
STL request still open, Carl. Also: what buck converter? Meanwell? Recom? There are a lot of cheap ones that ripple badly and crash the Pi under load.
Recom R-78E5.0-0.5, 12V to 5V, 500mA. Overkill for 2.5W but stable. Costs 4 EUR. I have seen cheap LM2596 modules drop to 4.2V under WiFi load, causing SD card corruption.
The Pi Zero 2 W is sensitive to voltage. Don't cheap out here.
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Recom is good. I use Traco TSR 1-2450 for similar reasons. Pin-compatible, same footprint, slightly more expensive but available in Moscow through official distributor. Recom was out of stock for months during 2022.
Both better than any adjustable module with a blue potentiometer.
I found Recom at TME.eu, ships to Poland in 3 days. 3.50 EUR. Ordering two, one for spare. This thread is expensive.
Still cheaper than one train ticket to Warsaw.
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I ordered nothing and learned everything
This is the free tier of homelab
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Polish humor. I appreciate this.
Serious note: has anyone used PiKVM with ARM servers? I have a Honeycomb LX2 at home, no x86 BIOS, different boot flow. Wondering if PiKVM captures the UEFI shell correctly or if there are timing issues.
PiKVM doesn't care what architecture the host is. It captures HDMI, sends keyboard/mouse via OTG. The host could be RISC-V, MIPS, whatever. The PiKVM is just a remote pair of eyes and hands.
UEFI vs BIOS vs U-Boot, all the same to it. Timing issues would be in the HDMI source, not the capture.
