A sneak peek at JetKVM OS Services
An OS service for the machine your JetKVM is plugged into. Video up to 4K, a shared clipboard, a guest terminal, and file transfer. Out in the next few weeks.
Today we want to give you a sneak peek at something we have been working on for a while: JetKVM OS Services. It is a small OS service that runs on the machine your JetKVM is plugged into. You do not need it: a JetKVM works without any software on the other side. With it, your JetKVM can do things the hardware alone cannot.
It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, will work with every JetKVM, including the upcoming JetKVM Mini, and comes out in the next few weeks.
What it adds
The first release covers the four things people ask a KVM for most. None of them are possible with our hardware alone: sharper video, a shared clipboard, a guest terminal, and a way to move files.
Sharper video, up to 4K
The service captures and encodes the screen on the target computer, so video is no longer limited by the hardware spec and goes up to 4K at 60 fps.
Clipboard, both ways
Today, the only way into the target computer is the USB keyboard. Pasting means the JetKVM types the text out for you, one keystroke at a time, which is slow and breaks on anything unusual. Getting text back out means OCR on the video. The service replaces both with two actions.
Guest terminal
The guest terminal opens a shell on the target computer inside the JetKVM interface.
File transfer
Drop a file in the browser and it is copied to the target computer over the USB cable.
How it works
Today the video goes from the target computer to the JetKVM over the video cable, where the JetKVM captures it at up to 1080p, encodes it, and sends it to your browser over WebRTC.
OS Services adds a second path. The service captures the screen on the target computer, encodes it there, and sends it to the JetKVM over the USB cable, and the JetKVM forwards the frames into the WebRTC stream to your browser. Any codec your browser supports over WebRTC works, including H.264, H.265, and AV1.
The JetKVM switches between the two. While the service is sending video, that is what the browser sees. When it stops, the JetKVM goes back to hardware capture without dropping the session. See in action.
The USB cable is the only connection the service uses. Video, clipboard, terminal, and files go to the KVM over it. Even OS Services updates come back the same way, so the target computer does not need a network of its own.
An open protocol
We kept the service and the protocol vendor-neutral. They are IP-KVM OS Services and the IP-KVM OS Services Protocol, and they will live under a neutral home, so any KVM can adopt them without carrying our name. The protocol, the service, and a reference implementation come out together, all open source.
The spec covers the whole exchange: how the service and a KVM pair, how video, clipboard, terminal, file transfer, and updates share one link, and when the KVM lets the service's video replace hardware capture.
What happens next
The service, the protocol, and the firmware update land in the next few weeks, and there is nothing to buy. Until then, join Discord and tell us what you want from it.
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