AIO Ep15. 100 RMB Low-Cost PiKVM (IPKVM / Out-of-Band Management) Solution

Out-of-band management solutions for servers (like IPMI, iDRAC, iLO5) don’t get much attention on a daily basis, but they can save you a ton of trouble when you accidentally mess up a remote server—especially when you’re away from home.

However, server motherboards come with many drawbacks: disabled integrated graphics, high prices and scarcity, high standby power consumption, and often requiring additional licenses.

The most well-known DIY remote management solution is PiKVM, but a full official kit costs over 1000 RMB…

After some research and experimentation, I’ve finally found a practical and budget-friendly alternative:

• Phicomm N1 TV box (now back down to around 70 RMB on Xianyu; if there’s a newer, cheaper box or dev board in the future, that could work too—just make sure it supports OTG and has two USB ports)

• MS2109 capture card (most ~30 RMB USB 2.0 capture cards on Taobao use this chip)

  p.s. Go for one with a short USB cable instead of the direct plug-in type shown below—it might block the neighboring USB port

  Wrong capture card example

• USB double-male cable (around 10 RMB on Taobao)

Installation Steps

1. Flash the N1 with Armbian’s Ubuntu 22.04 (the main advantage of the N1 is its large availability and mature firmware ecosystem—most common issues have already been solved)
2. Follow this article to modify the dtb and enable OTG mode
3. Install the fruity-pikvm project as per the README, and apply the MSD Patch as instructed
4. Further configure settings according to the official PiKVM documentation
5. Connect the capture card, HDMI, the double-male USB cable, Ethernet, and power
6. Done!

Final Result

You’ll get the three core features: emulated keyboard and mouse input, HDMI video capture, and ISO upload (emulated as a virtual CD-ROM). Video capture runs at 1080p@30fps with acceptable latency. It doesn’t support ATX power control, but for most use cases, this setup is more than sufficient.

Remote management web interface

Hardware setup—note that the capture card casing was removed because the enclosure blocked a USB port

Side Note

I haven’t measured the N1’s power draw myself, but from online sources, it’s estimated to be around 2–3W. The MS2109 capture card consumes about 1W—so leaving it on 24/7 won’t cost much electricity. If you’re concerned about security, you can just ask someone at home to unplug the N1 when it’s not in use, and plug it back in when needed. And hey, flipping the ATX power switch manually isn’t exactly hard either 😂