USB A to Serial Cable
Is there a possibility to add (From TinyPilot) USB A to USB (or RJ 45) console serial cable support?
This way the TinyPilot could connect to serial-based devices and provide an out of band function?
This could include a USB to RS232 FTDI chip support.
- CCharles Hague @cghague2022-12-02 00:29:29.282Z
Hi Brian - thanks for reaching out to us with your suggestion!
This is an interesting idea that I don't think has come up before. Could you please describe how you think this might work in a bit more detail? For example, would you imagine a serial console being displayed on the TinyPilot web interface alongside the existing video feed or would you instead expect the TinyPilot device to offer some kind of serial forwarding?
Not Brian, but I came across this post when I was comparing tinypilot to pikvm...
Use case would be to manage the very switch that is providing the PoE (one of the other reasons I am looking at tinypilot). Managing servers via KVM is great, but frequently I have a need to manage a network switch or some other device that only supports a serial connection that is out of band. I normally have to drag a laptop over plug something like this in:
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Serial-Adapter-RS232/dp/B00J4N9T9C?th=1
and run the native serial port commands to configure the speed, etc:
$linux_shell: screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600
If you guys exposed serial commands (I assume you run linux under the covers) you could also use tinypilot to support pretty much anything that takes a serial port as well after pluggin in pretty much any cheapo generic usb to serial adapter like the one above.
- CCharles Hague @cghague2022-12-08 15:22:02.050Z
Thanks for the detailed response @jpriddy! The examples you provided are interesting potential use-cases. I can certainly see how this would be a good feature to add. I've shared the suggestion with the team.
TinyPilot does indeed use Linux as the base operating system - specifically a version of Raspberry Pi OS which itself is a derivative of Debian.
We've not tested this but if you're comfortable working on the command line you might be able to use a compatible USB-A to serial adapter by accessing your TinyPilot device over an SSH connection.