If you asked us to build you a KVM last week, we’d likely have reached for a Raspberry Pi. Now, thanks to [JonathanRowny], we’d seriously consider an ESP32-P4, because his IP KVM seems pretty capable.

He’s using the P4 hardware to its fullest, getting the supported 1080p graphics, and doing so in an interesting way– he’s got a commercial adapter board to try and translate HDMI signals to the camera input on his dev board. Conveniently enough, it’s the same ribbon-cable pinout as the RPi, which is not guaranteed by the CSI standard. Writing a driver to take that signal proved the hardest part– aside from the usual chip revision confusion that plagues this chip– and we can’t help but wonder if the client on the other side of the KVM-IP link might have an easier time doing the image processing that was required for a good image. Regardless, he’s got the code as it is now up on GitHub under the Apache license. 

As of this this writing, there’s no audio, and ironically for an ESP32 project networking is wired-only– but much more importantly, there is no security. So it’s a work in progress, but great to see the P4 in the wild doing something other than emulation. Not that we haven’t seen the P4 at work before–the Tanmatsu handheld also makes use of Expressif’s most powerful chip for a handy little terminal. Between the KVM and the handhelds, we cannot help but wonder how many of the projects that were once the provenance of a Pi will get squeezed into these overpowered microcontrollers. Sure, they can’t even match the original Pi in horsepower, never mind a modern Pi5, but how many times have you seen a Linux SBC seriously under-taxed in a project like this?

If you’re swapping Pi for P4– or doing anything else interesting– please let us know on the tips line.

如果上周你让我们帮你造一个KVM，我们很可能会用树莓派。而现在，多亏了[JonathanRowny]，我们会认真考虑ESP32-P4，因为他的IP KVM看起来相当强大。

他充分利用了P4硬件，实现了支持的1080p图形，并且用一种有趣的方式做到这一点——他使用了一个商用适配板，试图将HDMI信号转换到开发板上的摄像头输入。方便的是，它的排线引脚与RPi相同，而CSI标准并不保证这一点。编写驱动程序来获取这个信号被证明是最难的部分——除了困扰这款芯片的常见芯片版本混淆问题——我们不禁好奇，KVM-IP链路另一端的客户端是否更容易处理获得良好图像所需的图像处理。不管怎样，他现在已经把代码上传到GitHub上，采用Apache许可证。

截至本文撰写时，还没有音频，而且对于一个ESP32项目来说，讽刺的是网络仅支持有线连接——但更重要的是，没有安全措施。所以这还是一个进行中的项目，但很高兴看到P4在现实世界中做除了模拟之外的其他事情。并不是说我们以前没见过P4工作——Tanmatsu手持终端也使用了Expressif最强大的芯片来打造一个便捷的小型终端。在KVM和手持设备之间，我们不禁想知道，有多少曾经属于树莓派的项目会被塞进这些性能过强的微控制器中。当然，它们的性能甚至比不上最初的树莓派，更不用说现代的Pi5了，但你在这样的项目中见过几次Linux单板计算机被严重低负荷使用？

如果你正在用P4替换Pi——或者在做其他有趣的事情——请通过提示线告诉我们。