PfSense TouchScreen
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Hello Everyone,
I've ordered all my parts, and I started to think about things. It's going to be a giant PITA if I need to work on my router, and I can't access it via ipmi. I'd have to disconnect everything, move it to my work area, power it up, and work on it. Thats way too much work for this.
My questions are;
Does pfSense have touchscreen driver support? (no biggie if it doesn't)
Would a Raspberry Pi 3 7" screen work as well?
The goal is to get a small LCD Screen to work on it. Wasn't sure if the pi 3 screen needs to have the pi3 connected to work or not.
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I don't understand, once pfsense is installed u can do very much everything on it via the network.
But OK, u insist on console mode… I can think of an old TTY screen/kbd combo via COM, or any old laptop will do, then old VGA display?
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Hmm, yeah going to need more explanation there. What are you expecting to use the screen for exactly?
Steve
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Hmm, yeah going to need more explanation there. What are you expecting to use the screen for exactly?
Steve
Hey Steve,
Thanks for the response. As a Micro-Monitor. The area where I'm putting my pfSense box is cramped, MicroATX was just a bit too big for what I'm liking. However, I couldn't find a Mini-ITX setup I liked. This was going to sit on top of my case, or close to it so I could monitor it and potentially see errors.
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If it's connected directly to the firewall you're going to display just the console output?
That would normally show almost exclusively just the console menu apart from at boot.
It is possible to redirect log output to a screen maybe.
You would not need a touch screen though because there is no mouse input.
Steve
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The pfSense console has no real use unless the network interfaces no longer work.
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You can always use a KVM over IP extender to reach out to your box from further away.
Aten, Adder, Black-Box come to mind.PS: if you have a spare Cat5e cable run you could use one of the many HDBaseT extenders as well. Lots of them send USB in the direction where video comes from.
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This also works: https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Connect-Extender-Cat5e-Ethernet/dp/B018WS7TIC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1519783573&sr=8-4&keywords=hdmi+ethernet
There was one where you could just buy the sender, and then have a python script that allows you to view the HDMI stream in VLC as a video stream. IPKVM on the cheap! Still requires a long USB cable or wireless keyboard.
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If your time is worth anything to you then forget about the el-cheapo extenders. They aren't even worth the time looking at them.
Why do people think they have to come up with an even cheaper solution than originally proposed? That's ridiculous.
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If your time is worth anything to you then forget about the el-cheapo extenders. They aren't even worth the time looking at them.
Why do people think they have to come up with an even cheaper solution than originally proposed? That's ridiculous.
It's because the expensive ones are the same but have an expensive label. Pretty much most enterprise stuff has this, twice as expensive, half as good.
What you want in this case is a frame grabber connected to a RTSP streamer, which is a 2-chip solution on a PCB the size of a gumstick.On the other hand, it's much cheaper to buy a long DVI/VGA cable, LCD display, keyboard+mouse combo. You can have that for less than 200 which is less than any 'KVM'.
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I don't know in which area you excel and get your knowledge from. We run an AV Systems Integration business for some decades now and my experiences in this area do not correlate with your post.
If you take an upper class HDBase-T extender you get 1 line (not frame!) latency at 1080p, distances up to 100m on copper, USB in reverse direction and tested in zillions of installs around the world to work rock solid 24/7/365.
When clients demand cheaper solutions we never get this reliability let alone features that work as planned. The end result pretty much always is that client pays the same - this time less on parts but more on labour.
It's always the same song: you get what you pay for.Use this transmitter: https://www.ebay.com/itm/173167089754
with this receiver: https://www.ebay.com/itm/162919249702 (even with scaler)
and you're done. Only issue we ever had were blown up 24V PSUs.PS: be aware that for the suggested components you need a dealer-locked software to configure settings other than what the device comes with (like EDID and auto switching on TX, resolution on RX, IP settings other than DHCP, … just saying.)
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I don't know in which area you excel and get your knowledge from. We run an AV Systems Integration business for some decades now and my experiences in this area do not correlate with your post.
If you take an upper class HDBase-T extender you get 1 line (not frame!) latency at 1080p, distances up to 100m on copper, USB in reverse direction and tested in zillions of installs around the world to work rock solid 24/7/365.
When clients demand cheaper solutions we never get this reliability let alone features that work as planned. The end result pretty much always is that client pays the same - this time less on parts but more on labour.
It's always the same song: you get what you pay for.Use this transmitter: https://www.ebay.com/itm/173167089754
with this receiver: https://www.ebay.com/itm/162919249702 (even with scaler)
and you're done. Only issue we ever had were blown up 24V PSUs.PS: be aware that for the suggested components you need a dealer-locked software to configure settings other than what the device comes with (like EDID and auto switching on TX, resolution on RX, IP settings other than DHCP, … just saying.)
This is about a cheap home-use "oops I didn't get IPMI/iKVM on my mobo" setup, not about some AV or narrowcasting stuff. Sure, you probably will have a bad time if you try to use a substandard HDMI frame grabber with MPEG encoder connected to an RTSP streamer that either does real RTSP or does bare ethernet frames, but if you are just lazy and want a hacker solution there isn't much use in getting an actual iKVM (i.e. a whole avocent setup), or even a USB or PCI(e) frame grabber, it's too expensive and completely misses the point.
This is the stuff I'm talking about: https://blog.danman.eu/new-version-of-lenkeng-hdmi-over-ip-extender-lkv373a/
Extremely fun, but not really something you'd use for.. anything. -
If $65 spent on eBay are too much then I don't know.
A capable 20m HDMI cable will cost more.But then again, I dislike the "I can do it cheaper" attitude.
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I was looking for this as an option in case my pfsense box goes down, I can still access it without having to move it. The motherboard I'm buying has IPMI but if the pfsense box goes down, don't I lose all routing capabilities, unless that's all handled by the switch. If that's the case, I shouldn't need to worry… right?
What I'm trying to avoid is having to move the box to a tv/monitor, or move a monitor to it everytime something happens. I may purchase a 15" monitor, and leave it on my wall but I'd prefer to NOT put any holes in my apartment walls. Land Lords aren't very nice towards that sort've thing.
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"everytime something happens."
What 5 years down the road? How often do you think something is going to go wrong with your pfsense install? Unless you have shitty power… And your hardware is sound it will just run and run and run.. The problem with this is people forget to upgrade it ;)
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Hmm… I was hoping to make it a bit harder than that, and more custom but that'll do for now. I need the 3D Printer before I do anything more. And study up on electrical engineering. My pfSense box won't be online until April :( Stupid bills :(
Thanks for all the responses guys. I really appreciate it. Your responses have sparked some crazy ideas in my head. I'll be writing them down in my "Stuff to do to my own House" book. :)
