inputexec VS display-switch

I recently put something together similar to this, to switch between my personal PopOS/Windows machine and my work Macbook Pro.

I used one of these manual USB switchers, (https://sabrent.com/products/usb-sw30), and connected it's switch to a Raspberry Pi 4B via GPIO (4B is overkill by wanted hardwired network). There's a small separate keyboard (which will later be a macro keypad of some sort), connected to the Pi. Using inputexec (https://github.com/rbarrois/inputexec) to detect keypresses and then firing off a specific script to send a network request to the LG TV I use as a monitor to switch the source, and then set the GPIO connected to the USB switcher to high or low to switch the keyboard/mouse to the other machine.

I can also turn on/off the TV using the same WebOS API (and Wake-on-lan) as used during the source switch. A Kasa smart outlet also gets toggled to turn on/off a BenQ ScreenBar Halo (https://www.benq.com/en-us/lighting/monitor-light.html).

So with 4 different keypresses, I can switch to Work, to Personal, turn off monitor and light, and turn on monitor and light.

I’ve been using display-switch[0] for this for a while now. No problems whatsoever. Works on windows/mac/linux.

[0] https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch

Now it just need to be combined with something like https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch to do a DDC/CI monitor input switch as the USB activity moves around.

With a device like this you'd be missing the on_usb_connect event, but presumably you could do something (a special HID device button, an extra device id appearing, who knows) to make it work.

The best option I've found is to hook both computers up to a USB-only KVM, and plug them in via separate video cables to the monitor. Then set up the computers to tell the monitor to change inputs (via DDC commands, which most but not all monitors support) when you change devices on the KVM

There's software to help do this automatically (https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch)

Cynical footnote: PC users can continue to enjoy https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch while Mac users need to buy a 300 USD device. That's the Mac experience for you :D

There's a workaround in https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch now for M1 Macs. In general, you made your bed by buying a Mac, sleep in it.

Oops I missed that https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch

Then we will run https://github.com/haimgel/display-switch to have the monitors switch inputs when you use the USB switch.