BomeBox and Bome Network Pro: USB Peripheral Switching Possible?

Bome Products
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1

Hi All.

I’ve been out of the game for a long while, finally re-entering and powering up my BOME boxes again.

I’ve been trying so solve an issue, and realized BomeBox might have what it takes, but I don’t see any forum posts regarding this.

Can the BOME system be used to connect remote USB peripherals (keyboard and mouse/trackpad) to a PC/MAC in a rack?

I’ve got two Mac Minis installed in a caster rack, and two displays: One on my wall at home and another on a tablet at the keyboard stand of my band. These are connected through a KVM switcher in the rack. I’d like to use Bome product to send the USB peripheral controller stream from the BOMEBox at the keyboard station to the KVM switch, and thus to the selected Mac Mini. Is this possible?

2

In general, no. However if you also have a licenses copy of MT Pro you could:

  1. Use an MT Pro project on BomeBox to convert QUERTY keyboard to MIDI.
  2. Send the MIDI over to your computer.
  3. Use an MT Pro project on the computer to convert MIDI back to keystrokes for the local machine.

Or you could look into Synergy which is a software based KVM switch that uses the local area network to control mouse and keyboard functions. I’ve been using this for years with my computers. It is a little difficult setting it up but works pretty well once it is set up.

Synergy, however will not work with BomeBox so the original solution above would have to be applied if you want to use BomeBox to attach your keyboard.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
3

Thanks Steve!

I think the Bome MT would fall short when it comes to trackpad gestures and key commands, no? At least without a lot of tweaking.

I’ve never used software KVM. My big concerns would be latency and resolution/frame rate. Using VLC was a big pain for those reasons. That said, I’ll look into it.

4

Yes Bome MIDI Translator will be able to handle keystroke to MIDI mapping and visa versa but not mouse/trackpad.

I have version 1 of Synergy which works really well. I hear version 2 was a flop and now they are on version 3. I just haven’t moved to it because version 1 is working fine for me and if it isn’t broken, I don’t want to do anything more. I hear version 3 has more features however, so maybe I will check it out in the future.

Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care

Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz