Vehicular LCD for Server Monitoring

Pete writes "The guys over at Extreme Overclocking have show how to put a car LCD inside a computer. The article shows how to install VNC remote computing software onto the server, how to manage the server from another computer, and how to use the color LCD to manage the server locally. They also included a video at the end which shows the setup process, and the LCD in action."

Comments

What is the point?

[Moderation abuser]

"If you are running a server and do not want to waste money on buying a monitor that you will only use probably once a week then you will definitely see the value here."

Yeah, $60 for a 15" CRT vs $130 for 12" LCD screen.

That statement certainly makes sense.

Re:What is the point?

[fubar1971]

Actually I would like something like this because of space restraints. All of my servers are crammed into a small corner of a small room. I do my best to keep it need and tidy, but I have to hook up a 15 inch monitor to a KVM switch. Even with the best cable managment system, it is a nightmare of KVM cables. If I could have these screens in the servers, then I could eliminate the cables, KVM switch, and monitor making a cleaner work environment. Not to mention by removing the monitor, KVM, and cables Now I have enough room to add another server. Right now I would have to start a second area of servers. Don't get me wrong I would love a new spcae that was large enough to house all of my servers and have room for expansion, but in these trying economic times the money to properly renovate a new space is non-existient. Remeber, by saving space you can save money.

Of weather and viewing angle..

[stephenisu]

With an operating temperature of 32 - 104 degrees Farenheit, make sure you park your car in the garage. Furthermore the viewing angle it 10 degrees from the top and 30 from the bottom. Mounting it upside down and running the signal appropriately might be a good idea.

Nice 'proof of concept' BUT

[Lysol]

- this does not scale well for > 1 server.

- only works if you have some sort of ATX type case

- with any sort of non-gui mgmt tools, this becomes irrelavent

that said, it's a neat idea for a web page article, but this would never fly for the typical mgmt of servers that i've seen. and, i prefer non-gui tools because gui tools tend to slow and a pain in the ass to deal with.

For servers?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

From the article:

If you are running a server and do not want to waste money on buying a monitor that you will only use probably once a week then you will definitely see the value here. If it's coolness factor you're looking for, then by all means go ahead and install the 5-inch LCD. But if it's "value" that you're looking for, as the article suggests, there are cheaper ways of doing it.

Headless comes to mind, of course. Nearly all new server hardware supports keyboardless/displayless operation. Or you can do "nearly headless" -- do a serial console. Again, nearly all new server hardware supports running the BIOS/POST to a serial port, and Linux supports a serial console with no trouble at all.

Of course, if you're running a Windows server, then you'd better just pony up the $100-300 for a real monitor (or in a large multi-server environment, a big KVM switch) because you're going to be spending a lot of time sitting at the console fixing broken Microsoft crap.

And before you mod me down as a zealot, please know that this is based on my experience at a mid-size managed hosting facility. Our sysadmins are constantly babysitting the Windows boxen, so we have to dedicate expensive KVM ports to each one. Linux just runs and runs without ever having a problem that requires console access, so we go serial, and we hook them up with really inexpensive used terminal servers.

Re:For servers?

[bergeron76]

It's not exactly cheap, but the PCWeasel 2000 will let you even see your PC's BIOS (and allow you to get into it) over serial, so you can run almost completely headless over serial. There's a cool demo of it over there as well.

When in Japan...

[NiteHaqr]

or to be more exact Osaka 2 (count em 1,2) years ago I had a look round various tech-shops and PC parts places (drooling all the way), I saw just this, or something similar in an "non-modded" part.

Basically it was a 800x600 LCD that slotted into a 5.25" bay.

How it connected to the PC I dont know, but I expect some kind of loop-back cable.

This is old news....

LAN party?

[milosoftware]

I don't mind dragging my 15 kg desktop to a LAN party, but I do mind carrying my 24 kg Iiyama around, i'm afraid i'll drop and break it.

But the screen is a bit small for my taste. How about recycling an old laptops TFT screen? I have a defunct laptop with a perfectly good working TFT screen. I'd love to stick its display to the case with doublesided tape. But I have no idea how to wire it, or what kind of video card I could use for this. Any comments/links on that?

Jumpers and tanktops

[Moderation abuser]

I noticed that the Windows admins tended to wear jumpers and tanktops round the office. The Unix guys all just wear t-shirts.

The air conditioning in the machine rooms is brutal.

Re:Bad idea

[Kadagan AU]

He never claimed that this was a business solution. Everyone's talking about how he could never use this to manage multitudes of servers, and that's very true, but he never said he wanted to use it for managing any servers at all. He was using this so he can monitor CPU/Mem loads from his recliner across the room. If you read the article, and looked at the images, all his screen shots showed the WinXP System Monitor app in the task manager. It shows with, simple bar and line graphs, how much load the system has. He put VNC on to actually manage the beast.

Read the article!

~Jon~

P.S. I'm not saying that I agree with him running WinXP on a "server" though ;-)