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I have 2 Xserves and 2 iMacs. I would like to control them with 1 Apple wireless keyboard and one Apple Magic Mouse.

I have seen a device from IOGear a Bluetooth 2.1 USB Micro Adapter, which made me wonder if something like the following could work:

Overview

To do this I would need two 1 x 4 passive usb hubs with some kind of electronic or mechanical switch. Then, plugging the bluetooth to usb adapters into each such device I could pair the keyboard or mouse with the respective bluetooth to usb adapter.

Do any such switchable usb hubs exist? Could I use anything else? Since I can readily share the displays of my iMacs via a mini dvi connection to the XServes I don't really need a full blown KVM device.

I saw a post on this site that recommended Synergy to do something like this, but as I don't have dedicated monitors for the servers, it does not look like a good solution for me.

Any other solutions welcome.

Thanks in advance.

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  • 2
    Is ARD not an option?
    – Digitalchild
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 5:32
  • You should be able to do this with only one USB bluetooth adapter and USB switch
    – MrDaniel
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 16:56

2 Answers 2

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Actually, it looks like this may work, as noted here Share your Magic Mouse between 2 Macs. This should be able to be extended to where both the keyboard and the mouse are Bluetooth and replacing the KVM with a USB switch.

For the setup we used the following hardware:

  • 1 mac mini (running 24/7 as a home server)
  • 1 Mac Pro (it’s a hackintosh inside a Mac Pro case)
  • 1 Apple USB Keyboard and 1 dual-link DVI Monitor
  • 1 Apple Magic Mouse (Bluetooth)
  • 1 Belkin Flip KVM Switch (DVI-D 2-Port)
  • 1 small Bluetooth 2.0 USB dongle
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I use a combination of synergy for my laptop (macbook pro), and workstation (ubuntu linux). To get to my servers (some freebsd, some linux) I use just SSH, but if I need an X session I can export it over ssh. As Lyken mentions, ARD is the way to go. VNC is more crossplatform, but since you're running all Macs, its a piece of piss to get working.

Synergy would be worth a go with your two iMacs.

With that setup, you won't need any extra hardware, just a working network.

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  • Do you experience any latency when using ARD or Synergy?
    – Jagra
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 13:03
  • For Synergy, not at all. VNC/ARD, some but its exporting a whole screen, so it has to round trip with the image. Synergy is only sending mouse/keyb movements.
    – gmoney
    Commented Mar 1, 2012 at 19:52

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