I have 2 dell ultra-sharp monitors, a laptop and a pc:
since the monitor has a build-in USB hub, I have all my peripherals connect to it. my laptop has a USB-c port and since the monitor supports USB-c as well, to bring my laptop onboard I just need one USB-c cable between the laptop and monitor1. the trouble comes when switching to the PC, its video output is coming from NVIDIA graphics card, so besides the DP cable between monitor1 and the PC I still need an extra step to deal with the keyboard and mouse
what I've been doing is whenever I need to switch to the PC, I unplug usb-c from my laptop and hook it to my PC, which is equivalent of redirect keyboard and mouse
Question regarding a better solution
- buy a USB sharing switch, I think its will 100% work, but it basically forgo my monitors' own USB hub AND it will add a lot more wires to my desk
- buy an USB-c hub, like this, 90% confident, keyboard and mouse will be connected to both computers at all time, not sure if the monitor is smart enough to know which computer to send the peripheral signals when both of them are turned on
- buy a USB adapter, something like USB-c <==> DP+USB+... have the PC connect its USB and display to the adapter so that there's only 1 USB-c reaching out from monitor1, it either connects to laptop or the adapter
If it were to me, I think the peripherals already communicates with the PC through bidirectional display port, not sure why can't the graphics card pass these data to mother board through PCI
2 Answers
I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish here but it sounds like you need a KVM switch. That is it switches keyboard, video, and mouse. I have used KVM switches from StarTech. They work, I can't say much more than that since I don't have any recent experience with any other brand. I'm not paid to endorse them, I just know that they exist, they work, and seem to run about the same price as anything comparable elsewhere.
Some monitors have a built-in KVM switch, and you may in fact be using some of this feature already with what you are doing. You stated the monitor is a Dell Ultrasharp with USB-C. This sounds like the kind of monitor that has a built-in KVM, like this one:
There's software solutions that can help too, a virtual KVM in a way. There's far too many to list and without knowing what operating systems you are running on these computers any suggestions I make might not apply. Search for the words "software KVM" with your favorite web search engine for some ideas if this is something you might want to consider. Be aware that there is another kind of KVM that will add some "noise" to your result, kernel-based virtual machine. That's not the kind of KVM I'm talking about. I've used VNC and RDP as a kind of virtual KVM. They work but have some limitations that a hardware KVM will not have. One being speed. The video of the remote machine will be running through the network instead of driving the display directly. If you have two monitors at high resolutions, and a slow network between the computers, then the lag can become annoying very quickly.
A hardware KVM switch will likely cost 3 or 4 times as much as the USB switch you linked to, assuming they allow daisy-chaining the displays like you have now. If that doesn't work then you'll need a dual display KVM which is more expensive. Personally I'd think it is worth it and I plan on getting a KVM for a similar layout like yours.
Having USB-C on one computer and not the other complicates things. There are USB-C compatible KVM switches but they only really work as intended if both computers have USB-C w/DP. Like this one as an example:
You mention using a USB-C dock to take the video and USB from the PC and connect the USB-C port to the monitor. Those docks don't work like that. They won't combine DP and USB into USB-C, they take USB-C and split that out into DP and USB. Maybe there is such a device but I haven't seen one yet. To switch video and USB together will take a KVM switch.
Perhaps the best, or only, way to get a USB-C w/ DP port on the PC is a new video card. Here's an example: Again, not an endorsement, I haven't used the product and I know nothing about it that isn't in that article. I do see that these video cards are not cheap. This is not the path to a cheap solution to your problem. I mention it as a means to get USB-C w/DP on a desktop computer since you mention that as an option. $90 for a dock won't get you there, it's going to cost more like $900 for a video card.
I hope this helps. I know you asked about a USB switch and I went on something of a tangent with KVM switches but I believe this is what will do what you are looking to do.
4- KVM == simulates unplugging/replugging the monitors
- The below app == simulates pressing the buttons on the monitor to change input source
The downside of a KVM with multiple monitors is that it's going to reset the positions of your windows every time you switch which computer is active. One way to get around that is to simply connect both computers directly to each monitor with a different cable type. You can then change the input source via the monitor buttons.
Changing monitor input source manually is inconvenient, so I wrote a little app that will do it automatically via a keyboard shortcut and DDC commands. It is just something quick I wrote for myself and have been using for a couple years now. Feel free to use it, enhance it, etc for your needs.
I pair it with Mouse Without Borders(MWB) so that I press a keystroke and it switches the monitors and then it simulates the shortcut for MWB to switch the kb/mouse at the same time. When you press the shortcut to switch back to the primary machine it will adjust the monitor inputs and then send a UDP packet over to the primary to tell MWB to switch back to local.
It's far from anything fancy since i just made it for myself, but I couldn't find any professional solutions that matched the capabilities so I figured i'd share for others. One big bonus is that both the source code i provided and the MWB app are entirely free. Enjoy.
----- basic setup instructions ------
Both this app and MWB will need to be installed on each workstation. You'll want to make the configurations of both apps be the same on each workstation as well. The only exception being the PhysicalKeyboardAttachedToThisComputer flag, which should be obvious how to set up.
Setting up the monitor input configs may take some experimentation to learn which monitor is 1,2,3 etc. If you use the same cable type for each monitor then your life will be a bit easier, but that's certainly not necessary. Just do some trial/error if you're unsure and you'll eventually get the combo that works for your environment. Just be sure to restart the app between config changes. You can quickly kill the app by double-clicking the system tray icon.
I set it up so that I press CTRL+ALT+2 to switch to machine2 and CTRL+ALT+1 to switch back to machine one. I then have MWB configured to switch via the CTRL+ALT+F1 / F2 option. The monitor switch app will then handled doing those F1 keystrokes to tell MWB to switch as needed.
