Post #1769705

2026-04-28 13:21 UTC

Last year, I moved all of my personal stuff to a mini PC, which has been working really well for the most part. It has no monitor. On the few occasions I&#39;ve needed sighted help, I just connected via VNC from a laptop with a screen. But I needed to change a BIOS setting, so VNC wasn&#39;t an option and I didn&#39;t want to cart it somewhere else to connect it to a TV or whatever. It turns out that contrary to my expectations, USB HDMI video capture devices are quite cheap these days (AUD$30ish). So I bought one and connected it to a laptop. The video capture device shows up like a camera. Once I was streaming the video from that, I was able to use Be My Eyes desktop to repeatedly take screenshots. OCR worked too, but it doesn&#39;t provide sufficient info to tell which option is selected. Direct streaming meant I didn&#39;t have to worry about positioning a camera, etc. With some prompting, Be My Eyes was able to give me enough information to tell me which option I had selected, what it was set to, how to get to the option I needed with the arrow keys, etc. Doing it this way was definitely kinda tedious, but it&#39;s nevertheless pretty awesome that I could do this without sighted help and without having to faf about with a camera.

Replies (11)

@Scott@tweesecake.social 2026-04-28 13:23

@jcsteh@aus.social BIOSMan, Batman's nerdy Australian cousin.

Open ##3203063
@mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe 2026-04-28 13:27

@jcsteh@aus.social Mind if I ask you some questions about your setup? I'm also aiming to go screenless with a linux SBC I got.

Open ##3203064
@dhamlinmusic@dragonscave.space 2026-04-28 13:33

@jcsteh@aus.social ah see I have a 7in monitor that I keep stashed away for whenever I need someone to assist in dealing with the BIOS.

Open ##3203069
@seedy60@vee.seedy.cc 2026-04-28 14:38

@jcsteh@aus.social What VNC client do you use?

Open ##3203070
@robin@kipp.social 2026-04-28 15:02

@jcsteh@aus.social Last year I did something similar with a Minisforum mini PC and its HDMI output connected to my Windows desktop using an Elgato capture card. Except I then used OBS Studio's full screen projector so it was showing the HDMI video stream, which I then passed along to Gemini using the Google AI Studio website and the screen sharing option found there. Combined with the voice chat feature, this meant I was actually able to talk to the AI which also had access to the video stream, enabling me to ask Gemini what was currently visible, how to navigate to a certain option using arrow keys, whether it was currently on or off, etc. It was still kinda slow but ended up working incredibly well, once it was going it honestly was pretty mindblowing stuff.

Open ##3203071
@techsinger@tweesecake.social 2026-04-28 15:07

@jcsteh@aus.social This does work fairly well, and I absolutely agree with you, it's slow but usable. I generally do it with the NVDA add-ons rather than with BME https://superuser.com/questions/1744688/how-can-i-view-the-video-coming-in-from-a-capture-card-on-windows-in-full-screen allows you to hook your capture card up to a browser if it appears to Windows as a camera. The video is shown in the browser window. The problem, both with BME and the add-ons, is hallucination. It actually doesn't happen terribly often but it does happen. If you'd like to avoid it, and have someone remote, you can actually use VNC. Just have the video appear in the window, and have the guy on the other end VNC into the laptop. You can then have the other side tell you what are currently selected and what to do to select the options you want. Alternatively, and this is more expensive though easier, you might like to try https://modularkvmip.com/ or https://www.pikvm.org/ I only use these because I had them for other purposes. As I said, it's more expensive and I don't see the point just for UEFI. @jonathan859@someplace.social

Open ##3203073
@SteveSawczyn@mspsocial.net 2026-04-28 18:17

@jcsteh@aus.social I haven't tried this exact setup, but in general, I've had a really hard time getting AI to reliably identify which option is selected. Sometimes it works, most times it just seems to choose an option whether it's highlighted or not. Curious how you prompted the selection bit?

Open ##3203076
@SapphireRose91@tweesecake.social 2026-04-28 19:55

@jcsteh@aus.social You are like the borg. You adapted.

Open ##3203078
@emassey0135@caneandable.social 2026-04-28 21:03

@jcsteh@aus.social @DavidGoldfield@allovertheplace.ca I did the exact same thing with my Geekom A9 Max mini PC, an HDMI capture card, and Be My Eyes on my laptop. Although instead of taking screenshots, I took pictures with the Windows Camera app, and I kept the folder where the pictures went open in File Explorer. Then each time I opened each picture in Be My Eyes from the context menu. It was able to tell me which option was selected as well as read the options. Before I got the mini PC, I used to use Seeing AI on my phone to scan the laptop screen. I was able to tell which option was selected by the description of the current option which always appeared on the right side of the screen.

Open ##3203079
@akash07k@mastodon.social 2026-04-29 06:59

@jcsteh@aus.social The solution which I was talking about in previous post's reply is a fully featured AI based agent which helps in realtime with all this. However, My plan is to develop a companion mobile app where we can directly plug the HDMI capture card and start fiddling around with BIOS even without relying on another computer

Open ##3203080
@itmike@fikaverse.club 2026-05-02 22:47

@jcsteh@aus.social did you look 👀 into pikvm?

Open ##3203081