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I have a unused laptop (Win7 64bit) with broken USB port, so I cannot plug any USB device in it. But the laptop itself is good enough to play indie games or any games from last gen.

Is it possible to plug in mouse/keyboard/joystick to my raspberry Pi and use it to control the laptop?

tickwave
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  • Related (if not dupe): http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/271/can-i-use-raspberry-pi-as-a-usb-peripheral-device and http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/32197/can-the-pi-emulate-an-hid-device-with-via-usb/32199#32199 – Ghanima Mar 12 '16 at 14:13
  • And https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/32197/can-the-pi-emulate-an-hid-device-with-via-usb – SDsolar May 19 '17 at 09:29

4 Answers4

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The Raspberry Pi Zero will do a great job of it.

The Zero can be any kind of HID. Keyboard, mouse, flash drive, camera, whatever you can think of.

Turning your Raspberry PI Zero into a USB Gadget

There are a lot of decisions to make it the device you want. There is a world f information behind this link.

Enjoy!

SDsolar
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  • See this one: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/32197/can-the-pi-emulate-an-hid-device-with-via-usb/67275 – SDsolar May 19 '17 at 07:34
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I use a program called VirtualHere and it's working like a charm.

tickwave
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  • Care to flesh out this answer, please? – SDsolar May 19 '17 at 09:29
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    Basically I install VirtualHere server on my Pi and VirtualHere client on my devices (Windows, Linux, whatever). I can now use any USB devices plugged into the Pi, basically VirtualHere trick your computer thinking that a USB device is plugged into it directly. – tickwave May 19 '17 at 12:41
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Not sure about the joystick, but you can use a VNC player (and a VNC server on your laptop) to make the connection, then control your laptop's desktop from the RPi.

I found two more alternatives: This article on our sister site SuperUser.com details how to use NetCat (nc) to achieve keyboard-sharing over the network, and it also gives details on how to use Synergy or Synergy+ for the same purpose. Synergy is not free though, it costs $10 for the basic edition, but works across Windows, Mac and Linux. I have no experience with this software. There is actually a free version available, but it is slightly outdated.

Community
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Phil B.
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  • Is it possible to disable the rendering and only use it as keystroke remote to PC on VNC because it's going to be a waste of bandwitdh because I'm not using any display on the Pi. – tickwave Mar 12 '16 at 04:13
  • Surprisingly, that is not an option in tightvnc .. there is an option to disable sending of keyboard/mouse events, but no option to disable screen. – Phil B. Mar 12 '16 at 13:57
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I believe what you are asking is if you can use the Raspberry Pi as a "USB device". As far as I know only the Raspberry Pi model A and model Zero have this functionality.

chaoticslacker
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