Quickly switch between paired devices when using a mouse and keyboard that supports Logitech Flow.

This utility works by monitoring one of your attached devices to see what host it is currently connected to, and then, if that changes, instructing other connected devices to switch to the same host.

Installation

pip install logitech-flow-kvm

You can also install the in-development version with:

pip install https://github.com/coddingtonbear/logitech-flow-kvm/archive/master.zip

Basic Use

One of your computers will serve as the "server" for managing this, and all others will be "clients".

Server

On the computer you've decided to use as your server, get the ID of the device you'd like to serve as your "leader", and the IDs of other devices you'd like to use as "followers". The leader device -- I recommend using your keyboard -- will be the one we watch. The followers will just be told which host to connect to if your leader device's host changes.

> logitech-flow-kvm list-devices

Finding devices... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 0:00:00
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID             ┃ Product ┃ Name                       ┃ Serial   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ /dev/hidraw4:1 │ B369    │ MX Keys Mini               │ 08F5F681 │
│ /dev/hidraw5:1 │ 4082    │ MX Master 3 Wireless Mouse │ 0F591C09 │
└────────────────┴─────────┴────────────────────────────┴──────────┘

In this example, I'll be using my keyboard (/dev/hidraw4:1) as my "leader", and my mouse (/dev/hidraw5:1) as a follower.

You can run a command like this:

> logitech-flow-kvm flow-server 1 /dev/hidraw4:1 /dev/hidraw5:1

Note that the 1 in the above command immediately after flow-server indicates that the host number of your server is 1. This should match the host number you've paired your mouse and keyboard with your device as (i.e. when your mouse or keyboard is connected to this computer, the light for 1 is lit on the keyboard's device selector).

When you run the above command, you'll receive some output indicating what hostnames the server was bound to; on my computer, this looks like this:

...
 * Running on all addresses (0.0.0.0)
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:24801
 * Running on http://10.224.224.120:24801
...

From the above lines, you'll want to select an IP address that can be reached from your clients. In my case, I'll be using 10.224.224.120 for connections from the clients to the server.

Client

On the other computers you'd like to use this feature with, you can run the following command:

> logitech-flow-kvm flow-client 2 10.224.224.120

The client will immediately connect, gather some configuration options from the server, and will instruct your "follower" devices to change their hosts as necessary.

Note that the 2 above after flow-client indicates the host number your devices have paired with your computer under. See "Server" above for details.

How to

Finding available devices

You can get a list of available devices using the list-devices subcommand:

> logitech-flow-kvm list-devices

Finding devices... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 0:00:00
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID             ┃ Product ┃ Name                       ┃ Serial   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ /dev/hidraw4:1 │ B369    │ MX Keys Mini               │ 08F5F681 │
│ /dev/hidraw5:1 │ 4082    │ MX Master 3 Wireless Mouse │ 0F591C09 │
└────────────────┴─────────┴────────────────────────────┴──────────┘

Switching which host a device is connected to

You can change the relevant device to your desired host number using the switch-to-host command:

> logitech-flow-kvm switch-to-host /dev/hidraw4:1 2

The above command will tell the device having the id /dev/hidraw4:1 to connect to whichever device is paired as its #2 device.

Running a command when a device connects or disconnects

You can see when a device connects or disconnects from the receiver using the following example:

> logitech-flow-kvm watch /dev/hidraw4:1

If you'd like to run a command when a device connects or disconnects, use the --on-disconnect-execute or --on-connect-execute arguments. See the "How To" section below for how you might use this.

Automatically switch your mouse to a different host when your keyboard disconnects

Note: this isn't the recommended way of handling this sort of thing -- you probably want to follow the instructions above under "Use" above.

If you have two devices:

> logitech-flow-kvm list-devices

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID             ┃ Product ┃ Name                       ┃ Serial   ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ /dev/hidraw4:1 │ B369    │ MX Keys Mini               │ 08F5F681 │
│ /dev/hidraw5:1 │ 4082    │ MX Master 3 Wireless Mouse │ 0F591C09 │
└────────────────┴─────────┴────────────────────────────┴──────────┘

You can respond run a command that will listen to when the "MX Keys Mini" device above disconnects, and when it does, ask the "MX Master 3 Wireless Mouse" to connect to a specific host:

> logitech-flow-kvm watch --on-disconnect-execute="logitech-flow-kvm switch-to-host /dev/hidraw5:1 2" /dev/hidraw4:1

Credits

Much of what this tool does is dependent upon the work put together by the folks working on Solaar -- really: all of the functionality provided here can also be done by Solaar alone, albeit just a little bit slower.