Introduction

Synergy is a VKM (Virtual Keyboard and Mouse) software that allows you to share your keyboard and mouse with computers running different operational systems (E.g.: Linux, Windows, etc..). There are alternative softwares that can replace Synergy if you would like to share your keyboard and mouse with devices that use the same operational system (E.g.: Mouse Without Frontier for Microsoft Windows). However, the attractiveness of Synergy is the fact it is an open source software and can run in multiple operational system platforms.

The following walkthrough will demonstrate on how to install the Synergy software and share your Windows machine keyboard and mouse with a RaspberryPi device, however you can use the same process to get it ready on other devices.

Installing Synergy on Windows and run it as Server

• Download the Synergy http://synergy-project.org/ or http://download.cnet.com/Synergy

• Click on the Installer and follow the instructions
• Open the program
• Press the Info button:

You will find the information of you computer Host name.

• Select the “Share this computer’s keyboard and mouse (server)” and press the Configure button:

• On the Screens enter the information of the computers Host names that will share the mouse and keyboard:

The example above demonstrate a configuration on the Windows PC (RSANTOS-PC2) and the Raspberry PI device (raspberrypi) located at the IP address 10.168.23.137. The Raspberry PI is configured to be on the Right of the Windows PC.

• To test the configuration you can press the Test button:

Installing Synergy on Raspberry PI and run it as Client

• Open the LXTerminal

• Install the Synergy Software running the following command:

  sudo apt-get install synergy

• Run the Synergy client connecting on the Windows Server machine:

  synergyc

  E.g.: synergyc 10.168.23.204

Done! Now you can use your mouse and keyboard on both machines

Note: In case you are not able to move your Windows Device mouse on the Rasperry monitor, you can run the following command to trace the error:

 synergyc -f <Windows Server IP>

• Stop the test and press start to run it on background:

Note: You might need to re-start the synergy client on the Raspberry PI device.