ESP32-P4 IP – A developer is building an IP KVM that uses the ESP32-P4 instead of a Raspberry Pi, pushing supported 1080p graphics through a custom HDMI-to-camera input setup. The code is live on GitHub under the Apache license, but the project currently ships without audio
If you’ve spent the last few years wiring home labs around Raspberry Pi setups. this new KVM project lands like a quiet dare. The usual choice would be a Pi—last week, that’s where many people would have landed. But JonathanRowny built an IP KVM using an ESP32-P4 instead. and he’s leaning hard into what the chip can do.
The goal here is straightforward: get supported 1080p graphics through an IP KVM link. The interesting part is how he connects the video signal to the developer setup. He’s using a commercial adapter board that translates HDMI signals to the camera input on his dev board. That detail matters because it’s the same ribbon-cable pinout as the RPi. and that similarity isn’t guaranteed by the CSI standard.
Getting the video through wasn’t just a wiring job. Writing a driver to take that signal proved the hardest part. On top of that, JonathanRowny ran into chip revision confusion—an issue that, as he describes it, plagues this chip.
The upshot is that the project has working code today. He has the code up on GitHub under the Apache license, with the ESP32-P4 doing the heavy lift rather than leaning on a Linux SBC.
But the project’s current state is also where the tension shows. As of this writing, there’s no audio. And for an ESP32 project, networking is wired-only, not wireless. The bigger gap, though, is security: there is no security at all right now. That means this isn’t something you’d drop into a real network environment yet. even if the graphics performance is the headline.
It’s a work in progress, but it’s still hard to miss what it represents. The ESP32-P4 here isn’t being used for emulation or as a novelty test; it’s doing a job that many hobbyists would normally reserve for a Raspberry Pi. And it follows a pattern already visible in other ESP32-P4 projects. The Tanmatsu handheld, for example, also uses Expressif’s most powerful chip for a terminal-style device.
Putting the KVM and those handhelds together forces a simple question: how much of what used to be “Pi territory” gets pushed into these overpowered microcontrollers instead?. Yes. they can’t match an original Raspberry Pi in raw horsepower. and they definitely can’t match a modern Pi5. Still. the fact that this kind of work is even feasible on under-taxed hardware is exactly the sort of shift that changes what builders reach for.
And if you’re swapping a Pi for a P4—or trying anything else unusual—JonathanRowny’s project is already an invitation to see what else can fit inside these chips.
The only thing standing between experimentation and deployment is the part everyone will care about next: security, and whatever comes after this first pass with 1080p video.
ESP32-P4 KVM IP KVM 1080p HDMI to CSI Raspberry Pi replacement microcontroller GitHub Apache license embedded networking security