So here is how it works: The program runs on each computer. You plug your USB devices (presumably, a keyboard and a mouse) into a USB switch and then plug that into each computer. Then you plug each computer into each monitor (so you're limited by the minimum total number of inputs on the monitor(s) for how many computers you can switch).
When you press the button on the USB switch to go to another PC, the software detects this and sends data commands over the monitor connection (using DDC standard) to trigger the monitors to switch inputs. You can use this same data communications standard to do things like adjust the brightness of your display. For example, I have these setup on my Mac to adjust the brightness of my two attached displays (complexity increased with multiple displays and desire for each to change at same time, simpler commands with a single display):
alias day="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 80' sh"
alias evening="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 32' sh"
alias night="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 10' sh"
Does that make sense? As mentioned earlier, you're limited by the minimum number of inputs on the monitor(s) and/or the minimum number of computers the USB switch can be connected to. The simplicity of this system is that the display connections do not go through any switching layer and are instead directly connected to the computers (which avoids a number of compatibility issues).
I should be clear that I haven't used this yet but I'm going to try it. The Acer monitors I'm using have two HDMI ports and 1 DisplayPort so I can in practice attach 3 computers assuming I buy a USB switch which can connect to 3 or more computers.
When you press the button on the USB switch to go to another PC, the software detects this and sends data commands over the monitor connection (using DDC standard) to trigger the monitors to switch inputs. You can use this same data communications standard to do things like adjust the brightness of your display. For example, I have these setup on my Mac to adjust the brightness of my two attached displays (complexity increased with multiple displays and desire for each to change at same time, simpler commands with a single display):
alias day="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 80' sh" alias evening="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 32' sh" alias night="seq 3 | xargs -n 1 -P 3 sh -c 'ddcctl -d \$1 -b 10' sh"
Does that make sense? As mentioned earlier, you're limited by the minimum number of inputs on the monitor(s) and/or the minimum number of computers the USB switch can be connected to. The simplicity of this system is that the display connections do not go through any switching layer and are instead directly connected to the computers (which avoids a number of compatibility issues).
I should be clear that I haven't used this yet but I'm going to try it. The Acer monitors I'm using have two HDMI ports and 1 DisplayPort so I can in practice attach 3 computers assuming I buy a USB switch which can connect to 3 or more computers.