Workstations

A workstation is an operator's seat: one place a person sits down and works.

Physically it is a receiver (RX) with the things plugged into it: a display, a keyboard and mouse, and optionally a control surface such as a Stream Deck. Everything DisplayNet knows about that position is addressed by the receiver, so throughout this section the RX id is the workstation.

Workstations and desks

Concept	What it is	Addressed by
Workstation	A seat: one operator position, with its display, keyboard, mouse, and control surface.	The receiver (<remote_id>)
Desk	A named routing map: which sources appear on which receivers, arranged in a shared canvas.	A desk name

A workstation is where somebody sits. A desk is an arrangement of sources across screens that a workstation can adopt. One workstation may connect to several different desks over a day; a desk is not itself a place to sit. See kvm desk.

Components

Each piece is configured independently, and all of them resolve through the receiver:

Piece	Command	What it does
The seat itself	kvm workstation	What this seat may reach, and whether routing video to it also hands it keyboard and mouse. The view of the seat as a whole rather than of one of its parts.
Keyboard and mouse routing	kvm	Forwards the seat's keyboard and mouse to whichever source it is controlling, including across MultiView windows and desks.
Seat configuration	kvm config	A named bundle of hotkey macros and control-surface bindings, assigned to a scope. A seat resolves to exactly one configuration; most specific wins.
Hotkey macros	kvm macro	Keyboard shortcuts that fire DisplayNet actions from the seat's own keyboard.
Control surface	kvm streamdeck	A Stream Deck at the seat: keys, and on the + family, dials and a touch strip.
HID pairing	kvm hid	Which USB devices at the seat are extended, and the auto-connect that keeps a seat paired so its customizations work the moment an operator sits down.

Addressing

Every workstation-scoped command takes a <remote_id>, the receiver's device name or id. It never takes the serial number of the keyboard, mouse, or control surface plugged into it: a seat's configuration belongs to the position, so swapping in a different Stream Deck keeps the seat's button map, and replacing the keyboard keeps its macros.

In the Stream Deck commands the stored field carrying the seat id is named Serial. It holds a receiver id, not a device serial.

Next steps

• kvm workstation follow: make a source switch carry the keyboard with it
• kvm streamdeck: set up a seat's buttons and dials
• kvm config: bundle macros and buttons so they follow a seat
• kvm desk: arrange several sources across several screens
• kvm: the underlying keyboard and mouse session commands