Using an HDMI to USB Video Capture Device as a “monitor”

Setting up my Listening Station™, I got the Mac mini in place and then it wasn’t coming online (for some reason, moving it ~10' meant it could no longer see my 5 GHz WiFi network?). Didn’t want to tear apart the stack and wedge it somewhere to see what was going on, and I remembered I had the ikan HomeStream (HS-VCD) (discontinued but still works fine).

ikan HS-VCD

I found Quick Camera (free) and hooked everything up (adapting the ikan to USB-C with Apple’s adapter) and sure enough, I was able to use a MacBook Air as a “monitor” for the old mini. Easy.

(I also discovered that, holy hell, the current ikan replacement for what I got (HS-VCD-2) is $23 now (I remember being stoked to find it for $65 at the height of the pandemic, when anything that could facilitate Work From Home was at a premium), and the USB-C version (HS-VCD-USBC) is $15! What a weird time we lived through...)