One Dock to Power the Work from Home Setup

This post is a pre-cursor to the Ultimate Guide to Desk Cable Management that I will eventually write. For now, let’s talk about the heart of my work from home multi-monitor, multi-PC, single-desk setup.

The problem statement: how can I share 1 monitor and 5 peripherals between my work laptop, my personal desktop, and my personal laptop

Elaborating a little bit on the problem statement:

1. I have a single 38″ Ultrawide monitor that I use with my personal PC
2. I want to use this monitor as a second screen with my work laptop
3. If possible, I want to switch my keyboard, mouse, mic, webcam, speakers, and stream deck, between my 3 PCs

The two options I had was getting a multi-port dock or a KVM switch. Unfortunately, the more I looked into a KVM switch, I realized that this wouldn’t solve my problem. Here’s why:

1. KVMs look ugly
2. KVMs don’t have enough ports for my devices
3. KVMs are awkward for my master plan of cable management because in some cases they have two devices
4. KVMs look ugly

I started looking into docks because of the number of ports (USB-C and USB) that these things have. My plan was to:

1. Have everything connected to a dock and an HDMI switcher
2. Switching a single USB-C wire from my work laptop to personal PC (and vice-versa) would switch all my devices
3. Press a button and my monitor will switch between PCs

Selecting The Dock:

I narrowed my option to the Anker 575 USB-C Docking Station. It had all the ports I wanted. Unfortunately, I learned that the Anker dock does not carry video signal over USB-C. And this is when I also learned that not all USB-C cables carry video signal. There are special USB-C cables that can carry video over USB-C. Anyway, the Anker dock didn’t work so I started looking for another option. I also didn’t want to spend an obscene amount on the dock. My Amazon searches showed me a MOKiN dock that had the right number of USB-C and USB ports for me. I had not heard about the company before and that was ok; it had the features I needed at a price I was ok with.

The minimum requirements were:

1. Needs to have at least 5 USB (at least some should USB 3.0)
2. Needs to have at least 1 USB-C port
3. Should be USB-C connectivity to the PC
4. Should support at least 2 monitors (high refresh rates and FPS was not part of the selection criteria since this is work for home and I am not an FPS gamer)

Getting Accessories For The Dock:

To get this setup to work, I needed an HDMI switch and a USB-C cable that was long enough for me to easily move from 1 PC to the other. For the setup to work:

1. The dock’s HDMI 1 goes into the switch as input
2. The PC’s HDMI goes into the switch as input
3. The output of the switch goes into the monitor

The Result:

• Scenario 1 (work from home):

  • I plug the dock’s primary USB-C to the work laptop -> all peripherals switch to the work laptop
  • I press the button to HDMI 1 -> the monitor becomes a second monitor to the work laptop
  • I press the Bluetooth button on my Logitech G915 keyboard -> keyboard switches to work with the work laptop

• Scenario 2 (play at home):

  • I plug the dock’s primary USB-C to the personal desktop (or personal laptop) -> all peripherals switch to the personal desktop (or personal laptop)
  • I switch HDMI to HDMI 2 -> the monitor becomes the primary monitor for my personal desktop (or personal laptop)
  • I press the Lightspeed button on my Logitech G915 keyboard -> keyboard switches to work with the personal desktop

Here’s a quick video of the work from home setup in action:

Buying links:

• 8K HDMI Splitter
• Mokin Docking Station
• 100W + Video USB C to USB C with angled connector

Photos of how I hid the dock: