pc another room - any issues with long cables?

I dare say that a PCwould and should be able to know about the power, given that they can switch the devices or the ports off when they do take too much power from the port.

As for software that logs or checks this, I am sure it does exist, but I dont know any titles or such to search for?

And ACTIVE means that it provides its OWN power from a provided PSU.
Many USB hubs will work happily without one, and when it does that, you can only really use one or two USB devices, and even then, they may well overload the hub... Again, if the device you connect to the hub, uses its own power, then it wont drain power from the hub, but there are devices such as Keyboards and mice, that may light up and those will drain the USB of its power sometimes quite heavily.

Anyway, if the hub uses a PSU then it would always be adviseable to use the PSU than not. I do have a hub in my media center that I have not used the PSU with that, and it has the keyboard and mouse wireless adapter connected to it, but, when I add a USB Flash drive to it, the drive often fails and messes me about as this seems to be right on the border of its limit without moaning at me.

I think the reason you have issues with your mouse is simply that it really needs to have a USB port all on its own. I would also suggest the keyboard being solo too!

If you need to have the length, then simply buy a single longer cable just for the mouse, maybe a 2nd for the keyboard too!

But not in a hub.

Oh, and also USB 3 is powered much better than a USB 2 port, so if you ARE using a hub without power, then putting it through a USB 3 port would give it a better chance of handling the devices surely?
 
hub has been unplugged since day one. it didn't work so i unplugged and used 2 active usb cables, one each for the mouse and keyboard.

tried them on a variety of ports and the problem is the same. some ports though seem to never work though i think this could be due to me moving onto another after too few tries. some ports work instantly but then stop working after a random amount of times of sleep/starts, some don't work instantly but work after a random amount of unplugs and replug ins. usually it takes the keyboard to be plugged in first, and then when working the mouse.

if i plug another usb device directly into the desktop (so no active usb cable) then this can cause the active usb cables to fail, sometimes
 
i've bought the usb 2.0 hub. works as expected most of the time, until it randomly decides to drop every 10 or so seconds for only a split second, but long enough it has to reconnect the devices, and that repeats 4/5 times in a row, then is fine again. or sometimes another issue is it wont connect at all until i unplug it from the active cable and replug it back in.

is it possible that some motherboards just simply can't get the constant power needed to the active usb cable that it will have moments when it fails?

i've tried both cables so unless they're both faulty i don't believe that's the fault
 
Can you get away with just 5m regular unpowered usb cables for your keyboard and mouse?

If 5m will reach I'd say that's worth a try.
 
Can you switch to a wireless mouse and keyboard?

Alternatively, there are USB extenders that use ethernet cables.
 
I am just curious as to why not a wireless keyboard and mouse, I had a setup like yours last year and a good wireless gaming keyboard and mouse will work easily through walls and never noticed any latency issues.
 
Calranthe said:
I am just curious as to why not a wireless keyboard and mouse, I had a setup like yours last year and a good wireless gaming keyboard and mouse will work easily through walls and never noticed any latency issues.
Click to expand...

the mouse i could go wireless but not the keyboard. it's a saitek eclipse 2 so has back-lite keys and i don't think i could work on a keyboard without one now i'm used to having it.
 
I use a 10m DVI to HDMI cable and 2 10m USB extensions which have dongles for wireless keyboard and mouse attached to the end with no issue.

I will say however that over long distances USB isn't great. If I plug in a webcam to the end of the extension I find I get around 5fps and lots of lag compared to it being plugged into a USB port directly. I certainly wouldn't want to plug a USB hard drive into a 10m extension but low bandwidth stuff seems to work just fine.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom