sleeving usb wiring

[antok86]

has anyone used some kind of braiding material to sleeve their usb cables on their keyboards to give it a different look?

[o2dazone]

[antok86]

cant really see it..whats taht silver knob ?

[o2dazone]

It was the only good photo I have, here's another, but admire it for the braided sleeving, the camera didn't focus on anything in particular





edit: the silver knob is a Griffin Powermate

[pfink]

I haven't tried it yet myself but I remember someone mentioning on another board that parachute cord makes for a nice cable cover:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_cord

http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ROPE120-1.html

The inner strands are used to pull your cable through the outer braided covering.

[antok86]

edit: the silver knob is a Griffin Powermate

what do "you" use the knob for

[o2dazone]

I just use it for volume, I find that keeping my hand on the keyboard is more valuable than scrubbing through a timeline in Premiere or AE. I'm sure if I did a lot of 3d or something though, a SpaceNavigator would be worth it. But yeah, $30 volume knob. Right next to a $250 rubber dome

[nanu]

Paracord works here.

Initially, I tried sleeving an already-sleeved cord.  I didn't like that it emphasized existing sleeve kinks, and it probably decreased cord flexibility.

So then I made my own cable for my mouse, pulling 2.5 twisted pairs obtained from CAT5 cable.  The resulting paracord conforms the to gnarliness of the inner strands, but results in what I think is a slightly more flexible cord overall.

[rdjack21]

Haven't you tortured that poor Boscom enough already. Now you want to blow it up. I would think that would be an issue seeing as you don't have very many parts left.

[nanu]

don't tell me your mouse has higher dpi.

If anything, it's gone down from 1000 DPI, not that I can tell.

According to USB on wikipee, I should've used a twisted pair for the data lines.
Whoops; I just randomly mimicked the original cable.  The strands also no longer have shielding, but I figured it's acceptable since the cable's fairly short at around 1.8m (71 inches).

[o2dazone]

it's those Audiophile guys that really get into twisted pair.

Those audiophiles twist my pair >:|











(of undies)

[nanu]

It's questionable if you introduce significant electrical resistance by two solder points (and extra copper) by this sort of mod, but if it works...

Anyhow, I sleeved some extension cords for easier access from where I'm sitting. It could have been easier. Months ago I bought the cheapest cord-style USB hub available from Dealextreme, but of course it came DOA so I salvaged its inline jacks for this.



I thread the inner wires from a 4-conductor phone cord through paracord.  For the business end (jacks, here) it's better if you stagger the wire cuts before joining them.  Strip wire ends, preload thin heatshrink tube, twist the exposed wire ends, and tin with solder. Shrink the heatshrink tubing. The staggering is there to prevent a single bulge of wire joins that would prevent the paracord from sliding over. Complete the end of the paracord by thicker heatshrink and perhaps some adhesive underneath.

For the other end, I managed to find a motherboard-compatible ribbon cable with a header.

I have no clue why the 5th USB wire isn't hooked up in to the jacks.  Maybe it should just be grounded, I guess by touching the metal PC case.

[kishy]

On motherboard headers for USB, the extra 2 pins (well 1, if it's following the established standard) are for keying the connector so it can only go one way.

That the one 5th pin does have a wire connection is just because of the nature of the connector design. Grounding it shouldn't cause problems, but it doesn't need to be (and I can identify one rather old motherboard where it was in fact a 5 volt line instead of ground on the motherboard, so be careful with that).

[nanu]

Yeah, I actually plugged one of the holes there on the motherboard connector with a section of big paperclip so it goes in the correct way. I just assumed there should be some reason why most of the USB devices I've taken apart actually have that 5th wire.

[nanu]

Shows you how much I care for my devices. I wish that were my gold tooth. I'd knock myself out and trade it in to afford more goodies I'd maybe care about

[kriminal]

braided sleeves and heat shrink....
check the site

[trievalot]

mmmmmmm, spaghetti.

[ricercar]

Technically you're supposed to shield the cable and connect to the non-host side (the female connector).

Agreed. Also Technically, any system with a USB extension cable (male-female) is out of spec. There's no provision for USB extension cabling in the USB 1.x or 2.x specs. (not familiar enough to comment on extensions for USB 3. Wireless USB probably doesn't need extensions...).

[nanu]

Lesson learned: sleeve only existing manufactured cables or suffer the consequences.

I'm skeptical of an extension being improper though. If the combined cable length is still within spec and it's shielded throughout, what would make it unreliable?

[Rajagra]

I'm skeptical of an extension being improper though. If the combined cable length is still within spec and it's shielded throughout, what would make it unreliable?

Signals get reflected at the join. Doesn't matter for low frequency signals, but wreaks havoc with higher frequencies. Often seen with analogue video extension cables (you see ghosting.)

[nanu]

Signals get reflected at the join. Doesn't matter for low frequency signals, but wreaks havoc with higher frequencies. Often seen with analogue video extension cables (you see ghosting.)

So length of the extension matters? The extension from the motherboard to front panel USB jacks exists.

[Rajagra]

So length of the extension matters? The extension from the motherboard to front panel USB jacks exists.

Distance can matter. Signals travel at near the speed of light along the cable. If the join is very close to the source, then any part of the signal that echoes back and forth will only be out of sync with the original signal by a small amount. The longer the distance to the join and the higher the frequency of the signal, the more likely that the interference will, err, interfere.

Also the more extensions you have, the more reflections there are. The fact that one extension is already present is not proof that more are acceptable. It's proof that more will add to an already existing problem.

You can over-analyze this. All that matters is whether it works or not. The nice thing about digital signals is they tend to work well or not at all. Once a 1 or 0 has been received you don't have to worry about the quality of that bit. A bit sent through a $500 cable is no better than one sent through a 50¢ cable.