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geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => DIY Discussions ARCHIVE => Topic started by: adamrice on Mon, 23 March 2009, 16:16:11
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This might be a fool's errand, but if it's possible, I might want to try it.
My wife recently got a laptop. It spends most of its time as a desktop, where it has an external monitor, iphone, keyboard, and trackball plugged into it. She gets mobile with it pretty regularly though.
Obviously the whole unplug/replug routine gets a little old, and I'd like to minimize the number of things that need to be plugged. It wouldn't be hard to find a bluetooth keyboard, of course, but she's particularly fond of her old Kensington Expert Mouse trackball (she actually has two, so I could experiment on one).
So I started wondering if it would be possible to cannibalize a bluetooth mouse for its transceiver and solder that up to the trackball's USB circuitry…somehow. I'm not afraid of soldering, and I can follow a recipe, but I don't know what I'm doing with electronics.
Of course, even if this is feasible at the hardware level, I have to wonder whether the driver software for the trackball could possibly play nice.
Another option would be a USB hub that allowed USB2 and USB1.1 devices to coexist without dropping all the devices down to 1.1 speed, but I've never heard of such a critter. That would allow the three USB devices to be run through a single port, which would be an improvement.
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Docking station FTW? Just sayin'... :)
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Oh, and they are pretty cheap on eBay (at least for Dells).
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yeah, I use a docking station at work, since we have laptops. They are invaluable for what you are talking about.
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The computer in question is a new Macbook. An aftermarket docking station (http://www.BookEndzDocks.com/New_Products-Docking_Station_for_the_13_Unibody_MacBook.html) will be available soon, for the low, low price of $279.
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I do the 'giant usb hub' thing, so there's a single usb cable to plug into it when I'm at my desk. I guess I havent paid much attention to usb 1 vs 2 (not doing anything critical in that regard to notice much). My external drive is a network drive that connects via wireless router.
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Yeah, I'd do the giant hub approach, then you only have three cables to plug - one USB cable, the monitor, and the power.
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The computer in question is a new Macbook. An aftermarket docking station (http://www.BookEndzDocks.com/New_Products-Docking_Station_for_the_13_Unibody_MacBook.html) will be available soon, for the low, low price of $279.
Dude, that's a steal.
Them stealing from you. ;)
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I just got a look at that docking station. That thing is classic. It has a box of plugs attached to a base. I take it the MacBook doesn't have a dedicated docking port. I bet with a little hard work and time, you could make something like this. You're right, though, there is nothing about this that is $279. The giant hub approach sounds pretty good, too.
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Apple hasn't made a laptop with a docking port since the Duo series, in the early 90s. I had a friend with one of those—back in the day, it was stunningly small, since all the ports, removable media, etc, were moved to the dock.
A DIY clamp to hold all the various plugs might be an option.
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I may have been laboring under a misconception. I thought that if you plugged a USB1.1 device into a USB2.0 hub, it reduced the transfer rate to USB1.1 speeds for all attached devices. I was just reading in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hub#Speed) that this may not be the case.
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Yeah, USB is smarter than that.
The only instance that I can think of in which a USB 2.0 device will run at "full speed" instead of "high speed" is if it's plugged into a USB 1.1 hub.
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I don't know about the Mac compatibility (unfortunately, they aren't transparent, but need drivers), but there are (relatively new) wireless USB solutions on the market. You just plug in your wireless usb stick, which connects to the wireless usb transceiver to which almost any usb devices can be connected (usb audio seems to be problematic). Transfer rates are up to 480 Mbit/s when it's not too far (I guess < 3 m) with 100 Mbit/s fallback up to 10 m. It's not really different from the "one giant hub" approach, though, but at least you can move the laptop around a bit without losing connectivity, which might be a consideration when connecting external storage.
-huha