Using USB to Separate Computer and Keyboard/Mouse?

Klaus Thorn asks: "As a member of a technical team that plans a radio station with several audio-editing cabins I'm thinking about separating the noisy heat-producing computer from the cabin using one VGA cable and one USB cable. The computer is in the computer storage room. In the cabin there is (besides LCD) an USB hub with keyboard, mouse, soundcard and CDR-drive. Has anyone tried this? I need to know whether this all-USB-solution is clean and stable or a bunch of problems. I need to know what distance I can put between cabin and computer-storage room. Let's assume USB 2.0 and amplifying USB cables and Windows XP."

"One more detail: When the admin changes some hardware in the computer store room he does not want to run to the cabin to push a button. He could plug out the USB cable and plug in another USB cable that is connected to mouse and keyboard in the same room. After he's finished he could exchange the usb cables again (to the one leading to the cabin). This is only sensible if the computer will accept all four USB devices without driver reinstall and reboot. Anyone tried this or can predict wether this will work?"

Comments

Just use this

[GigsVT]

Here

Re:Just use this

[GigsVT]

I've got one just like this at work, but it is PS/2 instead of USB. It uses CAT5 and extends USB KB/Mouse and VGA video in this case, in my case it uses cat5 and extends PS/2.

Re:Just use this

[PurpleFloyd]

Why encumber a product with IP when it doesn't need it? This is designed for end-to-end transmissions over a single wire; IP is ridiculous overkill incorporating useless overhead for things like routability and the ability to communicate with multiple devices.

In fact, the designers of this product seem to have even dispensed with Ethernet (note that it only says it'll work with Cat5 and contains its own gain control system - something that to me tells me that it's using some sort of broadband signaling, rather than the baseband shared by almost all forms of Ethernet.

As for "physical network requirements," everything that works over a network can't avoid using some form of physical communication; all the fancy protocols in the world won't do you any good if you can't get two systems to exchange bits. While it's possible to avoid permenantly tying yourself to one particular medium (via modular interfaces), it's impossible to have a network without physical communication. You just can't have IP between two locations without something to communicate packets - there has to be some form of communication. There's a reason why the physical layer is at the bottom of the OSI and TCP/IP models. It's because if the physical layer fails, there is no network.

Check first

[segvio]

Look up specs on USB audio devices. Many (and I mean MANY) will not work at all on USB (power or unpowered) hubs and require a direct USB connection.

Try it yourself

[Rick the Red]

Not to be flip, but why not try it yourself? Surely you have a Windows PC with at least one USB port, so give it a go. From personal experience when I unplug most USB devices Windows gives a warning that I should have told it first, but Windows doesn't crash. You might also try two keyboards (one in each of two USB ports) to see if you don't need to unplug the remote keyboard to use a local one (I'm sure you can find PCs with two USB ports and use one for local, the other for remote).

As for how far you can go, I would think VGA is your limiting factor, not USB.

Re:Try it yourself

[sweetooth]

You can use multiple usb keyboards on a pc. Or you could use a USB keyboard and a PS/2 keyboard at the same time. I've done all of the above with no problem. I believe the max extension on a VGA cable is 25ft and USB is 15' without signal boosting. If you want to spend a bunch of money you can get a KVM extender style setup which lets you extend the keyboard, mouse, video, and audio up to 250ft over CAT5.

usb

[Anonymous Coward]

USB is nice in that multiple peripherals can all use the same port, but it just plain sucks for a variety of reasons

1. It's a master/slave relationship, rather than p2p
   
2. Bandwidth is limited.
   
3. the irq/dma conflicts make people yearn for the simplicity of editting dos/windows ini files
   

USB is good for keyboards and mice (only because hot-plugging is allowed), and simple low-bandwidth usage. However, USB drives (especially cdr) is asking for trouble.

It's a shame firewire isn't more prevalent. It's a better solution for higher i/o peripherals.

Re:usb

[Snafoo]

First of all, I think the question-poster has a really good idea: Computer interfaces *can* and *should* be separable from the beige box. Furthermore, I don't think that implementing this shit in USB **2.0** is such a bad idea. According to http://www.apple.com/firewire/ (hardly a non-partisan source ;) Firewire 800 (the latest Firewire standard) is only twice as fast as USB 2.0, allowing transfer rates of up to 800Mbs, which "delivers more than double the effective bandwidth of the USB 2.0 peripheral standard. That means you can send more than a CD's worth of data every ten seconds." This implies that USB 2.0 can send at least a CD's worth of data every twenty seconds, which is far more bandwidth than your pathetic 52x CD drive will ever put forth.

So, hey, if you have USB 2.0 on your computer, you might as well use it :) (PS. if you don't, then
you can just buy a USB2/Firewire combo card, and just use whatever works best.)

Thirdly, if your USB drive refuses to work with a hub, then simply put everything *else* on a hub and use your computer's extra USB port (it has more than one, right?) for the CDR.

Fourthly, VGA will be a problem --- *if* you're using VGA. Many LCD displays can take DVI, which (AFAIK) means that the cables can be strung somewhat further. If you can't use digital out, or if I'm wrong about the cable length feature of digital out, please feel free to use one 'o them VGA extension devices that, eg, use some multimode fiber-optic cabling and some conversion dongles.

I just googled a nice FAQ about such matters at

http://www.scala.com/hardware/dvi-vga-cable.html

Have fun.

Re:usb

[Schmucky The Cat]

Nobody cares that it's a master slave relationship. Especially for HID. Why would you want a keyboard that had a special peering relationship with the box?

Bandwidth is not limited for the purpose. He has 400Mbps to play with for hi-speed devices. If he's only got full speed, he's got 12Mbps, which (since it's pretty much dedicated) is enough to stream several uncompressed audio channels.

USB uses a single IRQ for the host controller. Devices don't use any irq or dma resources on the host machine. On any modern machine with a decent chipset (not *cough* via) you've got IRQ steering and APIC. I deal with IRQ issues on USB about once a year. And I develop USB device drivers, so I'm talking about a few thousand test boxes.

Have you considered Firewire?

[TorgoGuy]

The Firewire spec allows for much longer cables than USB. A bought two 32ft firewire cables that were guaranteed to operate at that distance (www.granitedigital.com) and put a firewire hub to connect the two together. That gave me 64 feet of distance.

I have done CD/DVD burning, printing, and scanning, with no problems over this 64ft distance.

I used a refurb Cybex extender for the keyboard, video and mouse over one CAT5 cable.

Try diskless with VNC

[Craig Maloney]

Diskless with VNC might get you where you want to be. You can reduce the noise from drives and fans, and you'll be able to control the main machine(s) from the audio rooms.

Some mods I'd make

[bluGill]

While I understand the value of putting all comptuers in a server room, I think that you would be better of to just have the computer in a closet outside the room, or in a soundproof (yet well cooled...) cabinet inside. I'm not convinced you will be changing hardware often enough to make pushing a button in each cabin a problem. Software updates are a different issue, and those you might change often.

I strongly recomend you keep most of your disks in a file server, and store all files on that. With SAMBA (windows networking can work too) to share as needed. Keep the harddrive noise far away because it is on the network. Also puts the componants you most want to replace in a central location next to the comptuer they are connected to, and lusers can't touch that machine.

Extended cables work ok at best, but you are introducing potential problems with them. By having the comptuer just outside you can run a few more cables inside the room, and still get off just as good.

Drop the USB cd drives for ieee1394 (firewire). A little more complex, but you have a solution that was designed for data drives from the start. If you have a lot of money fibre channel would be nice, but odds are you don't.

USB in theory allows you to plug multipul devices in. I'd expiriment with a usb hub local to the machine for pluging a second keyboard/mouse into without unpluging the one in the remote room. Dual monitor graphics cards exist, I'd consider putting one in each machine, so you don't have to unplug the remote monitor. Remember unpluging cables is what damages them, so you want to avoid that. Monitor are not always hot-plug, so you don't want to unplug them anyway. Or, instead of the complexities of the above, will VNC or similear solve all console admin needs?

Expiriment first. Try all the technology on one computer (that you can borrow for the purpose) first, to make sure it will work ok. If there is a problem that you can't overcome you don't want to have bought a large setup only to find it won't work.

One other thing I'd be tempted to try is some custom mini-ITX boards in a custom case. Use flash for booting, and set it read-only so that lusers don't go breaking the configuration. (better yet boot from the net, but that isn't easy) Provides most of the outputs you want, and use the network for all your admin. With the right heatsinks and case design they make no noise. When you do have to do a hardware change, you pull a spare off the shelf, make the change, test it, then bring the whole system to the cabin and replace the old on.

Not all these ideas are compatable. Only you know your exact setup, so only you know what will work for you.

Re:Stable, sure,

[computersareevil]

Audio editing in real time over VNC.
You slashdot posters crack me up.

Obviously you understand neither the sumitter's need nor VNC. Realtime is not a problem on a private network.

You unintelligent snobs crack me up.

Re:Stable, sure,

[MattCohn.com]

I'm not AC, but I'll reply to your response.

Uh no, you obviously havn't tried audio editing in this kind of an environment. I personally have tried editing audio with Cool Edit Pro on my home 10/100 network using both VNC and Remote Desktop. Neither worked well at all. When I meen working with audio editing software, I meen working well. Yes, you CAN do it over VNC but your productivity is limited. Latency is unacceptable when trying to get anything accomplished.

Why don't you go work in the productions department of a radio station, take notes, and then get back to me.