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Long-Range Wireless Keyboard/Mouse?
tambo writes with the sort of problem more people wish they had: "I've just bought myself an excellent LCD TV. I'd love to be able to access my home server from it for many reasons (music, video, surfing, MAME, etc.) — but my home server is in another room, 30 feet away from the TV and 50 feet away from the couch. I've acquired some gear to send PC audio and video wirelessly (over the 5.8GHz range), so that's all good. My challenge now is trying to send input wirelessly to my PC from fifty feet away. I've thought about getting a wireless USB hub, but that would introduce an additional wireless hop that would probably add to the input latency (and might interfere with all the other wireless gear in my pad.) My best bet now is to get a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse that have an unusually good range, and some of the Logitechs seem to qualify, but it's a gamble. Advice?"
The right bluetooth equipment can have a range of up to 100m. That enough?
i think this is what they mean by possessions owning the person rather than the other way around.
If 5 watts isn't enough, just hook it up to a 1KW linear amp. Oh wait, there's a van out front that says FCC on it. BRB. Door.
--
BMO
I realise you've just spent a fair bit on sending video and audio from the server, and probably don't want to waste that investment, but wouldn't the easiest approach be to have a networked PC under the screen, and use that to connect mouse and keyboard to? You could SSH into your server, or similar?
With this approach you could dedicate the "set-top box" to recording video (handy for the antenna connection or cable box...) and use the server for storing recordings long-term.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Use a USB extension cable, plug it into the server, and plug the wireless receiver into that. Run it along the wall as far as is necessary to bring it into range of wherever you use the keyboard.
And on a side note: the couch? Really? I can never quite believe that people are actually comfortable using a computer when they are sat on a couch. That goes double for non-laptops.
Gyration GO PRO 2.4GHz Optical Air Mouse and Compact Keyboard Suite. Needs only an empty USB port and gives you a 100' range.
http://www.gyration.com/p-18-go-pro-24ghz-optical-air-mouse-and-compact-keyboard-suite.aspx
Unne Liljeblad, Mix Engineer
Laptop keyboard + mouse shared to the desktop over wifi with synergy. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
me jumping with kites I make...
I built a little homebrew ir receiver that runs on the serial port. There are only 5 components that are easy to get and easy to solder together. Plans are linked on the homepage www.lirc.org
[Your] best bet now is to get a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse that have an unusually good range, and some of the Logitechs seem to qualify, but it's a gamble.
use a usb bluetooth adapter on a long extender cable so it's closer to your couch!
with the crazy setup you are trying to do, your best bet is getting a small carpet, some wood, and sending smoke signals to your server.
Read radical news here
http://reviews.cnet.com/keyboards/logitech-cordless-mediaboard-for/4505-3134_7-32319140.html
My friend is using one for just this purpose. And he's about 30' or so away, and he's going through from the first room of his house to his basement and it's working great.
As for the wireless video? Are you using so type of VGA wireless solution? With an LCD TV you should be able to receive 720p or even 1080p connect. This would require either a component or HDMI/DVI connect. There are actually DVI over ethernet adapters which will send your single over the long distance without losing quality which the wireless solution I used to use has issues with. You could also just hit up http://www.monoprice.com/ and pick up a 40" HDMI cable for about $40 or so shipped. If you didn't know you can get adapters that convert DVI->HDMI and some even support sound as well.
Storage server* in a back room, Mac Mini hooked up to the TV. Added a bluetooth keyboard and Mighty Mouse and I'm set. It's even a DVD player smaller than most! (Can't wait 'till they come out with a Blu-ray model.)
You're making the split at the I/O level. Makes much more sense to me to split at the storage level. Storage is still noisy, processing has gotten pretty quiet. Why fling all those signals around when you can just have one Ethernet backhaul, and keep all the I/O in the same room?
-Peter
*Actually just a Newertech drive plugged into the USB port on my Airport Extreme. I hope to upgrade to a Drobo soon.
Oh it's too bad they don't make the old PCjr infrared keyboards anymore. They had an upgraded model that improved on the notorious "chiclet" keyboard, I used to have one, it worked decently. The reason I say it would be perfect for you is that you can now buy "IR extenders" that are designed to carry IR remote control signals into AV equipment inside cabinets. The IR hits a receiver via line of sight, it's converted and sent down a wire, and is retransmitted by an IR LED at the other end of the wire. You could run the extender's wire as far as you like, and still have a wireless keyboard.
Maybe there are other IR keyboards around, but I'm not aware of any. They had a few bugs. For example, if I struck a BIC cigarette lighter near my PCjr, the spark would emit a little IR and the CPU would beep, indicating an unknown IR transmission error.
Most Part 15 devices intentionally have bad antennas, or bad matching to the antenna. If you don't care about the letter of the law, the easiest mod to improve range is to put a proper antenna on each end. This can be as simple as a correct length of wire soldered to the right spot.
I haven't used their keyboards but we use their Gyromouse products in various rooms for presentations. In addition to being a real cool motion control device (works like a Wiimote, but better, doesn't need IR) it has a really long range. They claim 100 feet and I'd believe it. I haven't done accurate range tests, but it'll go all over a fairly large room.
Seems to be very solid technology.
Cheap notebook, 802.11, SSH and X.
We have a Gyration keyboard and mouse set at our church. The range is awesome: The receiver and PC are at the back while the keyboard and mouse are controlled from the pulpit, well over 100 feet away.
"What do I need to remotely administer my server?"
"Wireless keyboard and mouse."
"But it's really far away!"
"Binoculars too, then."
I've got a Linux HTPC that satisfies me pretty well. The only case fan I need is on the power supply, since I'm using a low-power AMD 45W dual core CPU. The CPU fan is small and almost inadible. Since all the data storage is on the home server, the HTPC boots off a 4GB CF card. The power supply itself is "80 plus" rated PS with power factor correction, and the fan only runs as fast as it needs to, which isn't very fast since nothing in the box makes too much heat.
The performance specs aren't incredible, and this setup wouldn't be suitable for hard-core gaming, but it doesn't take much CPU horsepower these days to run video and audio codecs.I am not a crackpot.
To my knowledge there is no wireless DVI/HDMI, which means you're probably getting the signal via a composit TV out on the back of your server, which will already be lossy as hell by it's very nature, then sending it over a lossy radio connection. The difference between a PC's TV out and an HDMI connection is very large and you are not getting the benefit of your shiny new screen if you're going to use a non-digital source.
The best advice I can offer you is to grab one of the new barebone pc's with HDMI out and build a small unobtusive looking Media PC, which can then run MythTV, Media Portal, LinuxMCE, XBMC Linux/Windows, GeexBox, or any of the other great Mediacenter solutions that are out there. I'd also ditch the idea of the KB/M after initial setup and just grab yourself an MCE remote as your main input device (they're cheap, good quality and are well supported on both Windows and Linux).
For what it's worth, I've got a 3.2TB media server based on FreeNAS with 8x 500GB drives in RAID-5. I've got a media box under every TV in the house. The HD capable screens have the Asus P2-M2A690G barebones case with X2 4800+ CPU running Media Portal (Will be XBMC for Windows/Linux when a more stable build of either is out), while the SD TV's each have a modified Xbox running XBMC (unfortunately the otherwise rubust Xbox just isn't capable of decoding H.264 on it's 733Mhz cpu).
The Asus Barebones is whisper quiet, smaller than a PS3 and wouldn't look out of place next to a DVD or VCR.
Anyway, I wish you good luck with whatever solution you choose to go with.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
So you get a USB cable that has a repeater in it.
I think the repeater is a one-port USB hub, so they could be daisy chained for a while, as long as they get enough power from the original port. Maybe have a powered USB hub that the wireless receiver plugs into.
Or you use a USB-Ethernet Extender, which sends the USB signals over an Ethernet cable. I don't think that is USB over IP, so you probably can't plug that into an ethernet switch at all.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Mine works great for this... I have the older model but I've used this product from 100 feet away from a laptop in a presentation.
... I think mine might be a very early version.
http://www.gyration.com/
http://www.gyration.com/p-56-m2000-travel-air-mouse.aspx
[signature]
Had the same situation some time back.
If one use a Class I bluetooth/usb dongle instead of the basic cradle that comes with the Logitech gear (class II) the range is increased.
class I has a nominal range of 100m
class II has a nominal range of 10m and most bluetooth gear use this
class III has a nominal range of 1m and the only gadget using it I've seen is a bluetooth GPS receiver.
Using a class I receiver with class II gadgets, in my experience, increases the range over an all-class-II setup.
Bluetooth 2.0 EDR dongle are supposed to have 100m range too, but I haven't had the occasion to see if there's a significant increase in range.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Save yourself the pain and suffering of input lag, dropped connections, battery swapping, and start up time (as the wireless device pops out of standby), and just get yourself a good ole usb extension cable and repeater. This goes double or triple if you intend to play any games at all on the TV. For just clicking on an mkv file, a wireless device will do you. But it will do you poorly.
only one everything