Rocking Horse Droppings - (10M USB repeater cable)

[cpvh]

Once again, I am reduced to handing around the nursery stable yard.........

I am after a 10 M A - B USB cable (with repeater).

Now, I know that Nanny says I mustn't have these (and why*), but I want one anyway. Actualy I want another one, we already have one and it works quite well, but it was made up specialy at great cost, and we had to deal with someone who my collegue refers to as a tonsil (useless!).

I know I could get the same funtionality out of a 5M A Male to A Female Repeater Extender cable and a standard 5M A-B cable, but as this is going above a suspended ceiling, id' rather not have a join up there.

Does anyone know of a supplier who is willing to risk the wrath of the USB police and sell these as a standard item? Or failing that can recommend a supplier of the two separate cables which are reasonable quality and price?

*For those who are interested and haven't fallen asleep, the reason these aren't generally available is that otherwise people would join them onto 2, 3, or even 5M cables and then complain bitterly to the supplier if this config didn't work.

[Ian Stirling]

5m cable, pocket hub, 5m cable.

[Rob Morley]

You didn't read the second half of his post then?

[Ian Stirling]

Oops, I had an interruption in the middle of my post, and forgot to address that. IME, USB connectors are quite reliable, simply taping up the hub and connectors into one lump on the cable should work fine.

[Peter Crosland]

There must be other ways of doing what you want such as serial port to USB convertor.

Peter Crosland

[Ian Stirling]

Once the cable is in, you've got very good flexibility. It can be used to attach a webcam, printer, scanner, lava-lamp, ...

Serial is inherently pretty limited.

[Grunff]

A nicer way of doing this, which allows you to keep a nice, high-speed USB link, is by using a USB -> CAT5e -> USB adaptor. These work very well.

[cpvh]

Thanks for that Grunff I had spotted those in my search, but we're a poor school and that's a bit steep for this particular application - Connecting the USB on a Panasonic Data Projector (got em cheap guvnor, honest) to the PC so that you can control the mouse using the projector's remote. Not fantastic data rate requirement, but a very nice feature.

[me]

Try "10m usb" on eBay, and browse through the international results. Germany seems perfectly happy to manufacture and supply them.

Looks like they come in at under a tenner all-in, in most cases.

[Chris Hodges]

They're £10 cheaper from CPC. The problem with USB is that the timing doesn't work over >5m without a repeater. Unless you want to use a USB-over-cat5 you need to buy 2 active repeaters. I've tested it and it works (for up to 5 daisy-chained repeaters), but the price is comparable to the USB-over-cat5 kits, which are the _only_* way to do it without a break every 5m.

All this is USB1.1. Because these are active devices the USB2 versions do actually cost more (simple cables are identical).

• technically there's USB-over-fibre which is apparently good for 500m! Hopefully I'll get to play with that soon.

Chris