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captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

How are those that are running USB Monitors from booth to control room computer dealing with extensions? I'm pretty sure the limit is 15 ft of cable max..

Well, I ran a 15ft extension from the booth and the monitor got all funky on me.. apparently I didn't account for the 3 ft dual USB cable coming of the monitor leading to the extension, making it 18ft.. bummer

I re-ordered a 10ft extension and have yet to receive it and try it, however, I did notice that if I ran a powered USB Hub inside the booth, and ran the 15ft extension from the hub to the computer, it works.. thing is, I would like to avoid extra cables and wire running out the booth, which is already cramped for space.. any ideas out there gang?
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Lee Gordon · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 1:47 am Post subject:

I ended up building my booth 30 feet farther from my workstation than I had originally planned, so I am thinking of getting one of these:
http://muxlab.com/product?product=videoease-usb-4-port-extender-kit
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Jason Huggins · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:01 am Post subject:

Yep, I've used one of those too. They work great. I had one running 120' so I can vouch that they work at long distances.

vkuehn · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:06 am Post subject:

I use one of the extend-USB-via-Cat5 cable devices and have a 100 foot run that works fine. Keyboard and mouse. Note: these things are USB 1.x and when I tried to plug my camera in and extract photos from the camera, the wheels came off! You MUST have USB 2.0 or we can't play together.

So I went looking for an extender that would do 2.0. As of a few months ago, the market-place had not decided this was a viable market. The only device I found insisted on showing up as a NETWORK rather than among the other USB devices. When using the keyboard and mouse 100 feet away (on another floor) I don't turn the PC off... just put it in sleep mode. Roll the mouse back and forth a couple of times and the PC wakes up.... if using the USB 1.1 extender. BUT, when the PC is 'asleep' it doesn't respond to or recognize network so it was make a trip upstairs to restart the computer. Bah Humbug!

To extend my monitor 100 feet, I used old-school VGA cable and connection.

Who/What uses USB to drive a monitor? I haven't seen one of those. I don't own a monitor with a USB input. Will USB 1.1 drive a monitor or does it require the speed of USB 2.0 to fill a screen?

Ed Fisher · Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 8:01 am Post subject:

captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

so I ended up getting this

http://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1649FWU-USB-Powered-Portable-Monitor/dp/B005SEZR0G

looks great in the booth, and works.. occasionally..

the issue is it seems this monitor is a power hog.. I need about 16- 17 ft of extension to run from the computer to booth.. a 15' extension and the supplied 3' USB cord worked for a short while, now the booth monitor flickers.

a USB 2.0 CAT-5 booster needed to run long USB extensions is over $200.. already blown the budget on the booth, plus it seems silly for a 17 ft cord..

I may try a different, smaller monitor.. or if need be.. just run sessions from the booth on an iPad.. and figure out a way to mount the Ipad to the cool TV mount I has installed in the booth.. YIKES!
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Lee Kanne
www.leekanne.com

Jason Huggins · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 12:08 pm Post subject:

USB 2.0 spec say 3m is the longest run you can do. I'm sure you can run more for certain things, but I would not be surprised if the flickering is from the 18' USB run.

vkuehn · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:31 pm Post subject:

I sense a bit of confusion in this thread. Some people are reading 'monitor' as a loud speaker, a monitor speaker (fed by USB?). Some people are reading 'monitor' to be a visual device... something that flickers.

As far as stretching a USB circuit to 18 feet instead of stopping at 15 feet, quality of cable could be a make-it or break-it factor here. The text books indicate that you can extend that by "daisy-chaining" USB hubs.

On the other hand, I was having some difficulty setting up something new and when I got with the help desk / service department of the manufacturer of my analog-to-digital conversion device, I found that they are VERY SPECIFIC in their support files: "NEVER use a USB cable more than 9 feet long!!!. Never use a hub. Never use a USB extension cable.!!!!)

After behaving like a child (screaming, temper tantrums, tears, you know the bit) I was able to get a support person to quietly "sneak" me a hint: There is a new class of hub now available: The "Multi TT" hub." I did some research and I get the idea they are useful when you are intermixing USB 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 devices on one hub. There is just enough processing going on inside the hub to translate the data formats. (I think I remember reading that Multe TT is short for "Multiple Transaction Translation". Anyway, you are very unlikely to get any action talking with your local retailers and suppliers. I wish I had taken my camera along and captured all the facial expressions I observed in answer to my inquiries as the sales people asked: "Ya want Uh Whut?"

I mail ordered a Multi TT hub and I am happy as a lark. (I was not trying to extend the cable length. I wanted to apply external 5 volts while using my A/D converter with my Android Tablet... which was not happy trying to provide enough power to keep the A/D converter happy.)

As Johnny Sundance once said to me after riding into my place of business on his motorcycle from Alabama: "There IS more than one way to skin a cat.... but any way you do it.... the CAT ain't gonna be happy!"

captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago

From what I've read it's a 3 meter limit for Usb 1.1 and 5 meter limit for 2.0

Then there's this. A repeater

http://www.yourcablestore.com/16-Foot-USB-20-High-Speed-Active-Extension-Repeater-Cable_p_216.html
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Lee Kanne
www.leekanne.com

chrisvoco · Club 300 Joined: 14 Mar 2014 Posts: 380 Location: Local

It may or may not bear mentioning - the little usb to vga dongles, cheapies you can get from BB or similar... if anybody plans to try one of those, make sure your plan only includes visuals that don't move. Fiddling with a couple of them, my experience was not what you'd call good: pretty static stuff, like a page of text, had no problem, but anything that moved - of course video was right out, and even the DAW timeline - was unusable.

This may not be the case for usb 3 dongles, but the usb 2 units I tried were simply not usable for anything dynamic.

This was not related to cable length, of course, though I can also say that, being bus-powered as they were, trying to use them on an extension was flakey at best. Sometimes, I'd look away for a moment, then look back, and the screen had gone dark - and the computer would have forgotten that the dongle was attached in the first place.

I said hell with it, and simply got a great big graphics card with lots of outputs - a decent vga cable can go very, very long, and so can hdmi. If one were to go that route, though, careful with the adapters you'll need: the mini display port to dvi jobs have to be active; passive will not work.
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Jason Huggins · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:55 am Post subject:

captain54 · Lucky 700 Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 744 Location: chicago