• Registered: 2008-08-12
  • Posts: 4

Topic: USB Relay

Ok, I realize that I'm probably dreaming here, but I've got a feature request that would substantially improve the chumby from my perspective. I have an iPhone. I plug the cradle into my chumby on my nightstand, and charge my iPhone on that cradle every night. Every few days, I have to remember to manually pull out the USB cable and plug it into my laptop to sync in the new podcasts and such.

  So, the feature I want is a USB relay. I envision this as a pair of processes, one on my Macbook Pro, and the other on the Chumby. The chumby side would encapsulate the USB data and transport it over to the MBP. On the MBP side, it would look like another USB port, and thus iTunes would see it as a locally connected iPhone. There seems to be a project at http://usbip.sourceforge.net/ that certainly heads in the right direction.

  I could see this as being generally useful, beyond just iPhone/iPod/etc to iTunes connectivity. Opinions anyone?

  - Jim

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,209

Re: USB Relay

The USB ports on the chumby only support USB "host mode" - which means that it can only support peripherals, not be a peripheral itself.

There is a standard called "USB On The Go" wherein a device can be both a peripheral or a host (there's a negotiation), but it mandates the use of the "mini" USB connector, and special "A/B" USB cable.  This standard is often used by digital cameras and cellphones.

When we designed the chumby, we felt it was more likely that people would want to plug in devices as peripherals with standard cables and connectors rather than have the device run only as a peripheral or require a special cable.

Duane's Website

  • nDee
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2011-02-23
  • Posts: 2

Re: USB Relay

I kind of dig up an old story, but I think what CatHerder meant was doing something like this:
http://querster.tumblr.com/#9411336044

Your not dreaming pal... Well, almost not smile

-B