5m constraint on USB PC to ActivePanel/activeboard - any solutions?

[superatticman]

Dear All

 

The majority of our promethean Activepanel/activeboards are within the 5m USB lead tolerance. However, some are just outside of this. We have tried:

 

Adding active USB repeater 5m cable. Hit and miss. Seems to work fine on some boards/PC combo's but not other.

Adding 1m passive cable. Again, Hit and miss.

 

Was thinking about USB over Ethernet?

 

Anyone managed to find any reliable solutions for the above.

 

Thanks

[cullingsh]

Only one we have found is to change the cable route (go more direct across the back of the board) or move the PC.

[lostsoul]

We have used USB over Ethernet for a couple of our installations. Never had any issues with them.

[jon_nais]

we use either usb 2.0 active repeater cables or usb to cat5 adapters. for the latter you need to buy quality and not some cheap ones.

Once working though we rarely get any issues.

[3s-gtech]

Powered USB 3.0 hubs may help. They can supply more current per port (check specs - sometimes they have a single high power port for iPads etc) which may just get your board working reliably.

[Oaktech]

I've found a good powered USB hub will get you a couple more meters, if you are talking needing to get 15 meters, the only thing I've found to work is powered USB extenders...

 

If you need to get 10's of metres, USB over ethernet is your friend.

[Davit2005]

Ethernet extenders used at last place which seemed to work well.

[nicholab]

This is from Promethean: Any USB 2 port controlled by a USB 3 chip set may not work unless USB 3 mode is turned off in the BIOS. This worked for us on Lenovo E550 laptops. On any additional Promethean kit you may have to update the firmware/reduce cable length.

[superatticman]

This is from Promethean: Any USB 2 port controlled by a USB 3 chip set may not work unless USB 3 mode is turned off in the BIOS. This worked for us on Lenovo E550 laptops. On any additional Promethean kit you may have to update the firmware/reduce cable length.

 

This is pretty much the scenario we are facing. The issues are only with the newer HP AIO's of which come with on board USB 3.0 Disabling the USB3 in the BIOS doesnt seem to have any effect on the USB2 ports at all.

 

Managed to speak to a Promethean techie who pretty much went through what you posted above. He seemed to be under the impression that at present, 3m is the maximum officially supported USB cable length using USB 3.0 chipset PC's and promethean boards. Even when using the USB 2 ports with USB 3 disabled. 3m is of little use to us as most of our PC's require a 5m cable. They did recommend using a powered USB 2 or 3 hub and then extending the cable from there. The combination of 1m USB + active hub + 5m USB cable has so far proved to work fine.

 

Promethean have had a number of calls regarding this and did mention there may be a generic usb driver or windows update out in the future of which will allow the USB 2 ports to work in the same manner as those on USB2 only PC's.

[synaesthesia]

Ah, this old gem again. Promethean hardware wasn't to correct USB spec for quite a while (certainly on the older boards that worked on both serial or USB and the immediate next generation). Good ol' ethernet extenders did the job nicely

[superatticman]

Funnily enough the HP AIO 400 G1's that we are rolling out quite strangely include a serial port. We've actually taken advantage of this and plugged our older boards directly in using the serial cable! Actually think this is more reliable than the USB versions.