Promethean boards with longer USB connections

[Zourous]

We are shortly switching to laptops for our classroom PC's so any exiting serial connections will be a no go. Almost all our exisiting boards have the serial connections although all the one's I've looked at also have the USB option as well. I'm looking at runs of 7-8 metres on most of our boards. I've read up on the forums and as expected 5m is the longest a USB cable will go on it's own, so it looks like an active 5m usb ext (+ short standard USB lead) or an usb to ethernet adaptor will be needed. Will this alone be enough to power the board and provide a reliable connection? I've read some people have connected via a usb cable and have also left the power supply adapter plugged into the old serial connection, but surely the USB connection can provide the power? I've done a quick test with a laptop just using a short USB connection, but of course I don't know if this is reliable, especially as I'll be running over longer distances.

[3s-gtech]

From doing this with Smart boards - no it won't work. I could never get the active USB cables to work repliably either. You have a choice of getting Promethean ones (fun!) or moving things around. I did the latter with some short passive cables, and they've worked fine since.

[AngryTechnician]

Another option would be USB COM port adaptors.

[cmssbrie]

Hi,

 

If you have a serial connection, then the board will still need the PSU to be plugged in t the serial cable - those boards aren't powered over USB.

 

In terms of advice, realistically, we would only advise to use 5m USB cables. If it needs to be longer than this, realistically, it would be best if you looked at moving the PC nearer the board as mentioned above, but if that's not possible, and you want to use USB extenders, make sure they are the "Boosted" ones - and not purely "extenders".

 

We have also seen the boards work running USB over CAT5, but again, we simply can;t support it as it exceeds the 5m reccomendation. The one we used here was by a company called Cables2Go.

 

Good luck in whichever route you go down!

[plexer]

We have a promethean activboard running on a usb via ethernet dongle with about 15m cable on it.

 

Power wise there is another connector to use when moving to usb.

 

Ben

[steve]

We've used these before without issue:

 

Hills Components UK for a single 5m extension

 

Hills Components UK for a 12m extension or more (we did 2 of these plus the 5m cable with no issue)