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What went wrong with wireless USB

oldvcr.blogspot.com

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Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#11

Post by kensai »

gizmo686 wrote: post #6
kensai wrote: post #5

The standard of "wireless USB" was there, but probably as in any standards war, moved too slowly and had less to offer than competing standards. Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now? Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?

Neither Wifi nor Bluetooth are a 1:1 replacement for wireless USB, in that neither allow you to use a standard USB device without a wired path between the device and host. In theory, Bluetooth ought to be the replacement for most use cases, and would simply require replacing your USB devices with Bluetooth devices. In practice, Bluetooth is still kind of terrible, so I'm tempted to say any alternative timeline where…

It used to be the case that BT was terrible, but in the last few years I have increasingly stable device connections. Could it be they simply ironed out the bugs over the years, the standard matured, and also the manufacturers are more compliant? It just works for me, no horror stories. And BT LE is indeed low energy.

Btw, do you have any other suspected reason (politics aside) that wireless USB did not catch on?

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#12

Post by numpad0 »

frollogaston wrote: post #9
kensai wrote: post #5

The standard of "wireless USB" was there, but probably as in any standards war, moved too slowly and had less to offer than competing standards. Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now? Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?

Bluetooth is bad enough that wireless mice/keyboards usually have a USB dongle receiving what I guess is a proprietary RF protocol. Some wireless headphones have that too. And wifi requires too much power.

Bluetooth isn't too bad, Logitech Bolt is based on BLE and it's just fine. Bigger problem is integration into x86/x86_64 platform.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#14

Post by londons_explore »

Imo, at this point nobody should be designing any wireless protocol that doesn't support full IP networking.

Sure, your Bluetooth headphones only 1:1 connect to your phone... But if they could connect directly to your WiFi router they could keep playing music when your phone goes out of range... Or you could connect them to two phones... Or you could connect them to your TV to get sound from that...

Basically, IP networking still allows direct connections, but also allows far more possibilities.

Same with wireless USB - a wireless USB printer can only print from one host - but a wireless IP printer can be on the network for all to use.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#15

Post by nurettin »

variaga wrote: post #10

I worked on the design of wireless USB chips around 2008 - 2010. They worked - you really could get USB 2.0 full rate connections wirelessly and we had some neat demos. I would say the major problem it had with adoption was that wired USB also provided power . (A lot more people use usb to charge their phone than to sync their phone.) So great - wireless connectivity... but you still have to plug the device into a ca…

I don't see why Bluetooth took off and wusb didn't. It must have something to do with marketing.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#17

Post by Findecanor »

numpad0 wrote: post #12
frollogaston wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth is bad enough that wireless mice/keyboards usually have a USB dongle receiving what I guess is a proprietary RF protocol. Some wireless headphones have that too. And wifi requires too much power.

Bluetooth isn't too bad, Logitech Bolt is based on BLE and it's just fine. Bigger problem is integration into x86/x86_64 platform.

Bluetooth mice use the HID protocol borrowed from USB, except with Bluetooth as carrier. But HID had not been designed for the possibility that packets could get lost: it sends movements as a relative vector since the previous packet.

I don't know how Logi Bolt works, but Logitech has claimed that it should work better than BLE when the 2.4 GHz band is congested. Also that it would have better security than BLE.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#18

Post by bestham »

Liftyee wrote: post #4

Interesting to read about the (literal) bandwidth limitations on data rates. It's something I've been aware of but not fully understood for a long time. "Why can't you just turn the wave on and off faster", etc...

Instead of talking about the fundamentals like Fourier transforms, Shannon/Nyquist and wave propagation i usually refer to human speech: how increasing the rate of speech (signalling rate) comes with 1) substantial reduction in transmitting distance as the environment affects signal quality and 2) places a higher burden on error correction (interpretation of language) that is independent of the actual ability for the transmitter to create the faster speech.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#19

Post by freehorse »

frollogaston wrote: post #9
kensai wrote: post #5

The standard of "wireless USB" was there, but probably as in any standards war, moved too slowly and had less to offer than competing standards. Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now? Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?

Bluetooth is bad enough that wireless mice/keyboards usually have a USB dongle receiving what I guess is a proprietary RF protocol. Some wireless headphones have that too. And wifi requires too much power.

I don't know why USB dongles are popular for manufacturers (I assume to make their product more plug-and-play friendly), but I don't think they are a better solution than bluetooth. For example, it is common that if another USB device is plugged close to a USB dongle, it can cause interference to it, which results to unstable connection and eg makes a mouse "jump", keystrokes not register etc. Finding the right place for a USB dongle can be a pain. USB dongles with proprietary RF protocols are usually a terrible solution imo. I have never had any similar kind of connectivity issues with a bluetooth mouse or keyboard.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#20

Post by shahzaibmushtaq »

nurettin wrote: post #15
variaga wrote: post #10

I worked on the design of wireless USB chips around 2008 - 2010. They worked - you really could get USB 2.0 full rate connections wirelessly and we had some neat demos. I would say the major problem it had with adoption was that wired USB also provided power . (A lot more people use usb to charge their phone than to sync their phone.) So great - wireless connectivity... but you still have to plug the device into a ca…

I don't see why Bluetooth took off and wusb didn't. It must have something to do with marketing.

yes-and-no.

In my opinion, this was the timing and usefulness of Bluetooth in an era when only Nokia ruled the world. Moreover, there are many other reasons too.

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