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What went wrong with wireless USB

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Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#71

Post by ElFitz »

We were a bit late when we discovered wireless USB had been a thing. Still, we managed to find one pair of emitter and receiver that also transmitted HDMI, power the "receiver" side with a battery, in a backpack, and hook it up with another power bank to an Oculus DK1.

Unexpectedly, battery time was never an issue. The WUSB chip in the receiver would overheat long before that and start throttling, leading to jittery head tracking.

Turned out, it was a widespread issue with that WUSB chip.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#72

Post by hnlmorg »

m4rtink wrote: post #67
hnlmorg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when Bluetooth was new, the alternative for wirelessly sharing data between mobile devices like phones was infrared. IR was exceptionally slow, required line-of-sight and even at the time, felt like a shitty solution. So even though the early implementations of Bluetooth also left a lot to be desired (battery hungry, insecure, and also slow), it was still a massive improvement on what came before. Wireless USB w…

IR with palm devices was super nice - just point to the other device and send, then confirm on the other. No persistent pairing bullshit & you could also use it to control TVs.

That’s how BT originally worked too but it got abused (I touched on this in my original comment when I said BT was insecure). The paring is a security measure to protect people from abuse.

Back when BT was new, I used to get all sorts of random shit pushed onto my phone every Friday night on the drunk train home from London.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#73

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

kmarc wrote: post #56
dist-epoch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which makes the value proposition a lot less clear. Wirelessly transferring files between a phone and a computer seems like a big use case. Still no easy standard way of doing it.

I assume this is the same "problem". Most people (not the HN cohort) don't want to transfer "files", the abstraction of the file is either outdated for them or maybe even unnatural / unknown (younger generation). They might want to transfer (a better word: share) photos/videos, documents, etc. And for those they use specific apps and "the cloud". No "files" (for the sake of files), and barely any hierarchy of (folder…

I believe in the opposite.

Because we can't transfer easily transfer files between devices remotely, we had to get used to do it via apps. And so we didn't developed good, local files browsers (esp. for media) and companies invested in the cloud UI mostly because they could sell the storage and sharing capabilities. That was all unnecessary but we're used to that now to a point where sharing files is weird.

As a power user happily syncthinging all my files between all my devices, I'm sad because files is the easiest thing to share, organize, transfer, etc. I wish iOS supported this kind apps (full storage access!) as we could avoid the many, crazy, Alps specific workarounds just to share some stupid files.

And don't confuse the file itself (say, a pirated movie), the metadata (IMDb IDs) and the apps UI (Kodi!). Files is what we have, we should share files and let anyone pick the browser/apl they like for viewing, organizing…)

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#74

Post by numpad0 »

dist-epoch wrote: post #43
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…

> which makes the value proposition a lot less clear. Wirelessly transferring files between a phone and a computer seems like a big use case. Still no easy standard way of doing it.

Bluetooth FTP was widely supported until ~2009. All Nokia phones and many flip phones had it. iPhone did not, AOSP technically did, but carrier phones often had it disabled, and it slowly disappeared.

Windows 11 still supports it, I think macOS too. Pairing is technically optional.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#75

Post by dist-epoch »

rakoo wrote: post #70
dist-epoch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which makes the value proposition a lot less clear. Wirelessly transferring files between a phone and a computer seems like a big use case. Still no easy standard way of doing it.

There's no formal standard, but I keep seeing this complaint from people who just haven't installed syncthing. At this point it's not inexistence but mere ignorance

It's not only about your personal devices. Sometimes you want to exchange files between a friend phone's and your computer.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#76

Post by adrianN »

hnlmorg wrote: post #50
nurettin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Back when Bluetooth was new, the alternative for wirelessly sharing data between mobile devices like phones was infrared. IR was exceptionally slow, required line-of-sight and even at the time, felt like a shitty solution. So even though the early implementations of Bluetooth also left a lot to be desired (battery hungry, insecure, and also slow), it was still a massive improvement on what came before. Wireless USB w…

I wonder why IR is slow. Shouldn’t there be plenty of bandwidth available at those frequencies?

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#77

Post by dist-epoch »

ahoef wrote: post #59
beezlewax wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Needing to upload files to third party servers just to get them onto your personal computer doesn't solve the case. It just injects a middleman.

How does it not solve the problem? The data shows up on the other end. The fact that you don't agree with the implementation is a different thing, but it does solve the case.

For small files maybe. As shocking as it may seem, most Dropbox users just have the free version, with very limited space. Same for Google Drive or One Drive.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#78

Post by miki123211 »

phire wrote: post #41
nurettin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bluetooth had some early success in cellphones, mostly to support Bluetooth headsets and car radio integration, starting from about 1999. It could do other things, but the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days. Bluetooth didn’t really hit mainstream until the arrival of chipsets that multiplexed Bluetooth and WiFi on the same radio+antenna. My memory is that happened sometime around 2007-2010. At that…

> the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days

Don't forget music piracy.

At least over here, a lot of kids had phones that did Bluetooth, and the primary use case for it was sharing songs they liked with each other. You could use infrared (IRDA) for that, and some people did before Bluetooth was common, but it was much slower.

This was mostly on low-end Nokias, maybe with a bit of Sony Ericsson thrown into the mix. They definitely did not have WiFi, in fact, Nokia even tried to limit internet over Bluetooth for usual carrier monopoly reasons as far as I'm aware, but Bluetooth was definitely there.

For many here, the iPhone not doing file and ringtone sharing over Bluetooth was one of its main limitations, at least early on. It was a social network in its own way, and having a device that couldn't participate in it was no fun.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#79

Post by m000 »

freehorse wrote: post #19
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.

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…

USB dongles are popular because the mouse is paired with the dongle. This comes handy in a number of use-cases (servicing a different computer, hot-desk office, non tech-inclined people).

It is true though that USB interference for wireless dongles is an annoying reality. My Logitech Unifying dongle has issues whenever I copy files over USB. I'm not sure if later revisions or their Bolt dongles have improved on that.

Re: What went wrong with wireless USB

#80

Post by miki123211 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #72
m4rtink wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IR with palm devices was super nice - just point to the other device and send, then confirm on the other. No persistent pairing bullshit & you could also use it to control TVs.

That’s how BT originally worked too but it got abused (I touched on this in my original comment when I said BT was insecure). The paring is a security measure to protect people from abuse. Back when BT was new, I used to get all sorts of random shit pushed onto my phone every Friday night on the drunk train home from London.

I guess that was a lot less of a problem with IRDA as it required line-of-sight, which limited the abuse potential significantly.

Some devices would even establish an IRDA connection automatically as soon as they found anything. I have friends whose laptop names have suddenly appeared on lecture room projectors, as their laptop's IRDA receiver was in direct line of sight of that of the teacher's.

Not that you couldn't do that with Bluetooth, some early BT chipsets gave you a " wants to connect to you" dialog box any time somebody tried sending something to your device. This could be abused, to great student amusement, to display funny messages on that same projector if the lecturer's laptop had such a chipset.

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