Wireless USB Hubs

[Euan]

Ever got annoyed at the amount of cables hanging from your scope? How about trying out one of these bad boys?

Belkin Wireless 4 port USB Hub F5U302ea on eBay (end time 16-May-10 16:04:38 BST)

It's Belkin so it can't be all that bad can it?

I'm thinking of bolting one to my set up, it will make pier flips less terrifying

[philj]

Hope its better than the Medion I tried from Aldi s thursday specials a few months back. 100m range it proudly says on the box. Line of sight I am lucky to get 20m range. I was hoping to run the mount in the obs from it and sit in comfort indoors.

Phil

[The Sailor]

I have no less than 20 usb items attached to my laptop, some in other rooms and outside the house. When I first heard of the WiFi USB a year ago I thought great, no more cables, how wrong. From what I have seen you will be lucky to get something working with just one wall between hub and PC. No, I will wait a year or two before I spend money and know it works .

Jim

[Paxo]

Reviews (Belkin 4-port Wireless USB Hub review from TechRadar UK's expert reviews of General input devices) say they have a very limited range, often only 2m, and a very reduced transfer rate which might make it unsuitable for downloading usb 2.0 camera outputs.

Steve..

[The Sailor]

Time will tell if they will get better. In the meantime I will stick with the miles of cable in trunking all round the house and up the garden . The thing is you could buy a cheapie laptop with usb and wifi and setup a home network and that would work better than what is offered at the moment.

Jim

[Euan]

I was being inspired by the Celestron mount reviewed in the new S@N mag, it has it's cables built into the base, so there is nothing hanging, nice! Would be great to trim right down the cables I have on the mount, less chance of cables snagging during an automated session

I had a feeling these would be rubbish, it all seems a bit too good to be true. It's like USB Cat5e extenders, you can find one for a few quid on eBay then if you read the small print they are all USB 1.1

USB 2.0 is 480mbps mind you, so it must be hard to put it through the air

Let's hope they get better, it would be really handy