Max USB cable length

[SPotter]

Im in the process of building a new house and I want to run a usb cable from the room where the tank and controller will be into my garage where I will have a mixing station and possibly a frag tank. The distance I am looking at is about 40ft....will the signal from the main unit to the EB8 in the garage weaken?

 

[Mark Bianco]

I have a 75' cable not a problem. I think but not sure but I am thinking the length can be up to 200' remember no repeaters, no amplifiers just a straight male A to straight Male A cable there are many vendors that sell the cable to any length youy want.

Mark

 

[SPotter]

I have a 75' cable not a problem. I think but not sure but I am thinking the length can be up to 200' remember no repeaters, no amplifiers just a straight male A to straight Male A cable there are many vendors that sell the cable to any length youy want.

Mark

Thanks Mark. I found a site that charges $1 per foot but once you go over 25ft they have a warning that comes up saying that they cant guarantee performance. I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't be a problem.

 

[SPotter]

how funny is this...i was doing a google search for other sites that sold custom usb cables and came across this one.

http://www.usbfirewire.com/Parts/rr-apex-xxg.html#RR-APEX-50

 

[James77]

That is my one major complaint for the Apex...using USB cable. It is so much easier to source cheap long runs of Ethernet cable. Any reason they used USB?

 

[Mark Bianco]

That is my one major complaint for the Apex...using USB cable. It is so much easier to source cheap long runs of Ethernet cable. Any reason they used USB?

That is an interesting question. I am not by any means an expert, but here is my theroy/s. I know Apex does not use a standard USB circuit.

Standard eithernet cable uses one circuit (2 wires) for transmitting and one circuit (two wires) for receiving and there is no standard for powering the circuitry. Now USB use only one pair for both transmitting and recieving and one set for powering. Even at the most complex systems that one could hook up to the Apex even at 240 modules the USB style is more than capable the amount of data transfer.

USB was designed from the start to be a smart (plug and play) device there are no worries about addressing or anything else. Eithernet yes I am talking years ago you had to manualy address each and every eithernet device. I am talking not only software but setting the jumper pins on the cards themself.

Who knows maybe at one time Neptune had ideas for just selling modules and you use your pc with their software to control everything.

Now could Apex used just the four wires of the eithernet and an eithernet connection. Yes they could of, but then again. Why did IBM come out with the microbus when ISA was the standard.

Mark

 

[RussM]

40' is fine.

 

[RussM]

One pint to consider is that the Apex system uses RJ45 for network and varSpd ports. Using the same connectors for the system bus would probably have lead to confusion and incorrect connections. Just a theory...

 

[greendougan]

Can you connect two usb cords together using a gender bender?
Dont mean to Hijack but I thought it was relevant.