Blue Tooth Wireless USB Question

[markrvp]

I have a buddy who wants me to make a control panel for his multimedia theater.  He's using a 62" flatscreen and wants to have the controller on a coffee table in front of his couch.

He says he has a Bluetooth wireless USB adapter that he plugs his keyboard into.  I assume there is a Bluetooth wireless receiver which plugs into a USB port on the computer.

He wants to plug the control panel (Ipac or GP-Wiz encoder) into the BlueTooth adapter.  However, don't both of these require 5v?  I wouldn't think the BlueTooth adapter would supply that, or would it?  Could I use a powered USB hub to plug the encoder into and then plug the hub into the BlueTooth transmitter?

[nobody]

i was thinking about this myself, my guess is the only way to pull it off is to tear open a wireless keyboard and take the power supply from that to hook it up to the ipac

[AlanS17]

All of the bluetooth setups I've seen have the a USB receiver that plugs into the PC and the keyboard has a built-in bluetooth transmitter.

I've never seen anything where you the transmitter allows you to plus something in. You might wanna check out this guy's setup with your own eyes. Perhaps he's describing it to you incorrectly.

There are probably bluetooth pc game controllers you could hack, though, if this is the case.

[AlanS17]

If he's got spare USB ports you could use any wireless controller. Why does it have to be bluetooth?

[markrvp]

If he's got spare USB ports you could use any wireless controller. Why does it have to be bluetooth?

That's just what he said he had.

[AlanS17]

It might be easier (and cheaper) to try hacking some wireless pc game controllers. Unfortunately, I don't have any recommendations for good brands.

[Jakobud]

Okay I have researched this sort of thing a LOT in the past for similar ideas.  To my knowledge there is NO device out there that you can plug a USB device into that wirelessly transmits the signal via BT to BT enabled computer.  If your buddy claims to have something I would very very much like to see what it is on here.

Btw, BT is only like 700kbps while USB1.1 is about 1Mbps I think.  So there are obvious bandwidth issues.  Once BT2 and WirelessUSB become more standard in the coming year, we WILL start seeing devices like this guy is describing.  But for now, I'm 90% sure there isn't anything like this on the market.  The closest thing I have seen was some sort of wireless printer transmitter where you plug a USB printer into a device that wireless transceives info to/from your computer.  I can't remember if it was actually BT or not but it was similar bandwidth.  The only reason this application would work is because the bandwidth can be throttled down and your print would just take a bit longer to transmit.  You can't throttle a Mouse or something or then you just loose data and your mouse cursor movement will not be accurate.

Anyways, if he has such a device I'd like to see pics or something. Or even just a name.

[markrvp]

Thanks Jakobud.  I'll try and find out exactly what he has over the weekend.  It is highly probable that he's talking out his @$$.

[Adeptus]

Btw, BT is only like 700kbps while USB1.1 is about 1Mbps I think.

[drivingcabguy]

if only i could get 400mbps download speeds