Thread: New Product Idea Automotive USB Hub

Haha...so you want me to reverse engineer the product? I am not sure I can do that as I do have some ethics unlike my chinese counterparts. What I can do is see if I can make a better product with more functionality.

Nope, I do not want you to reverse engineer - I thought I mentioned the word "design" in there somewhere

I am sure the Carnetix unit will be excellent at the task it was designed for, it offers a lot of features, and I'm using their shutdonw controllers - have a few of them too.....

It's only the pricing in my mind which is high - sure they have to recover costs, but a lower price-point will lead to volume.

Would be interesting to have a few more players in the market, and see if that can force the pricing down.

You really don't need more players. All you need is a USB hub with a 5 volt power input on it and 12 volt to 5 volt regulator. Simple as that.

More players (in this specialist market) will drive prices down.

The PSU design is not as simple as "just a regulator" - you need an efficient design, and this tends to drive pricing up a little.

Of course you can get away with a std 12V->5V regulator, but integration is what it's about.

But, I digress - soz to OP for venturing off-topic.

Originally Posted by TheGuv

Surely a normal 7 port hub and a 5v charger will work fine... I've got a 5.5v USB charger for the cig lighter that I used to use to charge things like my phone, camera and tomtom satnav when I was travelling (means you only need 1 charger!) and that's rated to 2a... So I really cant see the issue lol, especially when most 7 port hubs are supplied with 2a 5v dc adapters.... That's what I'm gonna be using anyway, cost me about £2 ($1 ish) for the car adapter and a reasonable hub will probs set me back about £10 ($5 ish)... So for this to be a reasonable product it'd have to be cheap! lol

Tell us how that works out for you. I tried the same thing and couldn't get the USB devices on my charger-powered hub to work reliably.

Originally Posted by NSFW

Tell us how that works out for you. I tried the same thing and couldn't get the USB devices on my charger-powered hub to work reliably.

Works out 100% perfectly for me. Did you ever track down your problem?

Guys, there are 7-port hubs on eBay. There are DC-DC stepdown converters on eBay. I've spend HOURS at work looking at power supply design schematics and the concepts behind them. They're SO simple! You get a nice efficient chip for a few bucks and then you add a few inductors, caps, etc, and it all just works.

If someone were to be able to package this as one unit... then they'd be set. I'm buying a few right now and Ill see what I can do, but Im not too good with the whole resale thing. I might sell a few off if I can, but just know how simple it is!

I know the p5usb might seem like a lot of money to many of you but we have spent many weeks making sure this is a solid and deployable design. Many of you will want cheap USB hub solutions on a budget made with parts from your garage or lab. We aren't trying to stop that. Please talk about some of those options and ideas. That is what our forums are for.
We are however trying to make a simple, easy to use solution that works all of the time and solves a lot of the problems created when putting in many USB devices and hubs in a mobile computing environment. We wanted a solution that wasn't a hack.
Key things to remember about this design:

• Integrates with startup and shut down timing *1
• 500ma per port
• 7v-32+ volt input
• Polarity protection
• Breaker protection per port w/ indicator lights
• Checkout the other specs Here or Here

*1: Startup and shutdown timings- There are lots of ways to make a hack that has similar functions to this product, but integrating your USB hub and power to the power state of the computer is essential for a stable system & USB accessories, especially when hibernating. Lots of other threads have talked about ways you might make a cheap hack:

1. Have a 5v tomtom or 5v regulator power your cheap usb hub.
2. Integrate a relay activated by your 12v, 5v ATX rail, or 5v usb power.
3. Power your hub from your ATX supply

There are issues associated with the above hacks like overloading / overheating your internal ATX power supply with 2 amps, problems or nests of wires related to relays, and the general instability of hacks.

Please use whichever option is best for your budget and needs.

Well in all honesty I spent about $53.00 on my USB Hub powering. Only reason is because I went with the OPUS 15W PSU, which is $35.00. I bought it because it puts out 5V @ 3 amps, which also powers my Echo Cancel card. The HUB was $17.00. I still have a few issues where certain devices still do not work on the HUB, but I think its mainly the MoBo being a b!+ch. For some reason i was never able to power a HUB directly off the OPUS 320 I have. It would cause the PC to get stuck at POST if I tried too. I hope I don't have this issue when I have to power some more 5V devices off some M4-ATX PSUs.

So for those that have gotten a 5V Input USB hub and powered it off the 5V rail of a molex connector on their PSU.. Have you had any issues?

What do you need to watch out for when going this route? Overtaxing the PSU I would presume, right?