alt Hacker NewsWhat went wrong with wireless USB
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Could wireless USB be a case of "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? [1]
I.e. the effort was driven by the USB-IF [2] that happens to be more hardware than software oriented. So they were eager to deliver a solution based around a new chipset that could be adopted immediately by anyone interested.
This failed to account for adoption friction/lag, and the era of ARM-based SBCs and WiFi proliferation which was already dawning (e.g. iPAQ handhelds were available at the time [3]).
So, they ended up with most of their envisioned use-cases [4] being covered either by SBCs, or by Bluetooth. At least in retrospect, standarizing a pure software solution like USB over IP, as an added-value proposition for the USB standard, would have made more sense.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument#Abraham_...
This was so cool to go over.
It does seem to be missing a pretty significant era though? There's 802.11ad (2011) / 802.11ay (2021) / wigig.
It's mainly known for video, and is used today for VR headsets. But there's a huge variety of 802.11ad docks out there that also have USB, mostly about a decade old now! Intel's tri-band 17265 (2015) was semi popular in the day as the supporting wifi+wigig+bt host adapter, works with many of these docks. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/86451/i...
I've definitely considered buying a dock & wigig mpcie card & test driving this all! Price was way out of reach for me at the time, and I expect the performance caveats (range, speed, latency) are significant, but it could potentially genuinely help me run less cables around the office & the patio, and that would be cool. Afaik though there's no Linux support though, so I haven't tried.
Not UWB focused (but could work over IP capable UWB systems) I'd love to see more usb-ip systems emerge. It works pretty well for DIY (and kind of has for multiple decades now), but productization & standardization of flows feels hopeless, & worse, feels like anyone who knows up is likely to do the wrong thing & make something proprietary or with nasty hooks. https://usbip.sourceforge.net
And not USB specific, but pretty cool that the briefly mentioned 802.15.4 group continues to have some neat & ongoingly advancing 6-9GHz UWB work. IEEE 802.15.4ab is expected semi soon. Spark Microsystems for example recently announced an incredibly low power SR1120 transciever, good for up to 40mbps, capable of very low latency. It'd be lovely to see this used somehow for generic/universal peripheral interconnect. https://www.hackster.io/news/spark-microsystems-unveils-its-...
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.
Didn't help you had to flip the signal up-down-up to get it working.
Maybe the deeper problem with wireless USB was that “Wireless USB” is an appealing word salad rather than a solution a meaningful problem.
I mean a wireless USB hub would eliminate exactly one cable [1] and onboard wireless USB requires the same number of radios as WiFi. [2] But “Wireless USB” still sounds a kinda’ sexy answer to “What are you working on?” [3]
[1] Wirelessly eliminating one USB cable already had its critical solution in a mature dongle dependent wireless mouse market.
[2] For example WiFi printers were already a thing and fit into the evergreen problem of sharing printers and wireless USB wasn’t going to improve online experience.
[3] “Wireless USB” is a great sound bite. Short, sounds like the future, and people will feel like they know what it means. [4]
[4] The article reminded me that indeed at some point in the last five years (or maybe ten, these things run together) I thought “wireless USB would do that” and googling “wireless usb” because surely it must exist but of course it didn’t really and I probably bought a long cable off eBay. But I remember coming up with the thought and googling.
In certain cases, plug-and-play interfaces outperform wireless mediums.
This post has unlocked the memory of seeing some Intel CEO demoing wireless power and connectivity for laptops.
Basically you "just" put your laptop on your desk and it automatically starts getting power (similar to what phones can do nowadays) as well transmit video to a display (on the same desk).
It's sad that went nowhere, it would have been very cool and something actually useful.
The standard of "wireless USB" was there, but probably as in any standards war, moved too slowly and had less to offer than competing standards. Are we not better off with Wifi and Bluetooth now?
Btw, is there a direct comparison anywhere regarding energy consumption of the competing standards in real situations?
Imo, at this point nobody should be designing any wireless protocol that doesn't support full IP networking.
Sure, your Bluetooth headphones only 1:1 connect to your phone... But if they could connect directly to your WiFi router they could keep playing music when your phone goes out of range... Or you could connect them to two phones... Or you could connect them to your TV to get sound from that...
Basically, IP networking still allows direct connections, but also allows far more possibilities.
Same with wireless USB - a wireless USB printer can only print from one host - but a wireless IP printer can be on the network for all to use.
Interesting to read about the (literal) bandwidth limitations on data rates. It's something I've been aware of but not fully understood for a long time. "Why can't you just turn the wave on and off faster", etc...
Interestingly one of the competing chipsets for Wireless USB lives on today... in the market-leading[1] Spektrum radios for RC vehicle control. Their DSMx protocol is based on the Cypress Semiconductor products, which are still available in the market despite not being recommended for new designs.
[1] But certainly not best. Consensus for "best" goes to the open source ExpressLRS work based on the Semtech LoRa products.
That's one thing, but what happened to wireless HDMI? That would save a lot of cable pain in literally all households out there too.
Impressive. It sounds to be a thorough summary of Wirth's work.
Awesome. Now do WiMax.
In the coming age of AI we can do our own communications protocols and leave behind the horrible bt and wifi implementations. Right? :D
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 cable at some point (or have replaceable batteries), which makes the value proposition a lot less clear.
Beyond that it suffered from the usual adoption chicken-and-egg problem. Laptop manufacturers didn't want to add it because it was an expense that didn't drive sales since there weren't any must-have peripherals that used it, and peripheral manufacturers didn't want to make wireless usb devices since they couldn't be used with a standard laptop (at least not without a WUSB dongle - which raised the cost).
Still, very fun stuff to work on.