anelok: revisiting Bluetooth, tentative roadmap 2/2

Paul Boddie paul at boddie.org.uk
Sat Nov 23 12:32:40 EST 2013


On Saturday 23. November 2013 16.53.44 Werner Almesberger wrote:
> 
> Another benefit of combining dongle and Y-Box would be that we'd need
> only one host USB port for the pass-through scenario of [1].

You may have to draw us another diagram. :-)

One thing that I belatedly realised after our previous discussion of the Y-Box 
was that the hypothetical but not actually described scenario of using Anelok 
as a USB peripheral as well as a host depending on what the Y-Box has 
connected, which is admittedly awkward, reduces to the Y-Box effectively 
behaving like two hubs in one:

PC -> Y-Box -> Anelok

Here, the Y-Box provides bus power like an unpowered hub.

Anelok -> Y-Box -> Keyboard

Here, the Y-Box provides its own power (actually from the PC) and acts like a 
powered hub: the PC is the power source, not batteries or mains electricity or 
whatever.

So, you have an unpowered hub and a powered hub in the same box.

[...]

> Oh, and there's no reason why I should be the only one having fun.
> The enhanced Y-Box would make a nice little sub-project for anyone
> interested in playing with that sort of BE/BTLE-capable RF device and
> enough "trailblazing" as been done on the MCU side already that this
> shouldn't be overly daunting.

You're not the only one having fun, Werner. ;-)

It does get me thinking about the notion of a smart USB hub, though, despite 
my instinctive dislike of the technology.

Paul

> [1] http://downloads.qi-hardware.com/people/werner/anelok/tmp/comm.pdf



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