Hmm... that's odd. Have you contacted Silex support? I can't imagine why it wouldn't work... like you said, the keyspan works fine.

Before I heard of the Silex boxes, I used a keyspan and a wireless bridge device to make my USB devices wifi compliant.

I think at this point your best bet is the Silex solution. I've not tested it with the Phidgets devices yet, but I'm pretty sure it will work fine.

I can't wait for wireless USB devices to hit the market, but that wouldn't help you out. Devices would have to be designed with wireless USB built in, and the Phidgets devices are wired USB (like everythign else is right now).

I think your best bet is to go with virtual USB ports using the Silex wifi device.

Well, my three USB extenders came via UPS today. I tried them with a 6ft cat 5e cable first and was suprised to find that it actually did send the power through to the phidget board and worked well.

Next I tried a fifty foot length (since that is about what I need for my application) of cat 5e and it also works very well. It seems to be very reliable and everything. I then hooked up an LED and 20mA/5V reed relay to Phidget board to make sure it could still power them and read an RFID device. VERY COOL!  Everything worked great still! It appears I won't I have to supply a separate power supply for the Phidget board.

For those who are curious, the USB extender is approx. 2 1/4" x 1" x 1 1/2'' in size. It is a USB 1.1 extension device. No software is required for these devices.

Thanks Amal! Your book helped me to quickly get into RFID and start having some fun!

BTW - Does anyone know what the current max for the 5V output on the Phidget's board? I would like to try a little bit heavier duty relay, but I don't want to burn up the output section of the Phidget board.

Carl

It looks like the four port hub version can be powered by an external source since it says, "Requires: Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP or Mac OS 8.6+. High voltage devices may require a 5V, 2.5A adapter, not included." I think they actually meant higher current devices, since 5V is not what I would consider high.

For my purposes the single port extenders would work better. I ordered 3 today, so I'll let you know how they work out.

amal wrote: I've not tried it, but it looks like a good solution. I'm curious what you mean by "the Phidget could be hacked so it's power was supplied by a source separate from the USB connection" ? Hacking a Phidget has nothing to do with the power supply, so what difference does it make where the power comes from?

What I meant by "hack" is solder some wires on the Phidget reader to provide power to the Phidget reader since the USB extender says it is for self powered devices only. The Phidget reader gets its power from the USB connection, but it doesn't sound like the USB extender I linked to supplies any power from the originating (computer side) of the USB connection. So, a separate power source would have to supply power to the Phidget reader.

I think I'll go ahead and order one of these to give it a try. I'll let you know how it works out.