GetUSB.info has reported on several off-the-shelf USB extenders, but they are high priced, at least for the home user. If you have low signal strength and on a tight budget, here is a tutorial on making your own beefed up WiFi USB extender.
Using this home-brew WiFi extender will help pick up dozens more hot-spots in your area; don’t believe it – we’ll you’ll just have to try it – this really works. The premise of this solution is taking a parabolic dish and bouncing all possible waves into the focal point of the “dish” or in this case, the WiFi USB stick.
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Forget about garage design Altoid Tin battery chargers, Sanyo has a slick USB charger pack that will replenish your thirsty gadgets, called eneloop.
Eneloop is the first USB recharger pack Sanyo – self proclaimed world battery supply leader – has introduced. The Eneloop name is a concept of recycling, or looping, energy. The USB recharger is compact in design and houses the USB connector when not in use.
What I like, and albeit common, are the batteries being ready for use immediately after purchase; there is no charge-up time needed.
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USB is branching out into another standard, we first heard about China implementing USB the standard for cell phone chargers, now USB gets a new charging specification from the USB-Implementers Forum.
Power via USB is nothing new, but what the USB-IF did was increase the amount of energy which can flow to a USB device. To get our geek on, an example is current spec is only 100mA of electricity to a device, the new specification increases that to 500mA. In addition, USB-IF addressed the low-end too. The organization decreeds that devices which have completely dead batteries can charge at 100 mA. This allows dead devices to charge up even though they don’t have enough power to turn on.
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So here is a simple project to groom your child into the geek parent you are. Over at Hacked Gadgets Alan pointed out a “how-to” on creating your own USB charger from Lego’s.
The charger uses a Lego motor to generate current which passes through a voltage regulator and off to the USB port. If you don’t already have the Lego motor you can pick them up at target and the voltage regulator at Radio Shack.
When all done, rather then sending your kid to time-out, have them hand-crank and recharge your favorite MP3 player.
Here is a picture of the hand crank with electronics already installed.
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The WiRanger from Icron is a wireless USB hub making it easier than ever to unclutter your desk and redistribute that crap to the credenza, filing cabinet or your buddies cubical.
“Icron’s flexible ExtremeUSB technology is the engine that enables USB 1.1 or 2.0 connections over any media: wireless, cable, power line or fiber optics.”
so given Icron are experts with USB, jumping into WUSB is a logical move.
What I like about this solution is no software is needed for configuration so Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac users can benefit from this product. The hub uses a USB dongle from the host computer which communicates with the remote hub.
Using the 802.11g radio frequency the WiRanger can transfer data up to …well, Icron just says high speed. Speed will be determined by the peripheral product and radio frequency output of about 58Mbps – not the performance of the hub. The range is about 30 meters from base unit to hub unit. The WiRanger is a 4 port hub and has a set MSRP of $395. Icron said the WUSB hub to be available this spring, which should be any day now. Icron also eludes to other high-end WUSB solutions coming to market for the military, pro-sumer and medical markets in the coming months.
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The iPod Shuffle comes with the 2G Dock station which is a little large, relatively speaking, so replace it with this inexpensive iUSB dock connector. The Essential Tech iUSB connects directly to the iPod and directly to your USB port.
The iUSB dock station supports full USB 2.0 transfer speeds, is ridiculously small and eliminates any cables. At just 5.6 grams it’s truly the best mini iPod dock station available.
Mac and PC compatible for only $10.
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The USB-IF posted a somewhat interesting TV spot on YouTube about the convenience of wireless USB technology. The ad makes sense and sure is nice to watch, but where the hell are the WUSB products? I see the ad as a motivator to encourage faster development of WUSB products while at the same time, peak the interest of the consumer. Wonder if it will work…well, with respect to getting products out there faster – I think we can already agree consumer’s interest is there.
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There is definitely an Altoids DIY underground. I bumped into an article on how to make an iPod charger from an Altoids Tin yesterday at Chris DiClerico’s website. After doing a little research I see there is a big following for Altoids Tin do-it-yourself projects. So, to service my reader group, herezzz the how to:
It’s a very easy project and a great one for beginners looking to tweak something. The goal is to make a charger from two 9V batteries and two AA batteries which should juice your iPod for another 10 hours. Then house that charger in a clean looking Altoids Tin. Couple things you’ll need:
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Crap. I was really looking forward to getting my Apple TV ($299) this month. I guess I’ll have to wait a little bit longer.
This morning I got the following email from the Apple Online Store regarding my Apple TV pre-order. Apparently “wrapping up” took ” a few weeks longer” than they expected… whatever that means.
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EPOS introduces a revolutionary twist on the digital pen. This next generation digital pen will automatically scribe any writing to the USB flash drive. The key, is an EPOS chip on the flash drive which receives communication from the EPOS embedded chip on the digital pen.
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Now that Wireless USB products are starting to ship we’ll see a lot more of USB-IF certified chips and controllers. Take the LucidPORT L800 WUSB Device Controller.
This is an 8 or 16 bit memory mapped DMA slave chip to provide wireless connectivity to 31 devices. The L800 supports all the drivers offered by USB spec such as Mass Storage Device, Printer, Scanner and Video Classes and will auto switch between wired USB and Wireless USB connections.
So what does this mean? Here’s an example, the LucidPORT L800 would be integrated into a PC, either onto the motherboard or an adaptor card, from there the L800 can pick up
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WUSB is Wireless USB a high-bandwidth wireless extension to USB which is short-range so also known as WUSB. WUSB combines the speed of USB 2.0 of 480Mbit per second with the convenience and ease of wireless technology. WUSB is the most common terminology used for Wireless USB but the Implementers Forum or USB-IF would rather you say Certified Wireless USB, but who’s got time for that.
WUSB is based off the WiMedia Alliance’s Ultra-WideBand (UWB) radio platform which means WUSB will work at the 480Mbit/s speed up to 9 feet away and then slow down to
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