Talk:USB

History of USB

...as there are some companies mentioned in the history you may also consider to add that Apple radically promoted USB by introducing the first iMac with USB ports (and without SCSI) to the market. I remember this was 1996/97 and had much impact on the acceptance of USB and a lot of other hardware with USB came up that time. --Thomas Österheld (talk) 15:48, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Screw/Snap-lock USB connectors? Structured wiring?

As someone who has to deal with interactive whiteboard installations in schools, I am deeply frustrated by USB. It was never designed for the long-distance and structured/permanent wiring jobs it's been pushed into serving. I seem to regularly deal with loose push-fit connectors and flaky connections and bus extenders, where there's no solution but to "unplug/replug" and "wiggle and jiggle" and hope that it works for a while again.

Is there any sort of official industrial, architectural, or structured wiring to replace standard USB cabling, that is designed to be more permanent, with either snap-lock Modular_connectors or D-subminiature screw-down connectors?

It seems rather extreme to be taking apart out-of-warranty USB devices, removing the USB A/B sockets, and directly soldering 90 ohm twisted pair / modular connectors onto the device, but that seems about the only option to force reliable connections, and get rid of the crappy standard push-together and then fall apart while hidden behind device or in ceiling USB connectors.

-- DMahalko (talk) 22:19, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

First, Wikipedia is NOT a "solve my problem" blog. Second, I've seen some special USB connectors with screws/locks on them for industrial purposes, but they aren't a standard. Third, put Velcro around the USB connector hole and along both sides of the USB cable plug, then use another piece of the other Velcro type to connect the 2 together, ugly but it should work. Fourth, I agree this is a problem, but unfortunately no official solution. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 23:03, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

http://www.sealevel.com/support/article/AA-00149/0/SeaLATCH-Locking-USB-Cable-Solution.html

http://www.te.com/catalog/minf/en/779

I only make Talk comments where exploration of said comment would make a useful addition to the article. Due to USB being pushed so very far beyond its original use for "nearby serial connections", this is very relevant to the article, and I think worthy of addition to the article, regarding bus extenders and permanent-connection reliability. :)

-- DMahalko (talk) 13:12, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

You pointed out problems with the USB connector in some situations and asked questions, but you didn't say anything about wanting to improve the article. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 15:16, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Connectors and plugs - Usability and orientation: misleading/biased information

The section "Connectors and plugs" starts with a box reading: "Please help improve it by merging similar text or removing repeated statements". I'm tempted to take this advice advice and remove the word "incorrectly" from the sentence starting the subsection named "Usability and orientation" ;-) Jokes aside, the section really is lacking a lot of arguments. The main problem with the design is in the word "visible". I.e. To match a USB plug and a receptacle both of them must be visible, which is not easily achieved in most situations. The only use case where the USB plug design matches its expectations probably is, when you connect the plug at the end of a cable into a receptacle located at the end of another cable under good lighting conditions and without visual impairments preventing you from detecting the logo. In general the USB plug design fails to provide a reliable method for mating when you

1. are sitting at a table and insert a plug into a PC standing below the tabletop
2. insert a plug into a receptacle located at the back of a PC (traditionally the most common location)
3. insert a plug into a laptop computer without turning it around or bending your head over
4. are farsighted and don't wear your glasses
5. try to connect a device under low light conditions, esp. in combination with low vision

The Micro USB plugs found on mobile devices are even worse, if you don't have optimal vision. Fortunately, the problem can be worked around rather easily by applying a drop of hotmelt glue or some such on top of the logo on the USB plugs, improving their tactile recognizability. But such a barrier-free design should have been in the specs from the very start - and these problems should be mentioned in the discussion of the plug design in the WP article as well. BerlinSight (talk) 02:45, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello! Well, that's already addressed in the USB § Usability and orientation section, here's a quote:

While it would have been better for usability if the cable could be plugged in with either side up, the original design left this out to make manufacturing as inexpensive as possible. Ajay Bhatt, who was involved in the original USB design team, is working on a new design to make the cable insertable either side up. The new reversible plug is also much smaller than the current USB 3.0 Micro-B connector; it is called Type-C, and should be introduced as an addition to the existing USB 3.1 specification.

That explains the reasons for such a design, and the future solution. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 09:04, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, no! Though the introduction of the Type-C plug actually would solve the problem, the qouted section does not address the problems I mentioned in any way. Also the argument "as inexpesive as possible" does not apply in that context. E.g. extruding the logo by some tenths of a millimeter does not significantly increase production costs. As I mentioned, the real problem is that the USB specs focus on the visibility of the logo, which, as I pointed out above, is a severly flawed design. BerlinSight (talk) 04:18, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Some people have higher tactile sensitivity, some have lower; thus, it might be that raising the logo on USB plugs even slightly further might not help all people. However, manufacturers many times do not keep the USB sockets oriented in the right way, rendering the tactile feedback pretty much useless. I've seen numerous devices with wrongly oriented horizontal USB sockets, computer motherboards have their USB sockets in vertical position, for example, and not all ATX cases have the motherboards oriented the common way. Furthermore, people position devices they own differently, upside-down and whatnot. :) At the same time, Wikipedia is all about summing up reliable sources, not about publishing original research. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 04:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Micro-USB reliability

I saw articles tracing back Micro-USB reliability issues to its poor design. For example, Andreas Ødegård (2012-12-20). "Hardware comparison: Lightning connector vs MicroUSB connector". favoured double-sided Apple Lightning design over the "standard" micro-USB one.ilgiz (talk) 02:19, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Hello! Right, Micro USB connectors aren't perfect and do have their own issues. Such design choices probably have origins in overall tendency to keep the cost low, and some associated inertia against redoing things from scratch. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 06:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

USB 3.1 and Type-C

The text of the USB 3.1 Specification has been released on December 13, along with USB Power Delivery 2.0 and Type-C connector specifications. http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ --37.144.226.124 (talk) 12:20, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

merge from USB 3.0 and restructuring

The connectors and plugs section of the USB article has become an incomprehensible mess, and having a dedicated section on USB3 only makes things worse, as it contains a similar incomprehensible mess forked into a separate article.

My proposal is to restructure the following sections: Overview, History, Connectors, Plugs and Cabling, Signaling, and Transmission rates, and make them into four major sections tentatively named:

• Versions of the standard - should only list basic features and hardware requirements in each major version (1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1)
• History - dates of major announcements and standard
• Connectors and cables - description of pinouts, connectors and cables and typical usage cases for end users; please remove incomprehensible "connection matrix" diagrams
• Transfer modes - detailed description of bus specs and transfer speeds, including signaling protocols

But the first step is to merge content from USB 3.0 so the main article has a complete coverage of all versions.--93.80.58.33 (talk) 17:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)