USB controls...problem?

[Biggles]

Well, I was wrong. It wasn't 95% fixed. In fact last couple of days it's been worse (or seemed like it). But, my controllers work perfectly in FSX. Why not AH? So I looked at my controller settings in AH. Even though I don't have any force feedback controllers, I decided to click on that option anyway. Turns out force feedback was turned on. I never turned it on myself so it must have installed that way when I reinstalled AH after getting my new computer at the beginning of the year. I turned off force feedback and now everything is 100% as it should be. I've even gone back to using my USB keyboard and mouse without problem. So it wasn't a USB problem after all. 

[morfiend]

Biggs,  glad you got it sorted out,I'd still use the hub for your flight controls.That way you can leave all the other usb stuff plugged in and not worry about your controls getting the required power.





   

 PS: I sort of knew that AckAck,that JS followed an industry standard,but I dont always explain myself as elegantly as others. If you read my post again I did mention "depending on PSU and/or MB" but you explained it much better than I did.

[Biggles]

Biggs,  glad you got it sorted out,I'd still use the hub for your flight controls.That way you can leave all the other usb stuff plugged in and not worry about your controls getting the required power.

Thanks, morfiend, I definitely will still get a powered hub.



   

 PS: I sort of knew that AckAck,that JS followed an industry standard,but I dont always explain myself as elegantly as others. If you read my post again I did mention "depending on PSU and/or MB" but you explained it much better than I did.

[RTHolmes]

... I'd still use the hub for your flight controls.That way you can leave all the other usb stuff plugged in and not worry about your controls getting the required power.

I do it the other way round - X52 is the only thing using onboard USB, everything else on a hub. reason is that a USB hub introduces additional latency and my reactions are slow enough as it is . I'd also use onboard USB for TrackIR for the same reason.

I suspect the problems people have with sticks and USB has nothing to do with power but the USB controller getting overwhelmed with data, just because that 5V is also powering all your drives, PS ports, audio, mobo, PCI and GPU etc ...

 

[morfiend]

I do it the other way round - X52 is the only thing using onboard USB, everything else on a hub. reason is that a USB hub introduces additional latency and my reactions are slow enough as it is . I'd also use onboard USB for TrackIR for the same reason.

I suspect the problems people have with sticks and USB has nothing to do with power but the USB controller getting overwhelmed with data, just because that 5V is also powering all your drives, PS ports, audio, mobo, PCI and GPU etc ...

 

 Interesting, it hadn't occured to me about the latency issue with using a hub. I guess I've been running a hub for so long that I dont notice any difference but I'm willing to accept this could be an issue.

  Is there any USB controllers that are better than others? Is it possible to install a controller or make changes that can increase the performance of any of the USB ports?




   

[bj229r]

I dug into my pile of cables running through the desk and found my stick and pedals ARE plugged into a powered hub, sharing a printer (2nd hub, on other end of desk, has mouse, keyboard...couple of flying leads for phone, mp3 player, gps, etc....the latter aren't plugged in whilst I'm playing) I'm quite certain my deal is something bogging down the bus, have heard that strange 'ding-dong' sound in-game, which indicates something has been removed from USB....anyhow, last few times up, I've calibrated in Windows, then in-game, and killed printer, and things seem ok.....other than people shooting me down, of course. That problem seems a bit more complex

[gyrene81]

   you have a lot of stuff plugged into that system, even on powered hubs.

[hyzer]

 Interesting, it hadn't occured to me about the latency issue with using a hub. I guess I've been running a hub for so long that I dont notice any difference but I'm willing to accept this could be an issue.

  Is there any USB controllers that are better than others? Is it possible to install a controller or make changes that can increase the performance of any of the USB ports?
   

Wow, what a can of worms that questioned opened for me.  I goggled a bit looking for any clues.  I eventually came back to Wikipedia since I could mostly understand it  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

I'll try and hit the high points of the entry, what follows is my edited version:

USB was designed to accommodate hubs, no mention I could find about powered hubs.  It is a tiered star topology allowing branching with up to 127 devices per host controller.  Communication is based on pipes (logical channels). A pipe is a connection from the host controller to a logical entity, found on a device, and named an endpoint. A pipe correspond 1-to-1 to endpoints.  

There are two types of pipes: stream and message pipes depending on the type of data transfer.  I assume the pipe we are using with our joysticks is a stream interrupt transfer pipe, these are devices that need guaranteed quick responses.  An endpoint of a pipe is addressable with its device_address, endpoint_number.

When a USB device is first connected to a USB host, the USB device enumeration process is started. The enumeration starts by sending a reset signal to the USB device, the devices on the bus are assigned a unique 7-bit address.

In USB 2.0, the host controller polls the bus for traffic, usually in a round-robin fashion. The slowest device connected to a controller sets the bandwidth of the interface.

From my understanding of the above, whether a hub is involved or not really doesn't matter since the device is being addressed directly by the host controller.  What matters most in getting the best performance out of USB is the fact that the slowest device on the bus controls the bandwidth of the interface, and the number of devices on the bus since it is polled round-robin.

For best performance only have the joystick connected to the hub.

Hopefully some USB engineer can read this and comment one way or another.


  

[Tigger29]

I do it the other way round - X52 is the only thing using onboard USB, everything else on a hub. reason is that a USB hub introduces additional latency and my reactions are slow enough as it is . I'd also use onboard USB for TrackIR for the same reason.

I suspect the problems people have with sticks and USB has nothing to do with power but the USB controller getting overwhelmed with data, just because that 5V is also powering all your drives, PS ports, audio, mobo, PCI and GPU etc ...

 

Actually it's not the hub itself that introduces the latency - it's the excessive number of devices that people often have installed into them that does it.  If you have a hub with only the X52 plugged into it then it would not have any more latency than plugging it into the computer directly (and ESPECIALLY not enough to even be remotely noticeable).

I have my G940, my BU0836 controller and my TrackIR all plugged into one hub.  I get no lag whatsoever!  I even had my USB headset installed into that same hub (but not since I upgraded to a non-USB one)!

Personally I think you're just being a bit over-paranoid about it.  I'd rather benefit by taking the load off of the computer's power supply than by reducing insignificant lag...

[RTHolmes]

everything in the data chain introduces latency, from almost none (eg. a short optical link) to lots where a device's processing is slow. it all adds to the input lag, whether you notice it or not. how much latency a domestic powered USB hub controller adds when its jugling mice, keyboards, phones, printers and a stick I have no idea, but it could be significant.

as for power I'd be interested to know how sticks draw, given the USB spec is max 0.5A per port  

(my X52 pro reports 230mA required)

[bj229r]

  you have a lot of stuff plugged into that system, even on powered hubs.

It's mostly just cables with nothing hooked to them

[Biggles]

I've purchased a nice powered hub, will install it and try it both ways (joystick and pedals on the hub, then switch to everything else on the hub) and see what happens.

Too bad there's no way of actually testing all this via some sort of benchmarking utility....or is there?

[Tigger29]

everything in the data chain introduces latency, from almost none (eg. a short optical link) to lots where a device's processing is slow. it all adds to the input lag, whether you notice it or not. how much latency a domestic powered USB hub controller adds when its jugling mice, keyboards, phones, printers and a stick I have no idea, but it could be significant.

as for power I'd be interested to know how sticks draw, given the USB spec is max 0.5A per port  

(my X52 pro reports 230mA required)

While technically correct you make it sound like having a hub is going to slow everything down to a crawl.  The truth is that having a joystick plugged into the computer is not going to have any more (discernable) amount of latency than a joystick that is plugged into a powered hub that is plugged into the computer.  Now if you have twenty other devices plugged into that same hub along with the joystick then latency can become a problem but the hub itself is not an issue.

And while the USB spec may be 0.5A per port (500mA) when you run into a power supply that is starting to fail.. or is simply cheap and not built to spec it can sometimes not provide enough power for the USB ports to be able to provide the full 500mA required.  Even if it does supply enough amperage the power supply might not be stable resulting in voltage fluctuations that can affect the accuracy of your devices.  From what I've seen the 5V supply from the power supply is often its weakest point and the first to fail when a power supply goes south.  Even through working on computers as a hobby I can think of six cases where a new power supply fixed issues people were having with external hard drives not working or peripherals not working correctly due to a low amount of amperage available at the USB ports.

Even my dad's computer was having problems recognizing several USB thumb drives.  It was hit-or-miss (usually miss) even with thumb drives that worked correctly on other computers.  Then he kept complaining about his wireless keyboard eating batteries.  He said that every few days he was replacing it's AAA batteries to get it to work.  Honestly I think he was throwing away a bunch of perfectly good AAAs because after replacing his power supply his keyboard didn't require new batteries for another 14 months!  Also after doing that he's never had a problem with flash drives since!

In my opinion using a powered hub is CHEAP INSURANCE against overstressing the 5V circuit of the power supply.  It also helps somewhat to prevent voltage spikes and shorts in devices from frying the motherboard and/or power supply.  It can also act as a band-aid to allow you to use powered devices in lieu of a borderline or failing power supply.  If these things were expensive it'd be a different story but it's not difficult to find a decent powered hub for under ten dollars.

And in my opinion, the extra latency induced by having a hub installed between a joystick and a computer is so negligable that it doesn't even come close to being a deciding factor in whether or not to use one.

[Biggles]

Right now I have my flight controls plugged into my new hub, and everything works flawlessly, absolutely no perceptible in-game lag of any sort. Happy camper.

[morfiend]

Right now I have my flight controls plugged into my new hub, and everything works flawlessly, absolutely no perceptible in-game lag of any sort. Happy camper.

 great to hear this Biggs.