Which USB Hubs Work Well with Teensy?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Wozzy

Well-known member
Since it seems to be hit or miss I thought I would start a thread where we can list which USB Hubs do or do not play well with the Teensy.

Hootoo 7 Port USB 3.0 Hub - Does NOT play well with Teensy 3.0 or 3.1 (not tried with 3.2 or 2.0)
Running either on Windows 10 or Windows 8
http://www.hootoo.com/hootoor-ht-uh010-7-port-usb-3-0-hub-with-2-smart-charging-port.html

It almost never automatically recognizes the teensy when reloading code, even with only the blink example.
Most of the time if I press and hold the reboot button, it will load the code and run.
Never have problems with the USB serial monitor.
 
Last edited:
USB hubs in general... I have lots in my pro work. All have issues. As do the hubs inside my PC which has a high end ASUS mainboard.
I've yet to find one that works properly with the myriad of devices I use: USB/Serial (mainlyl FTDI only), Salea logic analyzer, JTAG/SWD, smartcard readers of all brands, wireless mice, SATA disk drive docks, and so on.

And most USB2 things won't work in a USB3 socket.

Flash / thumb drives usually work with no problem in anything; but not all.

Sadly, I can't find a well run company making USB hubs. IOgear and Belkin included.
 
lol, i found an cheap 4x usb-2 (with external power-supply) from a germany coffee-seller ("Tschibo") to work good.. of course it is re-branded, but i don't know more details... and it is some years old.
 
I would really like to build up a small collection of the very worst usb hubs. When I might get a chance to spend some quality time analyzing the problems is a very good question. Still, a small pile of confirmed problematic hubs, where confirmed looks like at least 3 or 4 people have experienced a lot of unreliable behavior which went away with a better hub would be really tempting to dig into. I'm not talking just replacing the hub with a direct connection, but with another hub that works, using all the same cables for a strong sign the hub was bad or incompatible with something Teensy does.

Another thing to keep in mind is the operating system and version might matter. USB 2.0 hubs are actually quite complex and managed by the PC, so their behavior can be linked to how the PC's drivers are designed.
 
It would be good to know which USB chips work and don't, if anyone has time to open the case and take a close look.
 
It would be good to know which USB chips work and don't, if anyone has time to open the case and take a close look.
I wonder if somewhere on the 'net is a list of USB hub chips that are counterfeits or known crappy in design.
Or ones that skipped some Japanese industrial alliance certification - and maybe their logo is absent on the chip or retail packaging.

To my right just now, is 3 seven-port externally powered USB2 hubs. Each port has a switch. Two of the three are identical except for color of plastic and brand name logo affixed.
I have about 10 more less elegant ones in a box. I've already discarded the ones that were worse than crap.

USB3 hubs are even more problematic. I have about 5.

Opinion: Only way to get good hubs is to buy a carefully chosen brand name PCIe card and put in the PC mainboard as an added root hub. Use the crap hubs for flash drives. The external hubs daisy chain off of a root hub, and that's where the issues arise, methinks. And I have 2 software license key USB dongles work in any hub so far.
 
Last edited:
In the early days of Raspberry Pi they had USB hub issues. One was that cheap hubs (= likely everything from eBay) lack a "TT per port" (Transaction Translator) which is the module that allows USB1 and USB2 devices to work together, instead having only one TT shared among 4 ports. The hubs with one TT per port worked better on the RPi when there was a mix of USB1 and USB2 devices connected.

I am not clear on the details, but apparently there are packet timing issues that make less difference with a regular PC, but was/is significant on the Pi. See also: http://www.cypress.com/knowledge-ba...orstt-and-multiple-transaction-translator-mtt

By the way, I have a cheap 7-port hub with lights and power switches on each port which looks like the image below. I like the design idea but it fails for a simple mechanical tolerance reason: the sockets are loose and the USB plug often simply doesn't make contact.
548881590_017.jpg
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top