How to add an USB hub to an existing circuit ?

Thread Starter

Benzine

Joined Feb 21, 2020
3
Hi everyone, I was looking for answers on google and stumbled upon this forum so I figured I might aswell directly ask my questions here =)

I'm trying to mod a Guitar Hero controller (RedOctane Xplorer for Xbox 360) and part of what I wanted to do was adding a usb HUB inside the controller to plug various devices on it.

Before everything else, is it possible ? The guitar is already plugged in the PC via USB, so i was hopping adding a hub in there would behave as a normal hub and detect every device I plug in it. For example, I plan to plug a webcam on the hub sometime in the future so I can film the frets and not be bothered with extra cables on my computer. So my PC would have to detect the controller AND the webcam. For now I'm just trying to power an arduino with it.

So here is the main PCB of the controller :
20200119_154232.jpg
The USB cables are visible here at the bottom of the PCB, the first thing that I don't really understand is what is this fifth wire on the left. I understood that the four others are the ground (black), data + (green), data - (white) and the 5V (red).
Last night, I tried to solder a usb hub directly on those pins. What I didn't anticipate is that my hub is USB 3.0 so there were more wires than what I expected but there were the same four colored wires aswell so I used those and linked each colors together (red on red, white on white, etc..) and left the other cables dangling.

I was full of hopes and plugged the controller in but it wasn't detected as a controller anymore. I just heard the device pluggin sound but nothing else happened. I tried pluging my arduino on the hub, it was powered but not detected by the PC. After that I tried with a webcam and nothing happened.

So, did I do something wrong ? Is my idea impossible to do ?

Thank you for your attention.
 

geekoftheweek

Joined Oct 6, 2013
1,201
The fifth wire looks to be just the shielding of the USB cable. You won't be able to simply solder your hub wires to the board. What you will need to do is remove the wires and connect them to the hub itself like you were plugging it in to the computer. You would then connect your board to one of the hub ports.

I don't know the differences in USB, but I'm guessing you would be better with something other than a USB 3 hub. I'm guessing it is possible for backwards compatibility to connect, but in the end you won't be able to fully use the 3.0 capabilities with an old 4 wire type USB and some devices may not work right.
 

Thread Starter

Benzine

Joined Feb 21, 2020
3
What you will need to do is remove the wires and connect them to the hub itself like you were plugging it in to the computer. You would then connect your board to one of the hub ports.
You mean the hub should be "between" my computer and the controller board right ? The controller cord should be wired to my hub and the controller PCB plugged in the hub ?

I don't know the differences in USB, but I'm guessing you would be better with something other than a USB 3 hub. I'm guessing it is possible for backwards compatibility to connect, but in the end you won't be able to fully use the 3.0 capabilities with an old 4 wire type USB and some devices may not work right.
I don't specifically need 3.0, it was a lack of checking on my part that lead to this. You think I should do the same with a 4 wire USB instead ? Plugging a 3.0 in a lower type of USB is generally fine so maybe it's not an issue ?
 

geekoftheweek

Joined Oct 6, 2013
1,201
Why not? Is that also a guess?
In a way it was a guess. Having looked around a little bit it seems the only difference would be speed related... which would still make the statement valid to some extent. If you connect a USB 3 device to a USB 3 hub which is connected to a USB 2 host and try to push it to the limits you will find the difference between USB 3 and USB 2.
 
Top