PiBox » PiBox Hardware

• 1 or 2 for video sticks
• 2 input device (keyboard and mouse) or 1 (keyboard/mouse combination or Bluetooth wiimote)
• 1 network
• 1 webcam (Media Server only).

The new B+ model supports 4 ports. That means the Media Server still needs an additional USB port so we have at least two video stick ports. But the Media Players could do with just two since they need no video sticks and no webcam.

I found the UUGear 7 Port board today, so that looks like a good solution.

Ordered 2 Pi B+ from Spark Fun.
Ordered 1 UUGear 7 port usb hub.

UUGear 7 port hub works fine. It attaches to the RPi via its mounting holes (above or below the Pi). I can power the Pi using a USB port but there are also pins that I can connect directly to the Pi's GPIO pins to free up that USB port.

• 1 or 2 for video sticks
• 2 input device (keyboard and mouse) or 1 (keyboard/mouse combination or Bluetooth wiimote)
• 1 network
• 1 webcam (Media Server only).
• 1 BLE (new)
• 1 Digital TV (new)

That's 8 ports max or 7 if you use a Bluetooth wiimote or keyboard/mouse combo like the Favi keyboard. Also, the Media Server can drop the BLE port in the future if a BLE board is connected via the GPIO pins instead. I suppose I could use the RPi camera instead of a USB webcam but that will change a number of things and I don't like the ribbon cable of the RPi camera. Reducing the number of devices on the USB hub may be necessary because of the power draw of the combined devices.

This issue seems resolved then. I'm going to keep it open for now and move to very low priority and 90% complete until I make note on the wiki of the use of the UUGear board.

The UUGear 7-port hub turned out to work fine. I was able to cable a single power supply that was split to power the UUGear hub and RPi separately. The hub was setup to not power the RPi. This works as long as the power supply can provide at least 4A @ 5V. There are problems if you try to power the RPi with the hub but that may have been due to the power supply I was testing with. I used a micro-usb-A breakout board to split in the incoming power to the two devices. And I power the RPi through the GPIO pins, not the micro-USB-A port. Using the latter also caused problems in this setup.

So the real trick was finding a physical configuration that powered both boards correctly. That's done.

This has been integrated into the first prototype case.

Closing issue.