vakkotaur | Entries tagged with usb

I still have the bluetooth issue, but at least I have an idea it will be resolved. It's just a matter of how soon. Seems that once upon a time as things were changing Blueman (the bluetooth manager program recommended for Xubuntu 14 and Mint 17 Xfce) had some trouble with PulseAudio and so unloaded the PulseAudio bluetooth module and handled that itself. Or else PulseAudio had an issue, but the result was the same. Then whatever it was got fixed, the do-it-myself work-around in Blueman was removed, but the unloader was left in. Now I wait for a new stable version to reach the repositories so I can update it nicely and have a system without needing an incantation at every boot.

My vacation, which just ended, involved some time in Merrill visiting my mother and other family and friends. It was nice, relaxing week for me. And I brought home a few things, including a printer and flatbed scanner that had been sitting idle for some time. Also, a little USB-cassette gadget that I'd ordered a while back had arrived. All this stuff takes some room and my desk was a cluttered, jumbled mess. So the first order of business (after unloading the car, unpacking, and starting laundry...) was clearing and rearranging the desk. It's better now, but it still wouldn't appear in Better Homes & Gardens. I wouldn't want it to, anyway. It's to be used, not just for display.

The cassette gadget replaces a tape deck and I was amused that the software that was included was Audacity. Sure, the paper said it was Windows & Mac, but the device presents as a USB microphone and I've been using Audacity in Linux for years. But it only worked if I used a USB2 port, not a handier USB3 port. Port speed wasn't important, but that problem lead me to investigate. No USB3 ports were truly working. They had power, sure, but Mint 17 wasn't seeing them right. It was the IOMMU issue again. That took installing Grub Customizer so I could add 'iommu-soft' to the boot parameters and be done. And done it is. I have all the USB ports working again. And the USB-cassette gadget? Works fine, after a little fiddling with PulseAudio settings to get everything just so.

The printer install went very well indeed. I simply told Mint 17 to add a printer and it pretty much went, "Oh this one? Can I download this driver? Wanna print a test page?" and the biggest delay was finding paper. It went so fast that I was disappointed it didn't print, only to find out it had printed. It was just that fast about it. Now I wanted to print stuff, but realized I really only had a need to print a few times a year. At least now I can do that directly and be done.

The scanner took more doing. It's not exactly new. As in, it uses a USB 1.1 connection. And, alas, Linux scanning tools do not support it directly. The result was that while the system saw it fine, the scanning programs went, "What scanner?" The adventure began. Of all the various web pages, this one seemed to be the most useful, even if it was for a different scanner. It has its own problem, which is that Avasys no longer supports the scanner, Epson does. So instead of the Avasys page, I needed Epson's download page and then I goofed and wound up wasting too much time. There are two download pages needed, but three things to download. I kept missing the data file that everything else depended upon.

What's needed? These:
iscan-data_1.29.0-2_all.deb
iscan_2.29.3-1~usb0.1.ltdl7_amd64.deb
iscan-plugin-gt-s600_2.1.2-1_amd64.deb

Once I realized that error and snagged the data file, Epson's scanning program installed. Annoyingly, it then went, "Scanner? What scanner?" but Simple Scan finally went, "Oh, look, a scanner!" and works. I seem to need to disconnect & reconnect it for each session, but it does work. And despite USB 1.1, doesn't seem terribly slow. Now, what do I need to scan?

Current Mood: accomplished

I'd been looking at getting a USB and possibly wireless headset for a while, so that I could use Skype (or similar, perhaps) and also listen to stuff in the office without it bugging Jay. Last week a deal came up and a Logitech ClearChat headset (refurbished). For $40 (shipped), rather than $100 I decided to go for it. It arrived this Wednesday and I tried it. I had an issue or two. But those have been resolved now.

My first issue was not with the headset itself with PulseAudio (the audio control program that *buntu, amongst other Linux distributions, uses). I'm sure it made sense to the designers, but it's awkward to seem to have duplicates of controls in a few places. And while it is understandable that a control for a specific program will only appear when that program is needing it, the lack of persistence of a control makes things confusing and can mean lots of hunting when there isn't much time - such as the test recording time for Skype. Getting audio to the headset was not a big problem, though I think it should have been slightly easier. When I later went thorugh this on the laptop it went fast, but only because I'd had considerable practice on the desktop.

The second issue was with the headset, or so it seemed. Any attempt to record audio was met with lots of harsh static on the recording. Muting the microphone stoped that but defeated the purpose of the microphone. Rather than fight that, I simply used the headset only for listening for much of the night. It was very easy to get used to not being physically tethered - and not needing to use the phone as a streaming device.

Figuring I might need to boot into Windows (a thing I'd rather avoid, as Windows now makes my skin crawl), I moved the setup to the laptop, caspian and tried again. To my surprise, after the fiddling about with PulseAudio, everything worked. I could hear things on the headset, I could speak and not get static from the microphone. That was with the USB 'dongle' plugged directly into the computer and with it plugged into the Logitech-supplied extension cable. I had a rather long Skype conversation that more than proved that everything worked. And this without any reboot at all.

I finally took the setup back to belgian and didn't use Logitech's cable and... things worked, sort of. The dongle was plugged into the front of the machine and the recorded audio had some rushing in it. With the cable, I got the static back. But that port is connected inside the case by a fairly thin cable to the motherboard. Moving the cable to the back of the machine and plugging that into a USB port right on the motherboard, all was suddenly well. No static hash. No rushing noise. It was acting as well as the laptop had.

I now have a properly working wireless headset arrangement. I'd like to get another extension cable with the nice base for the dongle so that if/when I move things between machines I only need to move the dongle and not the cable as well.

There was no manual with the headset, and I really didn't need one. No special drivers were needed (and disks with drivers or other software seem to be only for Windows, and maybe Mac, anyway) and I didn't need to read more silly warnings of "Don't be an idiot" written by lawyers. A sheet that listed what the light on the dongle meant would have been nice, but that was worked out as well:

Off        - No power to dongle; Headset won't work.
Slow blink - No wireless connection (Headset is off or out of range)
Solid      - Good wireless connection
Fast blink - Headset needs to be charged soon.

Nice features of the headset:

Moving the mic. boom up mutes it.
Pressing the right earpiece mutes & unmutes the mic. when the boom is down.
An LED on the mic. indicates that it is muted.

Almost:
There are volume UP/DOWN buttons on the right earpiece. Unfortunately I have yet to manage to get those to affect the headset volume. They can affect system speaker volume, but that's the wrong thing. Fortunately the setting is usually "set & forget" so this isn't a significant issue once levels are right.

One possible issue for extended use is that the speakers are a bit smaller than the ears, so these are not circumaural nor "intra-aural" like earphones, but supra-aural. The result is that there is some pressure on the outer ear that can cause some discomfort with extended wear. I can see springing for the bigger circumaural design if one expected to use the headset for several hours a day, most days.

Current Mood: pleased

"It works, but we're sending you a new one." is about what the message on the answering machine amounted to. I sent in the USB hub & card reader that wouldn't read the camera's CompactFlash card as it was still within the warranty period. The message was from someone who claimed to have tested the thing with a few CF cards and had it read all of them. He said that a new unit would be shipped, but went on to suggest that large size cards don't show up right away (256 MB is hardly large these days and the 512 MB flash drives show up without any significant delay) and that the format makes a difference. I'm not sure what filesystem Canon uses, but that I could see it at all indicates that that should not be the issue.

Having done some troubleshooting and dealing with similar though not identical issues, I don't doubt that every test he did showed a(n apparently) properly working device. But that doesn't change that the device didn't work me or for jmaynard. I am a bit suspicious of the offered explanations. Hopefully the replacement hub & card reader will work for me and not just the test bench.

A few days ago I wound up transferring some file from the laptop to the desktop machine with a USB stick since wireless networking was once again wireless notworking. In doing so I rediscovered that I had more USB devices than available USB ports. I needed a USB hub.

I checked out Radio Shack more out of curiosity than anything and sure enough they had some "High Speed" hubs for not much money. Recalling something from a couple years ago I looked closer and sure enough, "High Speed" was USB 1.1 which is higher than USB 1.0 but much slower than USB 2.0. There were one or two USB 2.0 hubs which were, of course, more expensive. I left. While my current computer only does USB 1.1 anyway, there isn't much point in buying something that will end up being a bottleneck when I eventually do get something else.

Shopko was better. I think everything they had was USB 2.0 and the prices were better. I bought two hubs. The physically smaller 4-port got put in the laptop bag, just in case and the larger 3-port is now in place in the office. The bigger one is a bit more than the usual USB hub. It has slots for a bunch of different memory cards as the fourth port, so I can read just about anything out there now. I've only tried it with the SmartMedia card from one digital camera, but that worked just fine.

Current Mood: pleased

( Painful experiences )

Current Mood: frustrated

Like all too many computer users, I don't really do proper system backups. I've never really had anything to do good backups to. That's about to change.

( The End of Procrastination )