Transparent USB splitter for input devices

Abstract

This paper presents a system whose purpose is to distribute input data from a single source to two outputs. This device acts as an inverse USB hub because it distributes information from a single data source to multiple end-devices. The Universal Serial Bus specifications do not make any provisions for multicast data distribution. The advantage of the system consists in simplifying the transmission process by decreasing the number of devices used in distribution and thus reducing the potential for errors as well as gaining valuable production time by parallelizing an otherwise sequential process. The purpose is to reduce the number of barcode scanners needed to input one product into multiple systems. Considering the fact that almost every scanner works in Human Interface Device mode, the system can be tested using a regular keyboard. The input should appear duplicated on each connected PC. The device will have an USB type A input and two USB type B outputs. The project consists of building and configuring such a splitting device.