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USB 2 compatibilty of USB 3.1 ports in Ultimate Powerbox Gen 2

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2022 5:22 pm
by bflachsbart
Hi,

I'm thinking about upgrading to the Ultimate Powerbox gen 2 .

I'm currenly a satisfied owner of the PBA gen 1 but a well known issue with that Powerbox is, that several QHY devices and e.g. my Celestron HC don't work with the port #1, which is USB 3.1 only.
So I can actually only use 3 out of 4 ports for my gear and I can't connect my newly bought QHY filterwheel due to the port #1 restriction mentioned above.
For this reason I need more USB ports.

Now my question is, if the 4 x USB 3.1 ports of the Ultimate Powerbox gen 2 have the same issue or are all 4 USB 3.1 ports backward compatible to USB 2.0, which is required for the QHY devices to be initially detected.

best regards
Bernd

Re: USB 2 compatibilty of USB 3.1 ports in Ultimate Powerbox Gen 2

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2022 3:26 pm
by Evans
Pocket powerbox (older Gen1) had a native USB3 port which was not compatible with QHY and ZWO camera.
This happened because these cameras do not respect USB3 native protocol. They require USB2 signalling before switching to USB3. As this single port didn't have the USB2 signalling, these CMOS cameras were never discovered.

Ultimate Powerbox v2 has 6 ports and all USB3 ports have backward compatibility with USB2 devices. So everything works as expected in these ports.

Re: USB 2 compatibilty of USB 3.1 ports in Ultimate Powerbox Gen 2

Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 5:32 pm
by bflachsbart
Thanks for the reply!

So I finally bought a new UPB togehther with the XT60 Adapter (SKU: PEG-ADAPT-25XT60).
I supposed I could still use the PSU from my old Advanced PB with this adapter on the new UPB but sadly this is not the case because the adapter has a 2.5 mm plug and the PSU a 2.1 mm plug.
I had to send the adapter back and buy another PSU which kind of sucks.

It would be great if you could consider producing a 2.1 mm to XT60 adapter as well in the future.
Thus people like me, who upgrade from a Advanvced PB to the UPB can still use the PSU with both Powerboxes.

bst regards
Bernd