Using a printer from 35 feet away ??

net1994

Hi All.

Just got a USB Caonn printer. It will be placed behind me in the room, but to hook it up without wires on the floor, I will need to get a cable of about 35 ft in length and snake it around the baseboard. But USB cables top out at 15' (I think?). Can I get a Ethernet > USB adapter? This way I could use a CAT5 cable from my router to the USB> to the printer.

Anyone ever done this before? What aould be great is links! I tried looking but couldn't find a guide on tring to do this. One option I'd like to avoid is getting a Wireless USB print server. Too expensive.

Thanks!!

RogersDA

net1994 wrote:

Hi All.

Just got a USB Caonn printer. It will be placed behind me in the room, but to hook it up without wires on the floor, I will need to get a cable of about 35 ft in length and snake it around the baseboard. But USB cables top out at 15' (I think?). Can I get a Ethernet > USB adapter? This way I could use a CAT5 cable from my router to the USB> to the printer.

Anyone ever done this before? What aould be great is links! I tried looking but couldn't find a guide on tring to do this. One option I'd like to avoid is getting a Wireless USB print server. Too expensive.

Thanks!!

See this:
http://www.usb.org/about/faq/ans5/

You may be better getting a few USB hubs connected in a serial manner.

Sam

If I remember correctly there is a thing called a USB powered extender. I am running a printer with about 30 feet of USB cable using one of these.

Sam

BradfordBenn

I get this question quite often at work, we make some USB connected devices.

The easiest solution and the one that requires the least software on the sending computer, is to get a wireless print server such as http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WPS54G There are other solutions such as the Apple Airport that will allow one to mount a drive and a printer, so look around a little.

There are other solutions such as USB over Ethernet, but those typically require a packet translator on the sending computer which can cause other problems on the sending/receiving computer. This is what I recommend to people who want to connect to our stuff.

Another option if you have an older computer (read slow) is to simply use it as a printer server on the network. That is what I do at home with my laser printer which is USB connected to a ten year old computer.

Reeka

The solutions already suggested are all good, but what I did when I faced a similar situation was to purchase a Tripp Lite U026-016 USB Extension cable from Amazon. It regenerates the USB signal for extra long distances. It is 16 feet long and can be daisy chained up to 80 feet. I use them with my printer and my scanner. Convenient and economical.

Reeka