There was a thing that was around 10 or 11 years ago called "Wireless USB", and it was actually kind of cool. It did exactly what it sounds like, you could plug in two different arbitrary USB devices into hubs or a computer that supported wireless USB, and the computer would just recognize it as a vanilla USB device. I don't actually know why it never caught on, I thought it was neat, and it seemed to work fine. I guess due to the popularity and ubiquity of bluetooth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB

EDIT: Looks like it was more than 10 years ago, circa 2009 or so. Time has no meaning.

I'm running virtualhere on thousands of raspberry pi's sharing various USB devices to cloud machines over vpn. It's been working without issues for years now. Seems to be a solo developer in Australia that's been working on it for a really long time. https://www.virtualhere.com/

The one hack I keep hoping <someoneelse> will do the actual work for is -

redirecting my steamdeck control via usb to my linux gaming rig and expose it as a usb device(s) for steaminput.

It seems like a natural and perhaps even "straightforward" hack but I've seen no evidence of one so far, perhaps there is something in usb that limits the ability to proxy it correctly.

Sounds a bit like USB/IP (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB/IP).

Is this a new thing?

It may not be well known that VMWare Fusion supports this.

I run Windows on a Mac Mini functioning as an ESXi server.

From my Macbook Pro, I can connect to it with Fusion Pro and attach USB devices to the Windows VM. I use this to program ham radios and troubleshoot my vehicle with Toyota Techstream + USB OBD2 adapter.

On Plan 9 I just rimport the remote machines /dev/usb. Since this is all over 9P it can go over any 2-way pipe, even rs232.

I'd like to get a VDI infrastructure setup for me and my partner -- something that enables both of us to run our computers with a single big machine, and not have cables running everywhere through the house, while being able to sit wherever we want and use our infra from any given place.

At the moment, I've brainstormed:

- A main server that runs some type 1 hypervisor (Xen or Proxmox, will need to see which is more adequate)

- Light "client" devices (laptop, for example), that may either be connected in a wired manner to the server (e.g. separate desks), or remoting into it through Wireguard. Each desk will feature a KVM-style setup with a docking station that offers screens, keyboard, and a range of USB ports.

- Individual VMs for running our respective OSes to our preference, some flavor of linux distro. Inputs from the client device (e.g. USB, Keyboard, Screen) should be forwarded / matched to the VM.

- A windows VM for gaming, running two sessions for each of us: GPU passthrough is a must. I would like to make use of Looking Glass somehow, if possible either through the Linux VM on the same server, or on the client machine. The latter would probably be better for performance, I suppose, given you don't have to forward input devices twice... but I'm also worried about whether the buffer-copy mechanisms from Looking Glass would work with such a setup.

So far, I'm looking into Moonlight/Sunshine as a general desktop redirection setup: my hope is that I can pass something close to direct framebuffers on an ethernet connection while at home, and switch to compression while I'm away, hoping to achieve as little latency as possible in all cases (so giving absolute priority on the host to the streaming process, if possible, kind of like an RT system). One notable thing is that Sunshine by itself doesn't support generic USB redirection. Has anyone tried using usbredir for this purpose?

In general, it's hard to find relevant information for this kind of home hypervisor setup with a focus on gaming/latency and general transparency all around... would appreciate tips if anyone's attempted something similar before. Thanks!

Does this offer anything over USB/IP?

Remember Remote Disc from Mac OS X? https://support.apple.com/en-us/101323

This would have been great for me to have around 25 years ago, when I wanted to mount a USB web cam in my bedroom window on the second floor and connect it to a computer in my basement. I was a dumb middle school kid and just spliced the usb wires onto Ethernet cable ends, and plugged them into the existing Ethernet run. That’s when I learned about maximum USB lengths the hard way, by frying some perfectly good hardware.

There is also USB-IP. https://usbip.sourceforge.net/

https://www.usb-over-network.com/usb-over-network-download.h...

I have used this software for adb debugging in rdp window10, it's really cool, but it don't meet all cases.

I used this the other day with some of my proxmox VMs and it worked amazingly well. Pretty nice to be able to pass my usb via spice instead if needing to plug it into the server.

Funny how yesterday I was using Winding Sandbox to test a software and wanted to connect an iPhone to it, problem was that there’s not interface like a fully fledged VM and had to use VMware instead, maybe this will do the trick?

What’s input latency and throughput on this like? Would it support near native keyboard / mouse, webcam or display output? What about mass storage devices?

Doesn't WSL2 use something very similar for forwarding usb devices from Windows to the Linux VM? Through "usbipd"

A software based Tibbo for usb, awesome!

https://tibbo.com/

So basically this a USB device server but you can BYO hardware. Use cases for USB device servers (according to https://www.seh-technology.com/products/usb-deviceserver.htm...):

external disks

dongles

card readers

telephone systems

barcode scanners

medical devices

mobile gauges

output devices

audio/video streaming devices

scanners etc.

...connecting a computer to a USB device that is further away than what USB is physically limited to (distance wise).

usbip is a thing, is even a Debian package...

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