Skip to content
Tech News

Superbooster Extender Makes Any USB Accessory Wireless, Expensively

By

Reading time 1 minute

Comments (0)

Are your USB peripherals too embarrassing to hang directly from your laptop? Your secret USB spy cameras too creepily hidden to run a wire too? The TruLink Superbooster Extender adds wireless connectivity to anything with a USB plug.

https://gizmodo.com/humping-dog-usb-drive-robs-us-all-of-precious-dignity-221189

Strictly speaking, this isn’t wireless USBthat’s its own protocol entirely, and this is more of a workaround. But in any case, here’s how it works, I think: The powered base station, which looks a little bit like a tiny router, has a plug for your USB device. It sets up an ad-hoc wireless network with your PC by way of a small USB dongle, and registers whatever you’ve plugged into the base station, which can be up to 150 feet away, as if it were physically connected to you computer. It’s like magic, a little!

Except that it only has one USB port, is only compatibly with USB Specification 1.1 (likely because the wireless spec—a cryptic “2.4 GHz, Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum”—couldn’t keep up with 2.0 anyway, and costs a painful $190, which seems like an awful lot to make a single accessory wireless—or really, semi-wireless. [Cables to Go via PC Launches via Engadget]

Share this story

Sign up for our newsletters

Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more.