Adding USB splitter to the tool head

[witor]

I want to add EDDY probe to my SV08. I don’t like the idea of having another long cable dangling around.

Would adding a tiny USB splitter to the tool head work?

I want to add a tiny USB splitter to the tool head, plug the cable from the mainboard ito it and then plug the toolhead board and eddy to the 2 ports available. The question is - would that work? This is the splitter I have in mind: NFHK PCBA for USB2.0 Ports HUB USB 1 to 2 Splitter with SR Cover for DIY OEM Parts & 3.0mm Cable: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

[mich0111]

Hi,
It would be surprising if someone had done exactly that test.
But who knows.
You’ll probably have to test it for yourself, but I’m really interested in the result.

[witor]

Wouldn’t that be a very clean EDDY install? If we could just add a tiny PCB to the tool head and then have EDDY connected with no additional wire all the way to the main board USB that would be great. I hope somebody thought of that and already tried.

[witor]

I am a bit stuck. I was thinking about hooking cable from the main board to this:

and then connecting this tool head board

and the eddy probe to the tiny USB hub PCB.

the issue is that I don’t know how to write everything up.

It looks like we have 24V ground and 2 USB data wires coming from the main board to the tool head PCB. The tiny hub needs 5V. Could I leave 24V and GND from the main board connected to the tool head PCB and get the 5V and GND from the uart port on the tool head to the VCC and GND on the tiny hub? Data cables from the main board would be connected to the tiny hub and then from the hub to the tool head PCB.

I would appreciate any comments about my plan for connecting things. Diagram below illustrates my plan.

[Blenky]

I would take a very serious look at the BTT 36 CAN bus to replace the toolhead board and have one usb cable only going to the main board.

BTT EBB36 CAN Toolhead Board

GitHub - bigtreetech/EBB

I am hoping to do this upgrade at some point.

[rootboy]

It might, but you are adding a lot of complexity to save two wires out of a USB cable. Are you sure that it’s worth it?

There is a discussion on Reddit covering exactly what you want to do:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sovol/comments/1evvyjl/sv08_toolhead_can/

So to answer you original question, yeeaah, maybe. Probably not. At least not without having to reroute your power around the USB converter.

[speedy901]

In case anyone is interested, I have a working plugin module and can confirm that its fully functional and saves me running extra USB cable. Picture attached.

[mistral]

That look like very nice. No issue with noises one the cable? Did you change the main power supply?

[speedy901]

The power supply was the first upgrade I did and no noise as I installed ferrite bead on USB cable.

[t3rminallychill]

Would you mind showing in a bit more detail exactly how you were able to accomplish this? I was considering switching to an Eddy but really don’t want to run a USB cable all the way to the main board, or to the side USB port. If you wouldn’t mind writing something up with photos and instructions on how you wired this, plus how you changed the config for this, I would be greatly appreciative.

If you don’t want to I totally get that though
I’m just quite novice with these things and learning as I go.

[acwest]

I ended up using an Adafruit USB hub board: 5997 Adafruit Industries LLC | Development Boards, Kits, Programmers | DigiKey
I did run into an interesting problem, using the splitter, the USB connection to the Eddy board would timeout after about an hour of printing, causing Klipper to crash out. It appears that the USB cable in the Sovol wiring harness isn’t any good. I switched over to the USB cable that came with my Eddy Duo, and the printer itself seems much happier. I had put a choke on the cable, and that didn’t help much, but switching cable did. It’s a little annoying, as one of the reasons I wanted to do this mod was to avoid stringing an extra cable, but such is life…