Identify your RFI troubled USB device(s) without too much trouble.
Mike Lewis
Even some of us computer guys struggle at times with solving computer device RFI….just like mortals 😊.
If you only have a couple USB devices then pulling plugs or tracing the few wires will find your problem device soon enough.
I have 18-20 USB devices across with 4 external USB hubs, 3 externally powered, 2 of the 3 industrial metal chassis and ferrites along the way. Pretty solid setup. Many of them are coming and going with equipment experiment, test gear, and my ham radio development efforts. Other devices never change ports. Keeping track of each would be easier if I took the time to label them after each change, but….
Occasionally I have RFI issues causing one (or more) USB devices to drop in and out. Sometimes it is nearly obvious what device is the problem, the IC-705 and IC-905 being typical. I put ferrites on those at each end with another big one in the middle with a few cable turns. That generally solved my issues with those rigs, at least in my shack.
During the ARRL international Digital Contest today I had multiple USB devices affected each transmission. Unplugging 20 devices one by one is not efficient. Device manager only told me the PID/VID of the failed USB device, not much help, though it has clues like hub and port. Problem is you have to translate to your hierarchy of hubs and ports and hub with each port. The IC-705 fix needed beefing up. I had more problem devices still. Even if I labvled the cables it does not tell you what port it is on without some help from a utility program.
The relatively easy answer is to something like USBTreeView utility. Collapse all the top level hubs and wait. Any device that changes status will expand that top level and hub and any hub in its chain. Problem port is obvious with yellow symbol. Next task is to read the device descriptions either side of it to help identify which hub it is. Then use those to determine which end is port 1 then you can locate the failed device (port 3 for example). Some of my 8 port hub consist of 2x 4 port hubs inside. The ports happen to be sequential, hub x=ports 1,2,3,4, hub y=ports 1,2,3,4, appearing as 8 in a row on the outside.
Here is a portion of USB TreeView on my desktop machine with a clean system just to visualize what I am referring to. You do not need to be a IT guru to use this, you only need to look at recognizable names, maybe pull a cord to verify where a cable actually is for verification then count the ports to your problem port location.
In my case today I found my USB GPS (ublox on Port 1 of and 8 port hub) was dropping off, rare for that to happen. The IC-705 is a regular offender. Better now that I have so many ferrites on it (it was not being used, just in RX on 6M). The last problem device turned out to be a AirSpyHF+ SDR on a 4ft USB extension cable. 1 big ferrite was not enough. It is currently unplugged, I ran out of ferrites.
Now my machine is not beeping at me every FT8/4 transmission.
Mike Lewis, K7MDL
CN87xs