I'm not entirely sure how relaying works but I think this is what I need for what I want. I posted previously about using a usb switcher to switch between 4 usb ports on the xbox for a wireless controller receiver. I actually don't need this much. What I need to do is connect the receivers usb wires to all 4 ports, except for the red wire (power). putting the red wire from one of the 4 ports to this 1 red wire on the receiver will of course turn it on. So what I think I need to do is hook the red wire to a relay so when it is connected to one of the ports, it is disconnected from the rest and can be switched to any port. Also what would be idealy nice would be an led above each port indicating weather the receiver is active or not. I have 4 dual red/blue led's I would like to use for this, blue being normal, red being reciever is turned on. And a push button switch to select which the ports.

I can build a circuit of this type, but not sure where to start and if a relay is actually what I need. Any electronic engineers out there that can point me in the right direction and if I need a relay or other parts, possibly tell me which part#'s or with what specs I need to get? I diagram would be helpful also. If need be I can draw up a diagram ofhow I would like it to work and post it here.

Thanks in advance.

This is what i've come up with. Now that i'm looking at this, it seems i'm making this relay out to the holy grail to all this. But i'm pretty sure it isn't going to work like that. Unless maybe I need 2 relays or a chip with multiple relays built in. Again, any help would be appreciated.

*bump*

aww, come on, I know for a fact some people from here eat this stuff for breakfast and can help me out. I've been trying to look up and understand relays and even tried designing my own type of circuit using gates and can't seem to find the right combo, or one that resembles a chip that exists. Or maybe I need 2 ... the more I think about this the more I lose control of my thought.

Course being laid off today didn't help either

I don't know much about electronics, but I don't think that you've explained what you want to do very well.

You want to connect one device to all four ports on your XBox? And then you want only one of the ports to power it? I don't think that that makes much sense.

I haven't looked at the USB stuff (yet), but here are som egenral ideas...

To sequentially select 1of N outputs with a pushbutton, I'd look at a setup with N flipflops configured to (hmmm, is it called a Johnson counter?) to move a "1" around the flipflops, looping back after it hits the last one. The pushbutton provides the "clock" signal that triggers the flipflops to move the "1" on to the next flipflop.

To connect the one USB port to 1 of 4 I'd look at bilateral switches (hopefully something with low enough "on" resistance is available) and the moving "1" enables one switch at a time.

Browsing a catalog I spotted the 4051/4052 8/2x4bit analog multiplexer/demultiplexer. That and a counter chip clocked by the pushbutton might do it (haven't read the the spec sheets, nor do I know the requirements of the USB bus)

/Michael

I think what your talking about might be what I need ... care to share the link of the company where you found this part? As for usb, basically you can totally disreguard it being usb at all and not worry about that part. All I need to do is apply power to the 1 red wire on each port in order to turn it on. The rest of the wires just all connect to the receiver together. This has alsready been done in some sense. The guy just hooked up 1 receiver to 1 port and put a toggle switch to the red wire in order turn it on and off. I would like the ability to also select which port it's on.

Ah, OK... Then disregard the analog multiplexor thing...

The specific company I looked at is Swedish, www.elfa.se, but the part numbers used are generic - look for 4000 or 74xxx series stuff.

I'm fairly sure what you want is a Johnson counter with decoding circuitry, as the basic counter would clock in, and fill up with 1's then start clocking in and fill with 0's - and so on. ie (0000, 1000, 1100, 1110, 1111, 0111, 0011, 0001, 0000...) Decoding the stages allows for singular outputs to each be active for only one specific state.

Look at the attached spec. sheet; you can see the high bit move along the Q0 to Q9 outouts for each clock input. Now, the 4017 is a 10 output counter, but it looks as if you can control the cycle length by feeding back the lowest unused output to the reset pin. In your case with 4 outputs needed (Q0 to Q3) feed back Q4 to reset. The counter will actually raise Q4 high for an instant, but immediately reset back so that Q0 is high instead of Q4.

/Michael

The guy just hooked up 1 receiver to 1 port and put a toggle switch to the red wire in order turn it on and off.

I could be wrong, but aren't the ports on the XBox master ports and your device a slave? It seems to me that if you have the ``data'' lines (I'm no good on USB terminology) connected to them all, when you apply power to the USB device, no matter from which port, or even an external power supply, it's going to be attached to each of those ports, which is not going to be what you want, I don't think.

there's 4 wires in usb, red(+votalge/power), black(ground), white and green (both data). The xbox has another yellow wire for the rumble pad I think. I hook up all those wires from the receiver EXCEPT the red to all of the same wires on all 4 ports. Depending which red wire I do connect on which port, that port will have the receiver connected to it. The rest will work as normal xbox controller ports (really just usb). If I apply the red lead to the receiver on a port, then the receiver is hooked up, but the port becomes unusable as a regular controller port till I switch the receiver to another port or turn it off altogether(which is another ability I would like to have).

What I'm saying is that if you have the data lines hooked up to all of the ports, it's going to send data to all of those ports, no matter where it's getting power from. The electricity in those wires isn't going to look over to see where the electricity on the red wire is coming from and decide to take a similar route.

It seems to me that you're going to have to switch all four/five leads at the same time.