Converting Any USB Device to A Wireless USB using Raspberry Pi Zero

hey guys what's going on it's don here from nova spare tech and welcome back to our channel and today i am going to show you guys how to convert any usb device into a wireless usb device so let's get started now i made a video like this a couple of months ago called uh usb over network and i'm taking a similar approach to that video but instead of using a raspberry pi 3 or raspberry pi 4 we are going to be using a raspberry pi zero this time with a little tiny usb hub on top now this is optional this is not really needed but if you want to be able to use multiple devices having a little tiny usb hub that plugs right on top of the raspberry pi zero is great otherwise you could use one of these little tiny adapters which is a microsd to a regular usb a so you could plug in devices if you only plan to just share one which in most cases one usb device is enough now raspberry pi zero is pretty affordable you could probably pick them up for ten dollars for the raspberry pi zero w which is the wireless device and for the sd card it could be any size from one gig and up because we're not going to be using a full desktop we're only going to be using minimal install of raspberry pi os now using this method you could actually turn one of these little joystick devices into a wireless device a webcam into a wireless device if you're planning to put multiple cameras for zoom or something i don't know and you could turn basically anything that requires a usb signal printer cnc machine 3d printers anything into a wireless thing like this now i've used this method on my raspberry pi 4 with ethernet setup for months and it is extremely reliable i've had at the point where i had something plugged in for almost a week and it did not disconnect unless i disconnected it manually but otherwise if you're planning to build something that you need a wireless setup for especially like a printer or something like that this method will work out great for you now before i start i do want to 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allows for p2p and if you guys don't know what that is don't worry about it my main uses scenario for this sometimes is to move to another country so i could watch stuff that's available in different places that's not available in the states but yeah you could do that with this as well and best of all if you're using the link down in the description below you get three free months of private internet access so not only do they have a 30 day money back guarantee you also get three free months so really you have nothing to lose all right so now that we are back so the first thing we need to do is install raspberry pi os on here so we're gonna pull up imager and select the image that we want which is the light version and then from there before we jump into next we are going to go into the advanced menu set up our host name scroll down a little bit set up our ssh then set up our wi-fi our region and our time zone once you're done with that hit next and let it install to the sd card once everything is completed plug it into your raspberry pi and we are going to start this up right now once you plug this guy in just give it a couple of minutes to boot up because it's going to take um i don't know five minutes or so to resize the hard drives and everything otherwise you could ssh right into it now i already know the ip address of this raspberry pi zero so i'm going to be able to pull it up otherwise you would have to search for it by either plugging it into a display or looking for it through your router now there is another way where you could just arp and pull up the mac address on this device which is a little bit easier as well but i'm just going to jump to a point where i'm logging into the device so it should be up by now and let's see ssh pi app oh yep there it is there we have it xero hub that's the host name i gave it and i know that this is the device so to get this working we are going to be using a software called virtual here this is by far the easiest software to get everything set up now i do have another video on how to do it without using this software and you're manually installing everything but this is the easiest way between a compatibility with linux windows and mac os because the client works very well so first thing we need to do is head over to usb server and find the version that you're going to be using so in my case it's going to be virtual here usb server linux for arm so i'm going to grab this and copy link location okay and then i'm going to do a w get and paste that into here all right and there we have it now that i have it on my raspberry pi zero i'm gonna do a ch mod convert it so it's executable vh usb d arm now this is a daemon and once you enable this it's going to be able to start pulling any device and you be able to share it so the first thing you want to do is make it so it's bootable every time you plug in the device there are multiple ways to do this you can either use system d or you could just put into rc local which is something super easy that i could do so in my case i'm just going to put into rc.local so we're going to do sudo nano etc rc.local now in here head over right before the exit and you want to go to home slash pi slash virtual here uh what is this virtual here usb d arm usb d a r m dash b ampersand now this will make it run in the background so it won't freeze up this installation and this will also allow the installation to keep going once you're done with that we are all set just to double check everything is working with either reboot or just type that in oh i don't have sudo and now that that is running in the background anything i plug into this usb hub should be detected now so what i'm going to test right now i am going to run downloads sudo the actual client so i already downloaded the client go over to client and you could actually find the linux version so there's a linux gui version and there's a different support for it so i already installed this and i just have to do virtual here run it in sudo and here is the prompt so i have two one is my raspberry pi 4 which i call the rpi hub and this is the new one well it did pick it up but it's not showing up because i saw the two ip addresses so autofine hub oh you know why i do not have anything plugged in even though my host name is called zerohub the device is still called raspberry pi hub by default so let me plug in first device i want to try is a mass storage device it's a little usb thing so if i was to plug it in yep there you go it detects it as a usb flash drive and if i go to use this device yep there you go it shows up ex-7 that's when i was installing esx7 onto the raspberry pi but it does show up and i can see all the files and this is doing it completely wireless over the raspberry pi zero so it is working now i am going to eject this device and i'll close this out and i stop using this device okay i'm gonna unplug this and i'm gonna plug in uh xbox controller this is the old 360 xbox controller that uses usb i actually still use this guy all the time for any games uh let's plug this in there you go it says controller use this device okay do i have any i know it's working but i don't think i have anything to test controllers on um ubuntu like how windows would have it let's say sudo app install js test gtk so if this is correct and i don't have this on microsoft drivers i should be able to work with the xbox controller okay js test gtk it does detect my xbox there you go and if i was to go here yeah look at that everything is working all the buttons pressed and it's actually very responsive on all these buttons there we have it guys if you wanted to test any other controllers maybe let's see if i unplug this guy will it disable it virtual here doesn't see it anymore i thought this would pick it up but let's try our joystick so if i plug in this joystick there you go t flight hosted hold us i'm gonna pop this in use this device used by you let's uh run this joystick again there you go thrustmaster and double click yeah all the controls are working if i was to click now i fully have a wireless joystick setup or wireless controller or wireless mass storage device if i needed to or usb camera whatever it may be i'm running everything through this little raspberry pi zero anyway that is it for me guys i did really enjoy doing this because i do have use for this i do have a driving simulator set up with the steering wheels gas pedals and everything and if i hook it together up with my vr this would be great to be able to run all the wires wirelessly because you got the hand brake pedals um everything you don't add it up together this would be great now also virtual here client is demo so you're only allowed to use one device at one time or at that time so if you really needed to you could purchase the full license from virtual here and you could handle as many devices as you want but in my case it really depends what you're going to be using it for and it is locked if you get the if you do purchase the license it is locked to this device so you can install it on somewhere else and hoping it will work anyway if you guys have any questions about this hit it down in the comments below if you guys are new to this channel consider subscribing also hit that bell notification icon so you know when the next video is going to be out and that's saying my nerd cave hack till it hurts

Channel: Novaspirit Tech

Views: 61,728

Keywords: novaspirit, tech, raspberry pi zero projects, raspberry pi zero usb wifi, usb wifi, share usb over network, share usb over wireless network, wireless network, wireless usb, usb hub, make any usb device wireless, usb over network, network usb, wireless usb hub

Id: I5zA1lU5Tw0

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Bearsiwin]

I have a single 15 meter active USB 3 cable and a powered hub at the rig. That works. I would,be concerned about this for wheel feedback for example. Mouse and keyboard no problem but it’s cheap to rig up. Not a big investment though, especially if you are a pi man.

[u/Pafkata-LdR]

I am in the process of building new 8020 rig, using Quest 2 with AirLink and was wondering if it is possible to make wheel, pedals and shifter wireless.

Does anyone have any experience with this? How is the latency? Is it stable enough for simracing?