Patent ID: 6898660

Claim:
A system for extending in length a connection from a universal serial bus (USB) peripheral device to a computer beyond the length enabled by the device hardware, the system comprising: a) a USB host emulator for polling the USB peripheral device according to a USB standard protocol, for receiving input provided by the USB peripheral device in response to the polling, for providing the input in a form suitable for transmission via a communications channel, said USB host emulator comprising; i) a USB transceiver, for bi-directionally coupling to the USB peripheral device; ii) a control processor interfaced to the USB transceiver, for polling the USB peripheral device and for receiving a report packet provided by the USB peripheral device in response to the polling, and further for providing the report packet information in serialized form; iii) a serial peripheral interface (SPI) universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART), serving as a bus for serial data transmission, for applying the serialized report packet information to a communications port; and iv) the communications port, for applying the serialized report packet information received from the SPI UART to the communications channel; b) the communications channel, having an input end and an output end, responsive to the input at the input end, for providing the input at the output end; and c) a USB device emulator, responsive to the input at the output end of the communications channel, and further responsive to polling from the computer, and in response to the polling, for reforming the input into a form suitable for input to the computer according to a predetermined protocol.