Is there any way to connect two USB Devices to computer with only one USB-port?

For example: You have a USB-stick. Is there any way, to have another usb stick, that connects to the computer via the same USB-port? So you then have two boards, connecting by one single USB port...

Is something like that possible?

It actually should be possible, because it's just like a USB Hub, isn't it? The only diferrence is, that I want to directly connect the two boards to the one USB plug, and not first connect them seperately.

I hope my question is clear.

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1 Answer

Sure. You use a USB hub. A usb hub basically goes "Hi. I'm a usb hub, and these devices are connected to me" There's a microcontroller of some sort, often a simple blob covered one, and it handles it.

The name "hub" indicates a few things. You have one upstream port and many downstream ports. In theory what your little microcontroller does is listen to everything your downstream ports have to say, and pass it on to the upstream port. With USB 2.0 and below, typically all downstream traffic is sent to all ports downstream - wikipedia goes into depth.

There's practically no modern electrical protocol that would allow you to connect an arbitrary number of devices (greater than 1) to a single port anyway. Maybe if you did USB over token ring (which would be either a crime against humanity, or an impressive feat of engineering), or some other abomination of a protocol, you might. As designed though, one does not simply plug two usb devices into one port and expect them to work.

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