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Comment by Klaster_1 | Hacker News Reader

Wow what an unexpectedly useful article! I have exactly this hub and wondered if I was imagining things. It absolutely has issues beyond that, for example I somehow managed to make a couple of ports unusable for micro-controller flashing even though they used to work just fine. For that price, it's an OK choice to low bandwidth stuff like periphery dongles and security keys, and the form-factor makes it easy to attach under desk or behind display. And buttons come in handy when you need to unpower a dev board. Anyone can recommend a similar shaped proper USB 3 hub off Ali?

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I had the opposite problem actually I think. I have these small nano teensy USB things that are programmable similar to Arduino, but they have a poor negotiation at start. I was using these to automate keyboard activity, so when plugged in they appear as a USB HID.

This crappy 7 port hub is one of the only ones that "works" to reprogram the chips over USB. Direct connections and other hubs cause it to always appear as a HID and never appear as a thing that can be reprogrammed.

> I was using these to automate keyboard activity,

I’m interested.

You can check my own project doing the same. It's a one key keyboard that also can be set to jiggle the mouse a bit.

https://github.com/markomarkovic/nena-ilo-lili

Did you use generative AI to design this? Superpowers plugin? This is cool, but if you did use AI that’s another level of cool :)

https://github.com/markomarkovic/nena-ilo-lili/blob/main/doc...

Agents are pretty good at this stuff, I coded a bike shifter button module with basically zero experience in the subject and it works pretty well: https://github.com/Klaster1/open-elin

I did use claude code with superpowers plugin and whatever opus version was active at that time. I already had tried it on another project so I had FSM design ready and the decision to use uv and platformio and so it was a smooth run. Described what I want in a few prompts and finalized the spec then let it write it. Wired it up and tested on hardware and after a few small revisions it was done. Few days later improved the design and now it has been running and used since then without issues.

I was automatong pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in a loop with a knob to adjust the loop time. This was to protest Path of Exile potion management requiring you to constantly press that for hours near end game. Also, to be clear, this is not a good potion strategy in terms of being competitive, it's a survival mechanism.

I'm curios why go HW route versus programming a keeb/mouse/ahk macro? For example, that one time I had a build in Diablo 4 where I needed to constantly rotate abilities to maintain it, which I solved with a macro on repeat that was toggled on/off with a button press. Does PoE discourage macro/ahk use?

It was kinf of a protest against the whole popcicle stick controversy in Path or Exile. People were getting banned for using macros and I wanted to demonstrate it was a pointless battle. Yes, ban botters and cheaters, but not for loops that reduce injury.

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