Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.
Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.
I would like to share my home printer between 2 computers, I have heard that I can do this with a USB switch, can anyone give me some more information on these?
Just to clarify, you can "share" it by physically switching between one computer or the other, but you cannot have it actually accessible by both computers at once. All you should need to switch it is a simple switch - you'd need to switch the two data wires, and probably the power wire as well, so a 3PDT or 4PDT switch should do the job if you want to build something yourself.
A quick google search revealed a number of units that do this, most with 2-4 computer connections and 1 device connection, using simple pushbuttons to switch between PC's, but most seem to be $30 or more which seems steep to me.
Personally, I'd just network the PC's, hook the printer up to one, and share it over the network so both can print from it.
Sounds a little confusing to me, i might just give the switch a go and see how that goes before networking. I have seen some good products on Lindy https://www.lindy.com/uk/
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