Can I solder an USB peripheral to an USB port?

Question

I am using a wireless mouse and keyboard. They have dongle that I have to plug to USB port. By doing so, one or more of my USB ports will occupied. I can not use them anymore. One thing and the most important about the dongle, when I closed my laptop and move to another place (like back home from office or vice versa), sometimes I left my dongle, I forget. That was very disturbing. So does when I would like to add more storage memory, I would like to install Linux Ubuntu on a flash memory. I don't want to spend my time to have to remember to bring the flash memory anytime I go. So, I would like to just soldier those peripherals to the USB port and put them inside my laptop case (more or less like a liveUSB). I found a space there to place the small USB flash memory.

Then my question is, Can I do it? I use Windows OS as my primary system, and Ubuntu will be secondary. Will adding that USB peripheral will disturb the USB's function?

Answer 1

As GoGoCrash stated, it is not possible to use a single USB port with 2 (or more) devices in parallel, so even if you open the computer and solder the devices directly to the USB ports, you will have to lose an usb port for every device you solder this way. A hub is used when this behavior is needed.

With a desktop pc, it is easier, because you are likely to have some spare internal USB headers to solder the devices to, and even if that is not the case, you have space to fit an usb hub inside the case so only one port needs to be "sacrificed".

My suggestion for your case is just don't do anything. Unless you have plenty of usb ports to afford losing 2 of them and the will and time to do some DIY.

Answer 2

Perhaps a better solution is to configure the system to dual-boot either Windows or linux from the system's hard/SSD system drive.

It would surely be possible to crack the system open and solder a USB drive to an available USB port, but you'd almost have to epoxy that USB socket shut permanently for safety. Two USB devices can't occupy the same port and it would be easy to forget that port is permanently in use by the now-internal USB drive.

Answer 3

As other answers mentioned, you can't have two devices connected to the same USB port. However, you can add a USB hub on one port, connect your keyboard/mouse dongles through it.

If you cut the data lines of one external USB port, put a USB hub on those lines, then connect one of hub's USBs to the external port (assuming you do it all with screened twisted wires), you could technically put few devices permanently into your notebook (also assuming you can fit all of those - the USB hub, the dongles, a thumb-drive, and all of the wiring under the case).

But you should consider if doing this is really worth it.

• You are risking damage if you don't know how to do it.
• If you do complete all the soldering without problem, you have few more devices permanently connected to your notebook, which decreases run-time on batteries.

If on the other hand you want also a bootable linux system, you probably would be better off buying an SSD with more capacity and dual booting, as booting from the USB thumb drive is not going to be a comfortable long time solution.

As a conclusion - yes you can probably solder and fit all of those parts in, and you most likely shouldn't.