USB Passthrough on Roombar

[Neunghwi Kim]

Hi everyone,

Has anyone tried to use the USB Passthrough feature with Roombar? 

I have connected the Roombar and my laptop using a USB 3.1 C-to-C cable and it works fine.(Camera, Speaker, Microphones are all recognized by the laptop)

However, also tried connecting the device and my laptop using USB 3.1 C-to-A cable and it doesn't work.(Camera, Microphones are recognized, but the Speaker doesn't appear.)

Does the Roombar only support USB C-to-C?  

[Wayne DeNardi]

Yes, it needs to be USB-C, and further to that, the USB-C port you use also needs to support USB-C Display Port Alternate Mode.  Not all laptop or PC devices support this.   

[Neunghwi Kim]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for the reply.

However, RoomKit Mini supports USB Passthrough by using USB C-to-A cable. We have already deployed some sites like this.

So I thought that Roombar would also support the same.

Do you know have any clear information about the difference between these two devices?

[Andyt73]

Hi, we are having a similar issue currently, I wondered if you found a resolution to this please?

[Neunghwi Kim]

Hi Andy,

As Wayne mentioned above, Roombar needs USB-C DP Alt mode.

I have got some more information from Cisco that Roombar uses 2 channels to send video and audio with USB-C(each channel is used by video and audio) but USB-A doesn't have a standard to support this. By using USB-A cables, you would need to connect HDMI cable to Roombar to use the internal speaker.

I have also heard that there would be a new version of Roombar released this year, which fully supports USB passthrough by USB-A type cables. However the hardware would be changed, not by just only updating the firmware.

Hope that this information could be helpful for you.

[Andyt73]

Hi, 

That is great feedback, thank you for the information it's really helpful and explains the issues we are seeing.

Thanks