Most desktop USB hubs are slabs of plastic with a few ports and nothing else to show for it. The Halo Touch V2 from Innoelement takes a different approach, embedding a 360 x 360 circular IPS touchscreen, a 360-degree rotary encoder with haptic feedback, and per-port power monitoring into a compact dock that also happens to offer two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a USB 2.0 Type-C downstream port, dual microSD card readers, and a Realtek RTL8152-based 100 Mbps Ethernet port. The RTL8152 is supported in the mainline Linux kernel via the r8152 driver, which ships enabled in all major distributions and requires no additional setup. The device is believed to run on an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, putting it in the same family as popular maker boards from M5Stack and Waveshare, though Innoelement has not confirmed the exact MCU.
The rotary encoder doubles as a Microsoft Surface Dial on Windows 10 and 11 (firmware v1.3.0 or later), registering as a standard HID device that any application listening for scroll or keystroke events can use. Built-in firmware applications include an AIDA64 hardware monitoring dashboard that pulls live system stats over Wi-Fi, an MP3 player with a knob-controlled winding mechanism, a real-time audio spectrum visualizer driven by the onboard microphone, and a Pomodoro timer with haptic vibration alerts. A 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n radio handles clock synchronization and over-the-air firmware updates, while network credentials are configured through a plain wifi.txt file on the microSD card.
Customization leans on straightforward file replacement rather than any companion app. Photos, MJPEG animations, MP3s, AIDA64 backgrounds, and boot animations all live in dedicated folders on a microSD card, so swapping content is as simple as dragging files into /mjpeg, /pic, /music, or /aida64. Per-port power monitoring displays real-time voltage, current, and wattage for each downstream USB port, with a software-configurable overcurrent protection threshold from 0 to 1000 mA. One important caveat: the device uses a mechanical toggle switch to select between PC-powered and USB PD-powered modes, and plugging a high-voltage PD charger into the wrong Type-C port can send 12 V to 20 V into the board and destroy it. The user manual (currently available only in Chinese) details the correct procedure.
Round-display rotary knob devices built on ESP32-S3 hardware are increasingly common in the maker world, with options like the M5Stack M5Dial and Waveshare ESP32-S3-Knob-Touch-LCD offering open development platforms for custom firmware. The Halo Touch V2 stands apart by integrating that concept directly into a functional USB hub, though it comes with a notable trade-off for the open-source-minded: the firmware source code does not appear to be publicly available, limiting tinkering to file-based customization rather than full reprogramming. The Surface Dial functionality is likewise a Windows-exclusive feature, with no equivalent open-source host integration currently available for the device.
The Halo Touch V2 is listed on Tindie at $70 (€64), with tracked international shipping starting at $18 (€17). Innoelement describes it as a DIY project without formal product certifications, so buyers should expect a hobbyist-grade experience rather than a polished consumer product.
