What kind of USB hub am I looking for?
So I bought this caldigit hub along with this USB hub.
I originally had the Aceele connect to my computer through the CalDigit Hub, but when I connected my keyboard to my Aceele, I noticed that when I hit F11, the boot menu doesn't get activated.
I connected my keyboard to the caldigit hub directly though and was able to pull up the boot menu just fine.
Then I connect my keyboard to the Aceele hub and then connected that directly to my computer and it still was not able to connect my keyboard to the computer pre-OS boot. So clearly Aceele waits till the OS is actually up before it can connect (I think?)
However, I don't know what tech specs to look for in a hub that ensure that anything I connect to it will be detected pre OS-boot. I am looking for a hub that specifically plugs into a USB-C port, has 4 USB-A ports and is USB 3.2 gen with 10 gbps. Is that possible?
I suspect that the spec you're looking for is the IC that is being used inside the hub to do the usb multiplexing. Short of contacting the manufacturer before purchasing, I don't know how to figure that out.
I had to go down that rabbit hole with a project I needed some specific USB4 tunnelling capabilities for a year or so ago! Was a bit easier in my case because I at least knew precisely the spec I was looking for, but the trick turned out to be finding the IC names in AliExpress listings and then mapping those to the sellers that were rebadging them for the local market. Definitely wouldn't be my recommended option if it can be avoided, though...
That sounds awful.
This is likely caused by a BIOS security setting which blocks Thunderbolt from completing any handshakes or connections in the pre-boot environment, not anything specific to your dock. You will almost certainly see the exact same behaviour from any other Thunderbolt dock without updating this setting.
If you give your computer's model I can look around for which setting you need to change.
Edit: I definitely misunderstood the issue. Looking into this more. Do you have a different USB hub you can plug into the dock and test with, even an old 2.0 hub?
Edit: just for giggles, poke around for the setting I was thinking of and see if it changes anything. Discussed here: https://fedoramagazine.org/thunderbolt-how-to-use-keyboard-during-boot-time/
Might be worth disabling fast boot in the BIOS if it's on by default, it's possible that's causing a step to be skipped that would otherwise initialise the Aceele hub correctly. I'd also suggest a BIOS update if there's one available for your board, this is exactly the kind of controller chip issue that sometimes gets caught and fixed because it's exposed some weird edge case in the manufacturer's USB implementation.
That said, it could just be that the implementation in the hub isn't properly compliant - or that the motherboard's USB implementation is the issue but it's a rare enough set of circumstances that it won't be caught/fixed. There's a reason the CalDigit ones are 20x the price, unfortunately, but if you can be bothered ordering and returning five different cheap ones that look plausibly different from each other you might get still lucky with a combination that doesn't hit the issue!