Wednesday 24 August 2016

USB Mini Breakouts

If, like me, you ever fool around with USB hardware and choose to do so in the context of solderless breadboards, you might well need a little breakout board for one of the several types of socket - in my present case the USB mini-B receptacle.

There are, of course, lots of lovely commercial ways to scratch this itch, available - for example - on our favourite auction site...


but I wanted one now, rather than in a day or two's time (or longer, if it had to take the slow boat).

Of course, I'd been getting by with the usual solution of a butchered cable with a type A plug at one end and some pins on the end of bare tails I'd made at the other...


but I wanted to get rid of this 'trailing wire' and fit a neat socket.

I had some surface mount mini-B receptacles in the junk box and noticed that the connector pitch was close enough to the 0.95mm spaced pads on one side of a 10-pad SOT23 DIL carrier...


So, with a little judicious bending of the outer pair of pins, a 5-way strip of male header pins and some solder, I soon had my own USB mini breakout...


Here it is in action on the beacon...


I don't think I'll even bother to order any from the Far East - they're too easy to make!

...-.- de m0xpd

  

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