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