The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • USB Micro-B Connector: FAIL

    While setting up a Raspberry Pi camera, I had occasion to pull out its USB power cable, whereupon grabbing the camera while unscrewing it from the tripod felt unusually sharp:

    Micro-B USB - RPi jack
    Micro-B USB – RPi jack

    It seems the wall wart’s USB Micro-B connector pulled apart:

    Micro-B USB connector - disembowled
    Micro-B USB connector – disembowled

    Somewhat to my surprise, it was a CanaKit 5 V 2.5 A wall wart, definitely not the cheapest piece of junk ever made by the hand of man. On the other paw, it’s been around for quite a while, so …

    Even I will agree that’s not a repairable failure, so I planned to splice in a Micro-B connector from a volunteer chosen from the Box o’ USB Micro-B Cables:

    Micro-B USB connector - tiny wires
    Micro-B USB connector – tiny wires

    Nice color code in there, eh?

    Each of those conductors appears to be made up of nine springy copper-colored 0.06 mm strands, somewhat smaller than 40 AWG: not what you want on the business end of a 2.5 A wall wart. I had previously measured the cable’s overall resistance with a surprisingly useful Treedix USB Cable Tester and it was on the very high end of the charge-only cable collection.

    So I soldered a female USB-A breakout from the Drawer o’ USB Breakouts to the wall wart’s wires, snapped a 3D printed case around it, got a good (0.26 Ω) A-to-Micro-B cable from the Box o’ USB Adapters, and moved on.

    Ya gotta have stuff, but that was absurd.