Can I solder off a rapsberry pi usb port? And then re-connect using wires?

[crysome moar]

Hello,

working a on a project which requires the raspberry pi to fit in a small enclosure I know you de-solder the the USB ports, but I wanted to know if I could rewire  it so the usb ports are stuill connected to the raspberry pi but are not soldered on?

Any online tutorials would be great.

Thanks!

[Dom Ostrowski]

USB ports tend to be very sensitive to trace/wiring layout.

You may find the error-rate/download-failures becomes less good.

Try it as a learning exercise, use a chunk of a USB cable to create a flying connector lead soldered down to where the USB port was.

[Mr Ed]

What you want to do is certainly possible. I've successfully replaced USB ports with wires, when the port got ripped off the board taking some traces with it. I had to solder wires straight to the MCU legs (I used some enamelled wire). It was a 100% success. However, it was only USB 1.1, not 2.

If you want to do 2, then use the shortest bridging wires you can get away with between where you solder it down and the cable. The wires will probably be a little too thick to solder straight to the board.

Note: soldered wires are really REALLY weak and if they get tugged they can pull up traces and ruin the board and any chance for reconnection. To avoid this, I put a big blob of hard plastic down over the joint, and folded the wires back on themselves so that the wires would snap long before getting lifted off the board. Hot-melt glue will work OK, but something like polycaprolacetone works better if you have any, since it is much stiffer.

-Ed

On Sunday, 8 November 2015 12:50:22 UTC, crysome moar wrote:

[crysome moar]

Thanks, that sounds like it might work, any tutorials? usb 1.1 should be fine it's for a gamepad controller.

[Mr Ed]

On Sunday, 8 November 2015 19:29:03 UTC, crysome moar wrote:

Thanks, that sounds like it might work, any tutorials? usb 1.1 should be fine it's for a gamepad controller.

Nope, sorry.

My advice for the enamelled wire though is to burn the end with a cigarette lighter or match, then rub lightly with 400 grit or finer sandpaper. Then it should tin easily. Don't try soldering the wire down until it's tinned, though. Actually come to think of it, are these full sized or micro ports? If full sized, you could probably just strip the cable and solder it down directly.

-Ed

 

[Yvan Janssens]

+1 to soldering the connected device directly to it.

Also, you could get a cheap extension lead from e.g. poundland, chop off the male USB one, solder it to the PCB in the holes you freed by removing the connector.

As said, USB gets unstable with just plain wires, however, you can easily evade that with using cat5 UTP, but that might just not be worth the effort - if you only need one or two ports accessible from the outside of the enclosure, just go to poundland and do a nice chop job. 

Y.

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[Michael Botha]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUZjzQuTNX4

Use small internal wire like you would salvage from electronics that you would pickup from a boot sale / 3 week bin ?

and use glue over the wires to add strength and then tape the wires together.
If you do it right there will be no loss.

good luck.