[0:00] I’ve made myself a little USB tester
[0:03] So let’s try out this cable
[0:05] Plug in that end
[0:07] And then we plug in this end
[0:09] So you can see this cable is pretty good
[0:13] But it’s not going to do high speed USB
[0:15] Because it’s only got the two data lines
[0:18] It is interesting that there’s only data lines on one side of the cable
[0:22] So if I flip this over
[0:24] You can see our two data lines have swapped over
[0:29] So that’s pretty interesting
[0:31] So here’s another cable
[0:34] Let’s plug this in
[0:36] So this cable is pretty impressive
[0:39] Pretty much every single light is lighting up
[0:42] So this will do full high speed USB 4
[0:46] 40 gigabits per second
[0:48] So pretty impressive
[0:50] It’s interesting though that the two data lines
[0:53] are once again only on one side of the cable
[0:56] So if we just flip this over
[0:58] You can see our data lines have moved over
[1:01] So that’s pretty interesting
[1:03] Now all of these boards came from PCBWay
[1:05] As always did a fantastic job
[1:07] Check out our link to the PCBWay guys in the description
[1:11] But let’s talk about the actual assembly of these boards
[1:14] Because it was quite an interesting experience
[1:17] So this has been quite a traumatic experience
[1:23] Here’s version one of the board
[1:26] We have our two USB sockets
[1:28] which connect using these little USB connectors
[1:31] with all the pins exposed
[1:33] And we have our nice little battery connector
[1:36] for a coin cell battery
[1:38] And I’ve also got these rechargeable lithium coin cells
[1:42] which you can charge up using this nice little charger
[1:45] So that’s pretty cool
[1:47] So the first mistake I made was ordering the stencil
[1:53] This is not particularly practical
[1:56] So what happened is
[1:58] I ticked the wrong box when ordering the stencil
[2:01] and completely missed the fact
[2:03] that I ordered the very large framed version
[2:06] Possibly good for a wall decoration
[2:09] Not particularly practical for dispensing solder paste
[2:13] But fortunately that gave me a chance
[2:19] to try out the Voltaire for solder dispensing
[2:22] [machine working]
[2:44] And here’s what we’ve ended up with
[2:46] Note the bodge wires
[2:48] So another mistake I made when submitting this
[2:51] Despite my usual very careful checks
[2:54] and sleeping on the PCB overnight
[2:57] I managed to submit something with DRC errors
[3:00] So quite a few of the connections were just not connected
[3:03] So that’s a bit unfortunate
[3:05] Let’s try this out
[3:06] We’ll plug some cables in and see what happens
[3:09] So I have my little test cable here
[3:12] Can connect that one
[3:18] And we’ll connect this one
[3:20] So quite a few things light up
[3:23] It actually works
[3:25] but I know for a fact
[3:27] that this cable doesn’t have
[3:29] RX-, TX-, and it doesn’t have SBU2
[3:35] So what’s happened here
[3:38] is that these pins are actually really hard
[3:44] to visually inspect and connect
[3:47] Unfortunately a lot of the connections
[3:50] are hidden underneath the USB socket
[3:53] So you can’t really tell what’s happened
[3:56] and whether it’s connected or not
[3:58] So that was version 1
[4:01] Not very good
[4:03] So we come over to version 2
[4:07] This has been completely redesigned
[4:10] I’m now using these USB connectors
[4:13] which have the pins broken out with through-hole
[4:17] and the other pins broken out
[4:19] so you can actually see them
[4:21] So this is actually quite easy
[4:23] to visually inspect
[4:25] This time I ordered the proper stencil
[4:28] making life considerably easier
[4:31] The other change I made
[4:33] is I added on the option
[4:35] of having a rechargeable battery
[4:38] so you can get a lithium cell to this
[4:41] directly using this connector
[4:43] Now in hindsight
[4:45] maybe that’s a bit over the top
[4:47] as these coin cells will pretty much
[4:49] last forever given the use case
[4:51] But let’s get this assembled
[4:53] and we’ll see how it works
[4:55] [Music]
[5:18] So this is the most successful one
[5:21] I’ve managed to make
[5:22] but it’s still very difficult
[5:24] to get these USB connectors soldered on
[5:28] without causing solder bridges
[5:30] or making bad connections
[5:32] But this one works reasonably well
[5:34] You can see there’s a D- missing
[5:36] which should be there
[5:38] I don’t know if we flip this over
[5:40] There we go
[5:42] That’s a slightly better connection
[5:44] but you can see I’ve got a bad connection
[5:46] somewhere on a ground
[5:47] So I think for version 2
[5:49] I might just get PCBWay
[5:51] to actually do the assembly
[5:52] because life is way too short
[5:54] to be doing a bit of pick and place
[5:56] at home manually
[5:57] when you’re doing so many resistors
[5:59] and so many diodes
[6:00] and trying to place these USB connectors
[6:03] I just can’t get them to work properly
[6:05] so I’ll leave it to the professionals
[6:07] But what I might do
[6:09] is add a bunch of test points
[6:10] so it’ll be much easier to detect
[6:12] when there is a short
[6:13] so I can do some quality assessment
[6:15] and then reject the ones
[6:17] where they don’t work
[6:18] So it’s pretty nice
[6:19] looks very pretty
[6:20] lots of coloured lights
[6:21] If I do get something actually consistent
[6:23] and working well
[6:24] then I might stick this up somewhere
[6:26] for people to buy
[6:27] because I think it would be
[6:28] quite a useful tool
[6:29] What I will do is probably
[6:31] get rid of the additional
[6:34] lithium ion charging circuit
[6:36] I think a coin cell
[6:38] is more than sufficient
[6:40] for this use case
[6:41] especially these nice
[6:42] rechargeable coin cells
[6:44] So this is my initial thought
[6:49] What I’ve done is added test points
[6:51] for every single pin
[6:53] on the USB cable
[6:55] so we can do this best
[6:57] with the 3D viewer
[6:59] So here we go
[7:00] I’ve got all these nice test points
[7:02] so in theory
[7:04] it should be quite easy
[7:06] to test all of these
[7:08] and check for any shorts
[7:10] But then I had another idea
[7:12] and I thought
[7:13] wouldn’t it be much better
[7:14] if we could break out
[7:16] the actual USB connections
[7:18] So here’s version
[7:20] I don’t know what version this is
[7:21] Here is another version
[7:23] So what I’ve done here
[7:24] is I’ve actually put
[7:25] some header pins
[7:26] so we can actually
[7:27] connect to the USB connections
[7:29] So let’s have a quick look
[7:30] at how this looks
[7:31] in the 3D view
[7:33] So I’ve got one header
[7:35] for connecting up
[7:36] the two battery terminals
[7:38] and then this header
[7:39] in the middle
[7:40] will break out
[7:41] all of these USB connections
[7:43] So I think that’s actually
[7:44] pretty useful
[7:45] So I’ll probably go
[7:46] with this design
[7:47] It would be very easy
[7:48] to make a board
[7:49] that slots into this
[7:51] that could actually check
[7:52] all of the connections
[7:53] and make sure
[7:54] there’s no shorts
[7:55] So I think that would be
[7:56] pretty cool
[7:57] So I’ll send this off
[7:59] This time I’ll do
[8:00] a bit more sleeping on it
[8:02] and I will double check
[8:03] every single connection
[8:05] to make sure
[8:06] I’ve not missed something
[8:07] But I think this version 3
[8:09] should be good