Ive repaired the USB plug on flash drives before. To make it absolutely solid, i scrape off some of the green solder mask on the back of the board with a flat blade screw driver and bridge the gap between the board and shell of the USB plug (shown at 16:05) with a small piece (2cm) of used solder wick. Its a hell of a lot stronger than just soldering the support pins on the side. The USB won't ever bend again .
That sounds like it could be a good plan 🤔👍 *...Provided the copper on the other side of the PCB is already connected to the USB plug shell via mounting pins/etc!* I'm half-asleep right now so I was actually halfway through writing this comment before I realised that one could end up doing something Bad, such as accidentally shorting 5V to ground, if that isn't carefully checked first 😅 (If the shell _isn't_ already connected to ground, I'd be cautious about connecting it myself. It's one of those things where I think it _should_ be ok, but in practice there might be voodoo EMI issues or other weird effects explaining why it wasn't already connected...) I've used a couple of small blobs of epoxy resin to reinforce a USB plug before, but soldering to a ground plane at least has the advantage of presumably being _easy to remove,_ unlike epoxy! It might be neater, too. (I'm also wondering if it'd be possible to solder directly between the shell of the plug and the ground plane, without using solder wick, for the sake of looking cleaner/more professional, even if it's maybe not quite as strong.) Though in my case I think I was _adding_ a USB plug to a 5V-out DC-DC boost converter module that was supplied with a USB _socket_ on the output and a couple of holes for soldering wires on the input. I wanted a pass-through USB module to ensure a Raspberry Pi had 5.1~5.2V input, even from USB power sources that could easily supply >10W but often dropped the voltage a bit too low. A quick tweak to the module's feedback resistor divider and I had a pass-through module giving ~5.2V instead of 5.0V! 😸
The USB 2 version is printed on the board "HD TO U2_V1.3 2020.10.19."! Furthermore, there is a completely different component placement on the board and there is no heat sink on the CPU. I also have two of these capture cards, which have the same housing, but are differently populated. In addition, the version imprint on the board is also missing on mine.
I don't think electricity has been upgraded since version 1. So the wiring should still be ok, new wiring works well as the electrons don’t care if it’s Black and Red or Blue and Brown coloured wires.
Interesting how many versions of this stick exist. I've the same, but inside mine U6, U7 and U8 are missing (empty solder pads) and I've a 4 pin blue USB Plug. USB2.0 in a USB3.0 costume :)
@@DavidWatts it seems to be a common trait for us "creative" people. Nice to see a video from you again, hope to see more when you get settled in the new place!
