Monday, October 3, 2016

Pogo-pin Powered Pi Ports!

Got a little box in the mail today - a present for one of my Raspberry Pi Zeros:
 Nestled inside were two packages. On the left, a 5V 2.4A switching power supply with a power-switch USB->micro usb connection cord:
The tasty treat inside the little box is my new 4-port USB hub for a Zero:

As you can see, the good folks at MakerSpot also included nylon standoffs with screws and nuts! Putting the who shebang together was easy, and you can see the precision of the soldering points and pogo pins:
The only bad thing i might say about this product is that there was no documentation - just the little business card.
This hub makes a nice compact computer, ready for wifi, tunage, or flash storage! Booting up shows the following info:

[Mon Oct  3 13:15:28 2016] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1a40, idProduct=0101
[Mon Oct  3 13:15:28 2016] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[Mon Oct  3 13:15:28 2016] usb 1-1: Product: USB 2.0 Hub
[Mon Oct  3 13:15:28 2016] hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
[Mon Oct  3 13:15:28 2016] hub 1-1:1.0: 4 ports detected
[Mon Oct  3 13:15:28 2016] usb 1-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using dwc_otg


The vendor/device id maps out to:

1a40  Terminus Technology Inc.
        0101  Hub

One of the downsides to no included info is that while generally there is a caution to only power the Zero (when the hub is attached) through the hub's micro-usb port or the Zero, but NOT BOTH - bad things could happen!  However, according to the seller:

"has built-in a 2-way back-powering circuit to protect against power being plugged into the Pi Zero and the Stackable USB Hub simultaneously."

Not bad for US$17 with free shipping! Nice!