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Modifying the USB Hub Part I

A project log for Pi Zero PC by Bay Networks (The Pikelet)

I acquired a great little EN104 Bay Networks 'Netgear Hub'. I decided to re-purpose it to house a little Pi Zer0.

tinkerzonetinkerzone 12/14/2016 at 22:160 Comments

So they case is quite narrow. In fact it is tiny. So when laying out the components, it became quite clear that it'd be impossible to directly plug anything into the fourth usb slot on the hub, which isn't exposed externally. So if the USB socket won't go to the wifi dongle, make the usb socket go to the wifi dongle.

I originally stripped down an ordinary usb cable to use the plug to plug into the socket. Even by dremelling the connector in half, it still wouldn't fit. Damn, I didn't actually want to modify the hub.

Option two involved building a little extension cable. Being careful to ensure that all the pins were wired correctly: Black; Green; White; Red. Once again, hot glue was used to mechanically secure the cable to the hub pcb to ensure no accidents would rip tracks off the hub.

I made the extension cable a little long, and had to put a kink in it and tie down with a cable tie.

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