Bitcraze Forums

Well it was bound to happen to me sooner or later. The USB attachment broke off away from the Crazyradio board and I think it took the metal pads with it. I doubt it's fixable, but I thought I'd at least ask. Or is the board a complete write-off? ( Wish I had foosel's 3D casing to protect it from the start )

It's not impossible to fix but it might be tricky. What I would do it to take a USB cable, cut it in half, expose the wires and solder them directly to the components (D1, R1, R2 and GND). Then add hot-glue to hold everything in place. Have a look at the schematics here.

/Marcus

Sorry to see you Crazyradio like that
I think it is fixable as well, doing just like Marcus said. Found this pictureof the colour codes.

D+ -> R2 (pad closest to connector)
D- -> R1 (pad closest to connector)
Gnd -> Gnd (C10, pad closest to connector)
Vcc -> D1 (pad closest to D1 screen print)

That should fix it and you will have a cabled Crazyradio which might be practical some times.

Thanks guys for giving me some hope Now, since I'm no electrical engineer (can't read schematics) I'm a little confused as to where exactly to attempt to solder. Should I be soldering on the one side of the tiny surface mount resistors (I think that's what they are)? I've attached a photo showing where I think you mean. However, it seems it would be really hard to attach any amount of wire at those locations.

Yes, that's correct.

One idea could be to glue each of the small wires, one by one so they stay in place when soldering (just dont glue too close to where you have to solder). Then you glue the main cable after you are done.

/Marcus

And don't heat the resistor pad to much as they tend to get unsoldered.
* Start by pealing the wire just a little bit (~1mm).
* Add solder to the pealed wire tip.
* Add a little solder to the resistor/cap pad. And don't heat to much.
* Now place the wire to the resistor/cap pad and solder it together. Don't heat to long/much.
* Add hot glue to fix the wires and cable in place

That should do it

Great! Thanks for the advice guys. I'll let you know how it turns out

edit: OK, so I soldered the wires (most definitely not the prettiest job) and plugged in, but I don't think it's working properly. I get the red & green LEDs on solid. Just to be clear, I don't think it's a USB3 issue because I tried it with my Raspberry Pi.

So I guess something is really wrong with my board?

Just out of curiousity: When you plug it in and issue an lsusb on the Pi, does it show up?

If the LEDs light up at least the dongle CPU is working.

I found a doc that states that the white wire is actually D-: http://www.frontx.com/cpx508.html so you can try swapping the white and green wire.