Durability of Micro USB socket?

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helium

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Hi,

I have a Teensy 3.0, and intend on programming it very often, hence plugging/unplugging from the micro USB socket. I have some other development boards with surface mounted micro USB sockets (Arduino Leonardo, Pro Micro), and their sockets are pretty fragile. I've usually put super glue around the socket to secure it further. I was wondering, how durable is the Teensy 3.0's socket, as in its tendency/lack of tendency to snap off the board? And if I put some super glue around the socket, it shouldn't cause any problem if it touches the surrounding components?


Thanks.
 
The newer Micro-USB receptacles are designed for up to 10,000 cycles of insertion and removal between the receptacle and plug, compared to 1,500 for the standard USB and 5,000 for the Mini-USB receptacle. This is accomplished by adding a locking device and by moving the leaf-spring connector from the jack to the plug, so that the most-stressed part is on the cable side of the connection. This change was made so that the connector on the less expensive cable would bear the most wear instead of the more expensive micro-USB device.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Durability
 
I've had several USB cables fail from a few hundred insertion cycles. Lousy design quality.
But only one USB receptacle - and it was one of those combo USB/eSata ones on a laptop. Bad idea.
 
It occurs to me, that if you are worried about the durability of plugging/unplugging the USB cable, that it isn't the actual socket that you need to be worried about (as potatoron mentions, the socket has to be rated to a large number of cycles of insert and removal), but the quality of the solder connecting the cable connector to the board. That may in turn depend on the person doing the soldering or how much time the robot doing the pick and place spends.

You could get a small micro USB extension cord, and plug it into the teensy, and then plug the normal cable into that. That way you aren't constantly inserting/removing the cable.

Or alternatively, don't unplug the cable from the Teensy, instead unplug it from the computer, possibly using a powered USB hub in between the computer and the Teensy, in case access to the computer USB port is awkward, or the port on the computer is also fragile.
 
I believe there is an adapte available from PJRC that has a micro USB on on side to go into the Teensy3 and a much larger more mechanically robust USB-B receptacle.
 
The micro USB receptacle on my HTC Incredible phone I've had for 2 years or so- has its power plug used 3 or so times a day. Still going OK. Been through several cables though.
 
Like Michael suggested, I use a USB Type-A extender and plug it into the computer, and then plug a short USB Type-A -> USB micro cable into it and into the teensy3.

On my desk, it's easy to just unplug the extender with it's regular USB Type-A connectors.
 
USB Micro-B lasts a long time if you plug the cable in straight.

But if you lift the cable upwards with the PCB anchored to a solid surface, it's possible to pry the connector off the PCB. It usually tears some of the pads off, so replacing the connector usually isn't possible, even if you're able to solder such small things. If you do mount a Teensy3 to a solid surface, it's a good idea to make sure the cable can't move upwards relative to the PCB. Inside an enclosure, usually the hole for the USB plug to fit through does this function. There's also this adaptor cable, meant for projects where Teensy3 goes in a box.

http://www.pjrc.com/store/cable_usb_panel_micro.html

If you do break the USB connector off a Teensy 3.0, there's a way to solder a cable to pads on the bottom side. Hopefully you'll never have to do this repair/hack.

http://forum.pjrc.com/threads/19336-How-to-repair-a-broken-off-Teensy-3-0-USB-connector
 
Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I was more worried about the durability of the actual soldered connections between the socket and the PCB, since I've experienced those 'lifting off' or breaking off with some other products. I'll probably use an extension cable.
 
Recently, I've had two surface-mount items lift off of a (non-Teensy) board: One was a fairly large inter-board connector and the other was an electrolytic capacitor (on a Raspberry Pi board).
The combination of not using through-hole and unleaded solder seems to make these parts with some "mass" too fragile. You just can't "bump" or stress them at all.
 
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