Puma board for FreeEMS

Post by **Fred** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 2:21 pm

The large standard size is a horrible choice IMO, big, ugly, its too big for the PCB size and out of proportion, much like the totally wrong A connector.

As for mini vs micro, The obsolescence is at a manufacturing/product level. IE, new shlt being made (not us) is going to be micro, however, stuff that you buy, right now, is still MOSTLY mini, so the supply of mini cables is also higher. Hence my preference for mini, it's common, everyone will have one. If it becomes an issue at a later date, the micro can be put on there and Pumas from that point on will have them. Mean time I think that if we put micro on, we'll irritate and frustrate a lot of people due to lack of having one.

Fred.

jbelanger · Post by **jbelanger** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 3:35 pm

Mini is not obsolete since this is not an OTG port and will never be with the FTDI chip. Your link mentions that the mini is still completely compliant in this case.

Jean

jharvey · Post by **jharvey** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:10 pm

I just checked a couple mini's vs micro's. Looks like the pitch won't allow a mini to be used on a micro footprint, the mini's pins are closer together. The mini is much bigger, and the micro can fit under it. Perhaps we should just put in both footprints, and leave it up to the assembler to decide. If Fred's happier with the larger one, the smaller one can sit under it. Here's a rough picture to show what I'm purposing.

I see a search on Molex's page for USB mini, returns with USB micro, but no mini. Seems vendors are pushing this change. I think we have a flood of mini's, but as time goes on I think we'll see less of them. If getting a mini cable is a significant problem, I suspect that installing an ECU will not be a task you can accomplish.

jharvey · Post by **jharvey** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:19 pm

So if the goal is to get this working on several vehicles, what's the plan for adding other wheel decoders?

GartnerProspect · Post by **GartnerProspect** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:18 pm

My observation is that Mini is on its way out, especially in the Cell Phone market. That said, I have about 100 Mini cables, so I ended up buying a small lot of Mini-to-Micro adapter whips from Motorola. They were ~$1USD each and now I never have to worry about whether my device is mini or micro. I'm set.

Spudmn · Post by **Spudmn** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 7:46 pm

We should think about reliability of Mini vs Micro.

The only Micro I have is on my Kindle and I am always worried about snapping it off. Also its hard to work out if you have it upside down and you have to have a good look at it make sure it's up the right way before you attempt to jam it in.This will be even harder when it is installed in the car.

With all the Mini devices I have, I don't worry about the strength of the plug. It can take a bit of movement because it's stronger.

My vote is for the Mini USB but having the foot print for both would be a good compromise.

Post by **Fred** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 8:58 pm

Thanks Jean, as always, great post. Post count, low, forum value, through the roof. :-)

Spudmn wrote:We should think about reliability of Mini vs Micro.

The only Micro I have is on my Kindle and I am always worried about snapping it off. Also its hard to work out if you have it upside down and you have to have a good look at it make sure it's up the right way before you attempt to jam it in.This will be even harder when it is installed in the car.

With all the Mini devices I have, I don't worry about the strength of the plug. It can take a bit of movement because it's stronger.

My vote is for the Mini USB but having the foot print for both would be a good compromise.

+1 my thoughts exactly, along with the more common nature of them... why make things more difficult than they need to be.

KW1252 · Post by **KW1252** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 9:42 pm

Micro USB specification requires minimum of 10 000 mating cycles for the connectors, which is considerably more than Mini (which is around 1000 I believe).

EssEss · Post by **EssEss** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 9:51 pm

is the ground shield terminated directly to the gnd plane ? if so, not a good idea and I'll leave the rest of the 'homework' up to you if you're really interested in why.

Spudmn · Post by **Spudmn** » Sat Mar 05, 2011 10:14 pm

KW1252 wrote:Micro USB specification requires minimum of 10 000 mating cycles for the connectors, which is considerably more than Mini (which is around 1000 I believe).

What I am most concerned about is lateral force.

Let's think about how this is going to be used. We are going to bolt the ECU to the car and have the USB cable running up to our laptop. Sooner or later we are going to trip, kick or pull on that cable.

The lateral force is going to break a micro USB. This is less of a problem with cell phones because when you pull on the cable the light cell phone moves instead of breaking the cable.

I'm not saying that you can't break the Mini plug but it is stronger than the Micro.

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