USB Hoarding Vindication

I’ve been replacing some DisplayLink devices with Raspberry Pi screens, and now the time had come for the thing that both receives Z-Stick commands and sends Telldus commands to wall outlets.

The problem is that there’s just two USB ports, and they’re at the bottom of the screen, and I don’t want anything to stick out below. (But behind is fine, because of how it’s going to hang.)

And the Telldus thing has a Mini-USB connector. Yes! Mini! Not Micro! Mini! Nothing uses Mini these days, so angled connectors don’t exist. (Cables with angled plugs exist, but less cabling is less cabling.)

So I went and had a look at one of my boxes of connectors from the last three decades… nope…

And the other? What do my eyes spy!

Yes! It’s an angled A to A, and then an A to Mini!

Er…. That looks pretty wobbly, eh?

But then I found this U one.

And that’s OK! Looks less wobbly! The Z-Stick is smaller and can stick out that way; that’s fine.

Not as impressive as this classic, I guess.

Perfection!

See? Thingies are completely hidden by the screen, and I can now glue the screen into the shelf where it’s supposed to go.

The moral is: Never throw away connectors.