Q: How to hard wire a poker 2?

[Jixr]

Hey everyone, i'm looking to hardwire my Poker 2 for a special project... anyway, I just need the basic how to hard wire the poker 2 for a non removeable cable.

Thanks!

[nzhao20]

Just for the non-removable cable? wouldn't epoxying it down or something of that nature be better than having to rewire the whole keyboard?

[dorkvader]

Hey everyone, i'm looking to hardwire my Poker 2 for a special project... anyway, I just need the basic how to hard wire the poker 2 for a non removeable cable.

Thanks!

I think the usb port on poker2 is SMD. You could solder a cable to it "pigtail" style (but its sort-of a pain) but it wont' have any real strain relief. There's also not really enough room for a PCB hole for a cable tie. You could maybe drill a hole in the case where the USB inlet is and cable tie it to that. As above I recommend epoxying the cable to the PCB for strain relief.

basic howto:
1 desolder USB port
2 solder cable in place
3 test
4 come up with proper strain relief.
5 ??
6 profit.

[Jixr]

well, here is where the special projcet comes into play.

Basically, my poker 2 is my ipad keyboard

The only way to get a poker 2 to work with an ipad is to connect it through a non powered USB hub

basically, its Poker>hub>ipad camera kit>ipad

And so I stripped down my hub to the PCB and I want to basically put the PCB into my poker case
( I have an acrylic one so I have a little bit of free space in it )

But the thing is I basically want to hardwire the poker PCB to the usb connection on the hub, and have the wire from the hub going out to plug into a computer/ipad.

the traces behind the mini usb plug are too small for me to solder wires onto with my big fat iron tip, and pretty much thats the only thing holding me back from finishing up the job.

it sounds kinda complicated, and the basic idea is to have one cable to plug directly into the ipad for portability reasons rather than having a mess of wires just to use the keyboard with the ipad.


Pretty much I need to pig tail it like you said, but the problem is due to the position of the pcb layout I can't fit an iron in it to solder it. I suppose I could just try to hot glue the connection down.

[dorkvader]

How about getting a new iron tip? Unless it's pace/jbc they are pretty cheap. Even metcal MFR tips can be had for under $15/per.

Another thing to consider is just making a short USB cable and stowing it somewhere in the case.

[tjcaustin]

How about getting a new iron tip? Unless it's pace/jbc they are pretty cheap. Even metcal MFR tips can be had for under $15/per.

Another thing to consider is just making a short USB cable and stowing it somewhere in the case.

I thought about suggesting that, then realized the mini plug on the poker is like flush with the case.  Only way I could think to make it work would have been to cut/drill another hole to loop the cable from the plug back into the case for the hub.

But +1 to getting a fine soldering tip.  Or posting pictures of what you're working with.

[Jixr]

yeah, I can't really tuck the cable inside the case.

basically,  you can see I've already stripped the hub's PCB, wired in the cable that will be used to connect to the computer/ipad ( the white sleeved one ) and the little micro usb plug that I currently plug into to the poker.

To make it all internal, I need to wire the little black part to the pcb.

I guess I'll just try to go find a nice fine tip iron tip to try to solder it, but the traces are super close together and the diodes are in the way of the iron tip touching the traces to solder the wires in.