Analog Discovery 2 USB Cable Fit Problem

[clf]

My Analog Discovery 2 was very sensitive to movement, with Waveforms reporting the connection lost at the slightest bump.  Merely manipulating the flywire leads was enough to cause a disconnect.

I determined that the plug on the USB cable that came with the AD2 was not able to seat completely into the AD2's USB jack.  While looking through the top of the AD2's enclosure at the USB jack, I observed that the two metal "spring fingers" atop the USB plug were not inserting deeply enough into the jack to permit them to raise and latch into their corresponding holes in the top of the jack.

After disassembling the AD2's enclosure, I used some (mechanical) files and an X-Acto knife to enlarge the enclosure's USB port hole so the entire USB plug can pass through (photo attached).  With the enclosure assembled, the USB plug now seats completely into the AD2's USB jack.  I can see that the two metal "spring fingers" advance into their intended positions and raise up into the jack's holes.  Waveforms has yet to report a disconnect during my experiments with wiggling the USB cable.

[JColvin]

Thanks for sharing what you did!

I think the reason the enclosure is such a tight fit to begin with is that the Analog Discovery (1) and other Digilent boards had some historical issues with the USB connector on the PCB physically coming off, which wasn't so easy to fix for most users, so it was made sure that wouldn't be a problem with this one. From what I've been told, it was found that you were far more likely to break the USB cable prior to the USB host connector coming off the PCB.

I guess it's a little odd that you had issues with it disconnecting upon any sort of movement; I've picked up my whole assembly to move it from from one side of the monitor to the other, or rotated the whole assembly while debugging an accelerometer and haven't had any sort of disconnection issue.

Glad to hear it's working the way it should now though.

[NeilRG]

I had the same problem but solved it in a completely different way. Rather than hack the housing, I made an undercut on the cable strain relief as shown. It is the angled sides of the AD2 case that causes the lower edge of the strain relief to hit the side of the housing before the connector is seated and latched. Just for the heck of it I shot a video of the me holding my AD2 by it's usb "tail" and and shaking it without losing connectivity. The advantage is by modifying the cable's bottom edge, the rest of the strain relief  was left in tact so it makes contact with the case and helps reduce strain on the usb connector. YMMV depending on the cable you hack. The .mov file even at 3 sec was too large to attach. 

If you choose to do this hold the cable sideways against a cut proof surface and use a sharp blade to cut vertically into the strain relief material then make a cut guiding the blade against the metal shell of the micro B to free up the piece you want to remove.

[clf]

Bought an additional AD2. USB cable fit perfectly, could definitely feel it snap into place.