If looking nice isn't a problem you could probably open that USB plug's plastic housing and then just protect the wires again using some electrical tape. Unless of course there's something important in that housing (not sure what that could be but you never know). Its not pretty and it'll be tedious but you should be able to reduce the size of that plug by removing all that plastic. If you're lucky you may even be able to preserve the metal that gives the plug more grip in the port. I won't be able to do it until much later tonight but I can post my own cable that I ripped apart to give you a feel of what it looks like. 

- Julian


On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 5:56 PM, Stefan C. Kremer <skremer@uoguelph.ca> wrote:
Hi,

So a few weeks ago, I spoke to this group about my RaspberryPi project:  an on-board sailing coach computer.  The goal of this is to create a self-contained, battery powered, waterproof Pi equipped with GPS, Compass, Accelerometer and Gyroscopes.

This is a little project report/update for anyone who is interested as well as to see if anyone has any help with a couple of challenges that I have encountered.

I purchased a 4.3" diagonal TV (designed for car use) and successfully connected it to the Pi (via RCA cable) and a USB cable for power (it can run off 5v).  My goal is to embed that display into my waterproof  Otterbox connected to a Cell-phone recharger USB battery.  I will power the Pi also via another Cell-phone recharger USB battery.

The problem that I'm facing at this point is connecting all the cables and still fitting everything into the box.

For the RCA video connection, I need to take the cable from the mini-TV which has a female RCA and connect it to the Pi which also has a female RCA, so I need to have a male-male connector, like this one:



sold by Adafruit.com

But, that's going to stick out really far from the Pi, especially when I connect the connector on the end of the TV's cable to it.  I might try to get a right-angle RCA connector like this:




I haven't found a good source for this connector in Canada; if you can find one, please let me know.

But, really I should get a male-male right angle RCA connector which does not seem to exist.  If anyone can find a male-male version of the right angle connector, please let me know.

The other solution is to just remove the female connector from the video screen and replace it with a male connector that I can plug into the Pi.  If there is a short male RCA connector that I can attach to the video cable, that would be awesome!  Let me know if you know of any.

The situation is even worse with the USB connections.  I connect the GPS breakout board to the Pi using this USB to TTL Serial cable:

Holy cow!  Look at the length of the USB plug on that sucker!  It almost doubles the length of the Pi when plugged in!

I'm using the same cable to connect the Battery to the video.  But the battery has the USB output power on the side so it more than doubles the width of the battery.  Ack!

There's a swivel adapter:


But even the swively part of that sticks out about 1" beyond the edge of the Pi.

Crazy thing is I have a USB Wifi adaptor that is tiny in comparison and it does 802.11b/g presumably had an antenna inside, and only sticks out about 2mm:
Wow, that's nice and small.

So if anyone has any ideas on <how to build/where to buy> a "short-profile" USB connector, please let me know.

Once, I get these pieces resolved, I can finish the physical build.

The next step after that will be to start pulling data off the sensors and displaying them on the screen (first, while I walk to work, then on the boat).

Stefan Kremer


--
Dr. Stefan C. Kremer, Director
School of Computer Science
skremer@uoguelph.ca * 519-824-4120x58913


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