How do I box this thing?

Started by Big mike 1100, March 24, 2021, 03:03:21 PM

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Big mike 1100

I'm building a footswitch that will be able to pause/rewind/ffwd YouTube videos.  Basically I've disassembled an old USB keyboard and am using the PCB board that's attached to the USB cable.  Here's my question/issue:

One end of the cable is the USB plug, which is a certain thickness.  The other end is the PCB board (obviously wider than the USB end.  Since I'm putting it into a 1590B box I'm assuming that I can either drill a hole big enough for the USB end to get through (too big for my liking) and snake the rest through the hole.  The other option is to cut the cord and splice the pieces back together.  I'm not sure if I can easily remove the attached wires without causing more problems. 

Is there another way that I'm not thinking of?  I thought of a "semi-circle at the bottom of the enclosure that the cover will hold it in place, but still doesn't seem right.  Attached a pic for a visual- the enclosure in the pic is just a test box with a bunch of holes, not the final enclosure. Do the wires come out of that white housing easily?  Soldered or just shoved in there?





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davent

Rather than a half circle cutaway on the bottom edge of the enclosure, i'd cut a slot into a side wide enough for the cable with a grommet, however high up the side you want. Slice a grommet open so you can get it around the cable slide that with the cable into the slot, you can trap it into place with the bottom of the enclosure or if it's a deep slot, JB Weld a piece of something into the slot or even just the JB Weld to fill the slot.
dave
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Ripthorn

This could easily be done with a little microcontroller dev board. You can have three buttons, each sending a different USB key stroke. I did this for a volume knob for my computer. That way you can just mount the microcontroller board such that the USB jack sticks out of a little purpose made slot/hole and run a USB cable up to the computer as normal. It's nice to not have the cable hard wired into the device itself. You could use an Arduino nano, digispark, or whatever else that has onboard USB.
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