Hey folks, just a quick update to share that little addition to the bench!

Initially, I had to plug in all the USB devices in the rPi directly, which wasn’t bad when it wasn’t hooked to the wall. Then the wall mounting started, which complicated my life a LOT with the ports. It still wasn’t bad when it was a simple dongle or something with a decent wire, but that CP2102 or the CH341a programmer, it was quite a job to hook up. So I began searching for an alternative, my requirements were that I had to have a good amount of ports and that it was possible to on/off each port individually (I didn’t wanted the microscope to be on all the time). I found what I was looking for on Aliexpress and ~8 days after ordering, I received it!

Pros:

• There’s 7 ports, which greatly enhance my expandability for the rPi.
• Each ports has an On/Off switch, very helpful to not have everything ‘plugged in’ all the time.
• Each ports also has a light (we don’t really see in the picture). This is very nice since it allows me to know what is toggled at a glance.

Cons:

• The barrel jack is not deep enough to fit the power adapter jack that was supplied with it. As you can see in the picture, it’s half poking out. This is something I’ll have to sort out in the future.
• The supplied power adapter is really not strong enough for the job. They supplied a 5v 1am psu, which barely covers 2 ports at full usage. If I start using it more intensely, I’ll definitely have to switch it to a more powerful one.
• There was no mounting holes in the back. Had to open the case, drill some holes and mount it that way. Slightly challenging but nothing I can’t do!

Conclusion: I am mostly satisfied with the purchase. It allows me to have a better management of my connections and a ‘slightly less’ cable-hell at the bench. The cons are not that big and I can easily fix them if I decide to.