I’ve just come across a few USB boards that take advantage of the Raspberry Pi Zero (W) test pads to add one or more USB Type-A ports to the board without soldering.
The first one is “Catda Raspberry Pi zero WH USB expansion board” which I found on Banggood for $9.99.
It’s a kit that ships with a USB Zero plug expansion module, an acrylic “isolation protection cover”, an acrylic transparent light diffraction protection cover plus M2.5 screws and nuts for mounting it to the Raspberry Pi Zero WH board, but it should work any Raspberry Pi Zero including the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board since it relies on pogo pin to connect the four test pads for USB data and power, and those are in the same position for all Pi Zero boards.
You can then plug it into a laptop or computer to power the board and, for instance, access it as a USB gadget as explained on Adafruit. That’s why we see MIDI, HID, LAN, SSH, and USB written on the black cover. For example, an Ethernet USB gadget could be configured so that it exposes an IP address and the board accessed through SSH.
It looks pretty neat, but if you’d just like to use the USB board without the pretty acrylic covers, the “Waveshare Pi Zero USB adapter” will be a cheaper option available for $2.5 on Aliexpress, and other shops. There are also other models based on the same principle.
If one USB port is good, what about four? That’s what the “Raspberry Pi Zero USB Hub Powermanage” does for about $10.
It’s not the first time we write about this type of hardware, as there was a crowdfunding campaign for the similar Hubpixel 4-port Hub for Pi Zero as far back as 2016. As far as I understand, all board presented today also work with Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W since only the USB and power pins are used. But the location of many other test pads is different on Raspberry Pi Zero W and Zero 2 W.
There are through holes to connect the AV port on Raspberry Pi Zero, but a pad labeled “TV” has shown up in Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, so the connection is different. The MicroSD card test points have moved around, but I’m not sure who would use those other than testing since a MicroSD card slot is already present on the board.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Do these work with the Radxa Zero too?
EDIT: Nevermind, I looked at photos of the two and the Radxa Zero lacks the RPi0’s pogo pads on the back.
Hi Jean-Luc,
I can confirm these to be working well with the Pi Zero 2 W as well after testing it. The pogo pads are the same and power consumption peaks at around 400mA during booting, so a regular USB2 port can easily supply enough power.
Greetings
Ralf
This looks like the Pi Zero Stem that has been around for years and is made by a solo hacker.
There are also single and dual Ethernet boards that make use of the pogo pads. It’s too bad that the BPi M2 Zero and Radxa Zero didn’t copy that feature!
More or less the same old Zero Stem
► https://zerostem.io/