Hi everyone. I’m working with an Arducam B0332 global shutter USB camera on a Raspberry Pi, and I need to modify the cable. The USB A connector is quite large, so I’m planning to cut the USB A cable in the middle and solder the wires onto a simple USB 2.0 extension cable. Before I do anything, I want to check: will the camera still function properly after this modification? I’ve also heard that some USB connectors contain a small chip that handles a handshake protocol. Does the B0332 have such a chip inside the USB connector itself, or is it located on the camera board?
Welcome to the forum. For a camera like this, the USB protocol and handshake logic are handled by the controller on the camera PCB, not by anything inside the cable or the USB A connector. The connector itself is passive - just VBUS, D-, D+ and GND plus shielding. So there’s no chip in the connector that you’d lose by cutting and splicing. As long as you solder the wires correctly and keep the ground/shield continuity, the camera should enumerate normally.
Thanks, that’s reassuring. One more thing - I noticed there’s a ferrite core attached to the cable at around 1/3 of its length, presumably to reduce electrical interference. If I shorten the cable to about 60 cm, is it safe to remove that ferrite core, or should I keep it in place even with the shorter cable?
Good question. The ferrite core is there for EMI suppression, and with a shorter cable it becomes less critical - but if you can keep it, I’d suggest leaving it in place. The bigger factor here is keeping the jumper wire as short as possible and using good solder joints. Long or messy splices cause signal integrity problems on USB 2.0 high-speed, which can lead to enumeration failures or frame dropouts. My recommendation is to keep the jumper wire as short as possible and validate the result by trial and error - run the camera and see if it enumerates and streams correctly.
Understood. So the main risk is really the extra wire length and solder quality, not losing some chip in the connector. I’ll keep the splice short and test it. Is there any expected behavior difference between 60 cm and something shorter, or is it just a matter of trying?
Correct - no chip to worry about. The shorter the jumper, the better. USB 2.0 high-speed is quite sensitive to impedance mismatches from long splices, so I can’t give a hard guarantee for a specific length. That’s why I suggest a trial run: make the modification, then check that the camera enumerates and streams without errors.
Just an update - I went ahead and did the splice, keeping the jumper wire very short. I tested it and it works fine as long as the cable length stays below roughly 40 cm. Above that I started seeing issues. Thanks for the guidance.
Thanks for reporting back. That matches the expectation - keeping the jumper wire as short as possible is the key factor for this modification, and it’s good to hear it works below around 40 cm. If you ever need more length, a properly shielded, carefully soldered splice would be the next thing to try, but staying short is the safest approach.