USB was not designed to supply significant amount of power initially – only 5V 500mA.

That’s a very good thing, because USB-B had many pain points – Initial adoption was a bit slow, but over the past few years, USB-C has taken over the consumer electronics market, and most laptops and smartphones come with USB-C nowadays. Back in 2014, the USB-C standard was finalised, and Google was the first major manufacturer to adopt it with the 2015 Chromebook Pixel, with Apple following shortly after with the 2015 MacBook. What more can you ask from an ubiquitous connector that takes up minimal board space, and uses cables you can buy from even grocery stores? If you want to power your project with a wall wart, USB chargers are readily available, too (even from grocery stores).īut wait, it gets even better. A serial port for debugging (either through a USB-UART chip or enumerating as a CDC-ACM virtual serial port in firmware for STM32).Most of the microcontrollers I use nowadays have either a serial bootloader (ESP32) or built-in USB DFU bootloader (STM32), so it can be used to program the chip.Supplies power at a convenient voltage.

Why do I put a USB port on virtually all my boards? Because it: I have been designing PCBs for about a decade now (mostly as a hobbyist due to selling out and joining the software world for my career after my EE degree), and of the dozens of boards I’ve designed, I can probably count on one hand all the designs without a USB port. Implement that circuit, and use it like a good old Type B port. TLDR: Scroll to the “Putting It All Together” section. Their SMT Assembly service I believe is unique in the industry, and is great for hobbyists who need high quality assembled prototypes for cheap, without having to deal with logistics of component supply. Disclosure: JLCPCB sponsors some of my projects, but I would never recommend something that I wouldn’t otherwise.

Jlcpcb circuitmaker