alternative to Sparkfun USB breakout

[jbeebo]

I discovered an alternative to Sparkfun's USB breakout board for providing a mini-B USB receptacle inside the battery tray of the 9x. Why? Because I'm cheap and stubborn. Sparkfun board is like $10 by the time you pay shipping (assuming this was all you ordered from them), I knew there was a cheaper way...

I found this board on ebay, which at the time I purchased was $3.10 shipped to my door. The purpose is USB to TTL converter, a handy device in its own right. This board works perfect in the 9x for the following reasons:
-the width drops between the outer slots of the battery tray, no trimming required
-the pinouts have a direct USB pass-thru (coincidental discovery, was not known at time of purchase!)
-the pinout spacing aligns perfectly with existing cutout slots in the 9x battery tray
-it's just a hair too tall, but easily trimmed to fit, see pics

I removed the micro, but not sure that's necessary. I left the remaining passives on the board, they don't seem to have any effect.
After trimming the board to height, hot-glued it is place, soldered up a jumper to my modified betemcu programmer, shrinkwrapped and hot-glued it in place. Done.

[Flaps 30]

It would be great if you could give us a link to the Ebay article that you purchased.

[jbeebo]

oops, that's a miss! I included some links here for easy retrieval.

This is the item from the original seller. Now comically it's listed for $103 each!!!

Here's an ebay search for the same item from different sellers. Cheapest one today Mar19, 2013 is about $5.

[EDIT] Here's an alternate board that's even cheaper. Does require a little more modification (soldering directly to SMT mini-B USB legs, and drill/solder pinouts if desired). PS: this board has good reviews around WWW for being the cheapest accurate and safe CC/CV charger for single cell LiPo available.