[quote=geoff in UK]
Regarding the 5volt mains socket+USB units, what is anyone's experience with reliability? I put one in about two years ago and I'm going to have to replace it as the USB sockets are worn to the point of being intermittent.
I have a Leviton on the end of a counter that is a few years old but we usually leave the cables plugged in so it does not get beat up that bad. I can see where the USB socket could go bad if you were plugging and unplugging every day.
Out of interest, I did a "post mortem" on the faulty outlet. It turned out that the USBs themselves were not worn, but the soldering of the cases of them to their little PCB had failed. ie dry jointed!- a manufacturing quality failing. In the PCB design the casing had been used as part of the -ve path, hence the intermittent connection. I re-soldered the board to prove the diagnosis and it then worked OK.
