So I am building my first 'permanent' project: a radio/iR controller for bots and stuff powered by Arduinos.
I have a 4-inch square, 2-inch deep plastic box from the hardware store, originally intended for an electrical junction box.
In the lid I currently have the ubiquitous 16x2 LCD (only mine is the I2C version), two joysticks, a couple buttons and a couple LEDs.
In the bottom of the box, I intend to have a nano, a battery, some sort of battery charger/maintainer such as Adafruit's Boost line (but probably going the cheaper rout of a crappy little portable power bank), a USB Host of some kind, an NRF24, etc. The part that is daunting and annoying is ... most of what Ive just listed has one or more USB ports EACH . . . . . .
What methods do you use to consolidate the UBS ports? AT MOST I want two, one for charging and loading sketches, and the other for hosted devices (game controllers, for instance) ...
I would just hand wire a custom "Y" or "W" cable myself that connects power to all the devices but data only to the nano but to be honest I do not know enough about the internal electronics of all the devices to be sure that's safe... Is this something that wont blow up in my face?
please let me know your thoughts, ideas, suggestions, PICTURES of what you've come up with that has not melted yet ..
Blaise.