This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm in my 40s and therefore generally in the "get off my lawn, kids" age.
But I totally agree with that article. I've converted quite a few legacy devices with barrel jack to USB-C - and got rid of a huge box of junky old power bricks. Especially for devices I only use occasionally I don't want to search for the matching power bricks - I just want to plug it into one of the 4 USB-C PD sockets I have installed into my desk.
How difficult is it to retrofit that into older devices? Because I'd love to get rid of my."Miscellaneous Power Cords/Adapters" box on my storage shelf.
If you can solder and heat shrink then search for "usb c trigger board" on ebay and get some for like $5. They will request either 5v, 9v, 12v, 15v or 20v. I've found for most older battery powered barrel jack devices a voltage that is an little under spec works just fine. Ive convertered everything in my house and now own a nice USB PD battery bank, life is good.
It mainly depends on the space available in the case of whatever you want to convert. If there's a lot of space you just get a larger USB-C PD converter board with nice soldering points for the cables. The less space available the smaller the module you need to get, up to worst case trying to do your own.
pretty easy, if soldering is easy:
(first result from amazon, not endorsement: https://www.amazon.com/Type-C-Trigger-Module-Supports-Output/dp/B08LDJBN8P)
What are some of these devices?
Older notebooks, battery chargers, PMR radios, pretty much everything taking less than 100W DC current.
Some AI written post's language really sucks, and this is one of them.
I honestly don't know how to take this 🤔
It's very difficult to quote Douglas Adams without sounding like you're pandering to nerd culture. I don't think AI could pull it off.
I don't know what to think of someone who could blast off accusations like this, either.
Edit: Oh. The accusation is even dumber. It's just the header OP wrote. That was just direct to the point writing. AI or no, who cares about two tiny paragraphs.
Edit: Filled in the words my brain thought were there for everybody.
Thank you. Also I could have written it better. Reading what I wrote again I wasn't happy at all. It really sounded a bit fake...
you wrote it? Cool!
I've really been loving USB PD, and retrofit into several devices i use. My big next interest is the USB PPS, allowing devices to request extermly minute adjustments to the voltage, instead of just "9v"
No, I only wrote the intro of this Lemmy thread. It's the part that @[email protected] said was AI generated. At least that was my understanding.
I really hope that the hackaday article cannot be confused with ai generated garbage... Or maybe my taste is really bad!
AI can spell technology.
Also the de-jure standard in the EU
TIL de jure. At first I thought this was a typo of du jour.
de jure /dĭ joo͝r′ē, dā yoo͝r′ā/ adverb & adjective According to law; by right. noun By right; according to law. See de facto. adjective By right, in accordance with the law, legally.
I wish PoE would get more love. Networking and power in one package. Voltage is high enough that you can run it around your house without too much power loss, but not so high that you are supposed to have a licensed electrician do it. The equipment for it is getting cheaper. It's easily powerful enough to run smart LED lights without wireless network nonsense. Plus, you can give your PoE switch its own dedicated UPS, and now your lights are all on battery backup.
It was born for a corporate IT environment for running VoIP phones and security cameras, and mostly ignored for residential customers. Good news is that used 48 port switches with full PoE are cheap on eBay.
I love PoE, but there are some hard limitations to that idea. Mainly cost per meter of cable, but also in the amount of runs that would need to be completed to accomplish that. I cant splice two ethernet cables together and run one to a nearby light or other device without a switch, which means more equipment or more cable to make it work. Also, being 48v, it will have a lower overall efficiency compared to direct wiring with 110-220v, especially with the higher resistance of ethernet vs 14ga romex. That being said, I'd love to see 48v dc in home outlets.
I generally like USB-PD, as you can generally plug in any PD compliant device into any PD compliant charger and it will charge. The connector doesn't even matter, PD works over Lightning and for example MagSafe as well.
What I found to be lacking are these multi-port charging bricks. They do a solid job at charging battery-powered devices, but most of them renegotiate the power contract with every connected device when you plug another one in or remove one. I tried multiple chargers by Anker, Ugreen and Belkin and they all do that. Apparently Apple's dual 35 watts USB-C charger doesn't, but manages to renegotiate without a momentary disconnect. It's only 35 watts though, so it's not practical for many use cases.
Is there any disadvantage to this renegotiation? As far as I know, it happens to make sure the charging block doesnt burn your house down.
The biggest problem is that devices that aren't battery powered will reboot.
Ideally you would have each port on its own isolated bus.
I suspect a most people call power bricks "chargers" and forget there are non-battery-powered devices that they can power.
USB-PD can be used for more than just charging. If you're running something (a headphone amp for example) from one port of a multi-port brick, you don't want it to stop momentarily every time you plug or unplug one of the other ports.
Yes, if the device isn't battery powered. Think one-board computers or also docks (for example Steam Deck Dock). The Deck doesn't turn off, but the dock switches to being powered by the Steam Deck momentarily, which resets its ports as well (display and network disconnects briefly).
I've modified a few devices to charge or be powered with USB C. I've also modified devices with USB C That didn't work correctly because they were missing the pull down resistors on the CC lines.
Let's not talk about the new Raspberry Pi...
Plus the Pi Pico is micro USB. I hate them for making that choice.
why not?
It doesn't support PD, and uses an improperly wired USB-C connector.
Do you have any source on that? I planned to get one soon and that's worrying. So far I've found this post after a quick search, which claims PD is supported.
Maybe he's talking about the pi 4, which did have usb-c power issues on its first revision. https://bgr.com/tech/raspberry-pi-4-usb-c-charging-issue-how-to-fix-the-power-problem
Current pi4's and all pi5's don't have that problem.
The Pi 5 wants 5A and 5V, which I believe [citation needed] isn’t supported by USB-PD:
This article about usb-pd lists 5v 5A as an available option https://www.howtogeek.com/769888/what-is-usb-power-delivery-usb-pd/
USB PD never exceeds 5A of current, but the voltage can be dynamically configured to meet the needs of a device up to the maximum power limit for the standard.
And
When a USB PD charger connects to a device, it performs a "handshake" asking the device how much power it needs. USB PD supports seven voltage levels at 5V, 9V, 15V, 20V, 28V, 36V, and 48V.
I hope there will be a more robust connector option some day. But this situation already beats most of the alternatives and especially the tangled mess of incompatible cables and power supplies.
And with a bit of smarts, it can even work in two directions, charging one device off the battery of another.
