The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
1–10 of 63 posts
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#2With the new USB Power Delivery spec this can finally make sense to really start thinking about. Being able to power things that are "non-trivial" as far as power goes would make this go a long way. Imagine your sound system being powered off of a very clean DC power source, would be an audiophile's dream.
20V and 100W would make for a lot of nice options for powering things.
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#3It's going to be interesting, from a security standpoint. One of the original cracks on the PS3 was via the USB stack. I'd not go plugging my computers or phones into jacks that I don't necessarily control.
I can see a market for buffering devices that allow power through, and perhaps do power negotiation for you, but that do not allow data traffic. I believe these devices already exist. though I don't know how sophisticated they are.
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#4Anyone know how this standard actually works? I think right now Android phones tend to short the data lines and Apple uses some system of voltages to communicate that it's high power, which means that the other device usually gets stuck pulling 0.2 amps. How does this new standard tell the device it can supply 100 watts? And does this mean that iOS and Android will be stuck on 0.2 amps? Can you plug a legacy device on at all?
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#5It's going to be interesting, from a security standpoint. One of the original cracks on the PS3 was via the USB stack. I'd not go plugging my computers or phones into jacks that I don't necessarily control. I can see a market for buffering devices that allow power through, and perhaps do power negotiation for you, but that do not allow data traffic. I believe these devices already exist. though I don't know how sophi…
(I'm not an engineer). I a similar article; iirc android phones could be owned by plugging them into a hostile usb connection. I wonder, though, if you couldn't produce a simple adapter that just drops some of the pins? Maybe I don't know enough about usb.
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#6One problem with low-voltage DC is that according to Watt, to achieve equivalent power (watts) at a low voltage, current is higher. And heat is proportionate to current squared. So you can't send a lot of power at low voltage because you lose a lot to heat. That means low-voltage runs have to be kept fairly short, or very low power, limiting their usefulness.
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#7It's going to be interesting, from a security standpoint. One of the original cracks on the PS3 was via the USB stack. I'd not go plugging my computers or phones into jacks that I don't necessarily control. I can see a market for buffering devices that allow power through, and perhaps do power negotiation for you, but that do not allow data traffic. I believe these devices already exist. though I don't know how sophi…
(I'm not an engineer). I a similar article; iirc android phones could be owned by plugging them into a hostile usb connection. I wonder, though, if you couldn't produce a simple adapter that just drops some of the pins? Maybe I don't know enough about usb.
Yep they make charging only cables and I THINK adapters as well, I quit looking after the first find:
http://www.amazon.com/Retractable-Micro-Charging-Cables-FUNC...
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#8Anyone know how this standard actually works? I think right now Android phones tend to short the data lines and Apple uses some system of voltages to communicate that it's high power, which means that the other device usually gets stuck pulling 0.2 amps. How does this new standard tell the device it can supply 100 watts? And does this mean that iOS and Android will be stuck on 0.2 amps? Can you plug a legacy device o…
http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
USB has both power and data lines. This new standard can use data lines to negotiate power delivery, I believe. I'd expect will still be backwards-compatible of course. I would think the only allowable voltage would be 5V, as is currently.
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#9Anyone know how this standard actually works? I think right now Android phones tend to short the data lines and Apple uses some system of voltages to communicate that it's high power, which means that the other device usually gets stuck pulling 0.2 amps. How does this new standard tell the device it can supply 100 watts? And does this mean that iOS and Android will be stuck on 0.2 amps? Can you plug a legacy device o…
http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/ USB has both power and data lines. This new standard can use data lines to negotiate power delivery, I believe. I'd expect will still be backwards-compatible of course. I would think the only allowable voltage would be 5V, as is currently.
Correction: the new standard will always start at 5V (for legacy purposes), but then may renegotiate the voltage (and current), according to: http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/PD_1.0_Introduct...
Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
#10This is interesting as a contribution to the solar net metering debate. If you have a local low-voltage DC network, perhaps backed up by a UPS, you can charge the UPS battery using solar, and that means that solar electricity generated on-site automatically displaces grid electricity at the retail rate. That means that solar would only need to compete with the retail price of conventional electricity, and not the generation cost. And solar cost is already at or near parity with retail price in many parts of the world:
This is 2010: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/solar-pv-its-cheaper-than-yo...
And this is 2025: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2012/solar-pv-its-cheaper-than-yo...
(Countries above the isobar have lower solar costs than the price of electricity from the grid)