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The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

economist.com

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Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#51
post #15

This was posted a month ago as well, discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6591186

I find it notable that this article entirely ignores the EU's Common Electrical Power Supply law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_External_Power_Supply ), which effectively mandated that all smart phones sold in the EU use micro USB for power. This had a swift and noticeable effect in the diversity of connectors in phones (basically Apple is the only maker that doesn't use micro USB and this change happened at t…

The EC memorandum was only passed after the industry had already decided on its own to implement it: http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/mobile-industry-unites-to-drive...

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#52

On wikipedia I can count at least 6 different types of connectors for different voltages/current, sounds like a deal breaker to me. I'd rather have devices adapt Power over ethernet which requires just one cable and gives many more opportunities for networked future of devices. in fact http://www.commercialintegrator.com/guide/product/details/po... http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/the_wire/2012/06/14/fsr... So I…

We'd need a "micro-RJ45" to get any adoption among portable devices such as phones or tablets. And some solution to those terrible plastic clips.

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#53
In 2006 China demanded all mobile telephone manufactures to standardise on USB connections for charging and data transfer. South Korea did so a year earlier, requiring 'standardized charging' without explicitly stating USB. [1]

I'm curious if or how this requirement had any impact on charger standardisation. The Chinese market combined with economies of scale for common production models could have outweighed any cost benefits a market for chargers could have brought.

[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chinese-Government-Demands-US...

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#55
post #40
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even worse than USB is Firewire, which, if I am not mistaken, gives direct memory access to whatever device is connected. Both FireWire and Thunderbolt offer DMA. There's publicly available tools that allow you to extract passwords, remove lock screens and find keys in the memory of running devices using either type of port.

Plus PCMCIA and ExpressCard, so most laptops are vulnerable out of the box[1], but there are some ways to mitigate those attacks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMA_attack [1]...if you plug untrusted devices into your expansion slots or leave your laptop unattended.

My favorite FireWire hack was when a guy took a friend's laptop, which did not even have FireWire. He plugged in a FW card at the boot prompt. The computer auto-installed the driver, and the attack proceeded...

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#56
post #3

It'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…

surely this could be a software fix: tell usb driver to use special mode that is only allowed to use data line to negotiate power levels, before you plug into an untrusted power source.

Now you have to trust the driver. And depend on there not being "test modes" in the hardware that can be turned on (USB 3.0 is a pretty complex beastie; frankly, if I were a spook agency I'd want to have doors in via seldom-examined ports like USB).

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#57
post #39
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they're pretty limited in what they can do. Most things you'd plug a USB cable into are not thing you'd want to plug higher voltages into, so that would require device-side voltage conversion which is wasteful in energy, space and complexity. I suspect that the 100W figure is actually just a pulsed maximum specification. The thing is that current ratings for wires are actually specified as a max. continuous curr…

Almost all your USB-powered devices have voltage converters with varying inefficiencies. It should also be noted that a switched mode voltage converter can have well over 90% efficiency, even with large changes in voltage. You should also remember that those microwaves and kettles are getting up to 15A @ 120VRMS continuously, which works out to 1800W. You can verify the actual power output of a kettle by timing how l…

USB delivers 5V power and has 3.3V signaling levels, so any reasonable bus-powered device has to contain some kind of voltage conversion. Most common solution is LDO, voltage limits in USB specification even seem to imply that solution. Designing switched mode power supply that meets all the USB 2.0 (don't know about 3.0 but it is probably mostly similar) requirements on minimal voltage on input, current draw in various states and so on is not exactly trivial.

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#58
Network engineers in campus and enterprise environments have been building a DC network overlay for years in the form of Power over Ethernet. All of those VOIP phones, access points, and security cameras all need DC power with UPS backup and the network closet has become where that power is provided.

On our campus it's reaching the point where every switch we'll be buying will soon be PoE. I imagine many places are far ahead of us on this.

What is the max cable length of USB Pd?

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#59
post #39
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they're pretty limited in what they can do. Most things you'd plug a USB cable into are not thing you'd want to plug higher voltages into, so that would require device-side voltage conversion which is wasteful in energy, space and complexity. I suspect that the 100W figure is actually just a pulsed maximum specification. The thing is that current ratings for wires are actually specified as a max. continuous curr…

Almost all your USB-powered devices have voltage converters with varying inefficiencies. It should also be noted that a switched mode voltage converter can have well over 90% efficiency, even with large changes in voltage. You should also remember that those microwaves and kettles are getting up to 15A @ 120VRMS continuously, which works out to 1800W. You can verify the actual power output of a kettle by timing how l…

There are some practical limits to voltage conversion if you want to keep that high efficiency. Probably most important is that your switching frequency shouldn't be as high as it is in most small devices (because high freq. allows you to use smaller components).

In any case, as dfox mentions, most internal voltage level conversions won't be switched, because it adds complexity. They will be some form of linear regulation s.t. they can move between logic levels. That's different than moving from whatever high voltage is on your 150W USB line into a level that won't fry CMOS circuitry. There's a reason that the wall-->DC plug conversion usually happens in a brick on your power cable. Switched mode will be used as sparingly as possible, such as when you also need AC signals rectified, if you need both buck and boost depending on a battery or something, or if you need to be able to modify the control loop dynamically.

> those microwaves and kettles are getting up to 15A @ 120VRMS continuously, which works out to 1800W

Well that's kind of my point. Even at 1.8kW those devices don't need to draw 20A continuous (or even pulsed, because of the fuse). Basically no matter what you're doing, the copper losses are roughly fixed by the hardware. What you can control are heat dissipation and current levels, and it's a lot more fun to play with Ohm's law than try to fight against thermodynamics.

Re: The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough USB's inability to work over longer cable lengths works in its favour here. Generally we don't rely on anything working over 3 metres. Wikipedia says "the maximum power supported is up to 60 W at 20 V, 36 W at 12 V and 10 W at 5 V" [1]. For a typical 3 metre 20 gauge USB cable 10 W power delivery will cause a voltage drop from 5 to 4.6 V. This is within the +0.25/-0.55 specified for USB 3 [2]. Since no…

Yeah, it's fine for USB cables. The difficult bit would be if you're planning on cabling an entire office building from one low voltage DC source, like the solar panels the article mentions. If you want 60 watts at 20 v is 3A, and if you want to supply a hundred ports with that you're going to need copper cables the size of your finger.

A standard is currently being developed for DC distribution in datacenters and commercial buildings, at 380 volts.

One of the proposals for residential DC is to supply 380 volts and 24 volts. The higher voltage would be for things like space heaters and hairdryers, while the lower voltage would be for electronics.

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