That’s actually amazing because I have almost exactly the same phone charger, and the end that connects to the phone is broken. I posted on the instructables forums asking if this would make a suitable USB charger since it outputs at 5v but no one got back to me :( I guess this answers that.

My question is, why didn’t he leave the cable? Having the USB female end embedded into the shell seems to make it less versatile. If I just cut off the end of my cable, mark the polarity right, and splice it with an existing USB cable, I should be set, right?

Posted at 5:16 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by mike sty

(This is [rbhays]) I wrote that instructable when I was still in high school lol, never thought It would make it to hack-a-day :-)

Posted at 5:22 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by Ryan Hays

Some devices (like the razr phones) require more than just 5 volts from usb. To charge, you need pins 2 and 4 in the connector connected to ground via a resistor. This puts the phone in “charge” mode.
This may be the reason the Zune won’t charge with it.

Posted at 5:42 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by Matt_

however, the ipod can take up to 30V can it not?

Posted at 8:02 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by juliano

my wifes camera came with a usb wall charger, for you to plug it’s usb cable into, but I plugged my htc touch into it, and fried the touch. Camera still charges okay, so does ipod, but I wouldnt make one with higher than 5v.

Posted at 8:07 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by narn

Not a new hack but certainly a very useful one, I’ve done the same with an old 5v 2A power supply meant for some old obscure magneto-optical drive. I didn’t take the PSU apart but instead wired up a dual USB port hacked out from an unused PC front panel (dead motherboards’ dual USB ports work equally well) and superglued it to the top with added hot glue for extra stability – it doesn’t look very slick but works very well for my mp3 player/Archos PMP/mobile phone/rechargable USB battery packs.

It’s not just “wall warts” that this particular hack is good for, if you have a cigarette lighter adaptor for a mobile phone kicking about doing nothing then chances are it outputs 5v – look at the label & check with a multimeter :)

One important note to be aware of is amps output, the USB spec is 500mA so chargers that output 500mA or higher won’t give you any problems. 1A & higher ones are great for dual USB sockets so you can charge two devices without worry.

Posted at 9:17 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by Haku

This is a response to matts comment. Whats the ohm rating of the resistor for pins 2 and 4? Also are these pins in series to ground or each with there own resistor?

Posted at 10:26 pm on Aug 8th, 2008 by blizzarddemon

The Zune charger link above points to an Instructable for a ZEN player. If there’s an actual Zune link, please share it.

Posted at 3:59 am on Aug 9th, 2008 by Marty Capella

The USB guys have a standard for this:

http://compliance.usb.org/index.asp?UpdateFile=Battery%20Charging&Format=Standard

Posted at 4:22 am on Aug 9th, 2008 by Will

Jeze – just read the instructables comments – there are a load of uninformed people in there…

To clear up a couple of things

USB is rated at 100mA max draw until the computer says OK, then the device can negotiate upto 500mA

This means that the battery charger will not kick in until the computer OK’s it.

Enter the charging specification, this says that a dumb power supply can pull the pins to rails to allow the device to enter a charging mode without negotiation.

The reason why new devices don’t charge with a dumb implementation is because they follow the (new) standard, the reason why old devices work is that before the standard it was apparent that many Laptops would happily pump out up to 2A without any negotiation.

Nothing to do with corporate greed, in fact quite the opposite.

Posted at 4:52 am on Aug 9th, 2008 by Will

does this System make everything lowercase to avoid SHOUTING?

Makes kb and KB a bit confusing

Posted at 4:54 am on Aug 9th, 2008 by Will

That’s cool and all for 2 years ago, but usb wall chargers are all over the place now. I say bad HackADay. If you want a usb wal charger, let me know and I’ll send you one of the ten I have for free.

Posted at 12:40 pm on Aug 9th, 2008 by sPiTfIrE-K1LL

@will:

Actually, it uses the text-transform:lowercase CSS attribute to make comments lowercase.

Posted at 3:06 pm on Aug 9th, 2008 by Riax

submitted this like last year when I did it and it didnt make hackaday, but its the same project. Provides a full 2 amps at 5v and is compatible with ipods, zunes, etc..

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=130013

Posted at 3:15 pm on Aug 9th, 2008 by WarriorRocker

Pull up D+ and D- to V+ with 15K or 100K, depending on your device.

Posted at 8:44 pm on Aug 9th, 2008 by error404

@ mike sty

I chose to embed the usb jack to make it more portable. (no cable to wrap). Also, most device have thier own usb to proprietary connector, so having a cable sticking of the charger isn’t very useful (IMHO)

Posted at 10:19 pm on Aug 9th, 2008 by rbhays

hey sPiTfIrE-K1LL,
i would like to have one of your many adapters ;)
contact me if you were serious: hackaday@luciddrop.net

Posted at 2:33 am on Aug 10th, 2008 by jvm

@#12: Agreed. I have no less than 2 car chargers and 4 wall-warts that provide a “charging” USB port. Meritline carries them for like 5 bucks shipped.

The part that pisses me off is that I don’t think even the new “charging standard” is actually a *standard*, as it’s always a crapshoot whether a given mini-B device will charge with a given mini-B charger. I have (at least) an HTC phone, a Motorola phone, and a Creative MP3 player, that each need a separate wall wart — of the ~5 mini-B chargers I have, none will charge all 3 of them. One charges the HTC and the Creative, but no the Moto. One charges the HTC and the Moto, but not the Creative. One charges the Moto, but not the HTC or the Creative. It drives me crazy.

Posted at 12:50 pm on Aug 11th, 2008 by James

the link to the zune charger is actually for zen’s i believe that they are a different type

Posted at 7:53 pm on Feb 2nd, 2009 by Josh