Comments on: USB wall charger

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:53:59 +0000

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

By: James

James — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:50:11 +0000

@#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.

By: jvm

jvm — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:33:18 +0000

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

By: rbhays

rbhays — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 05:19:22 +0000

@ 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)

By: error404

error404 — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:44:49 +0000

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

By: WarriorRocker

WarriorRocker — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:15:47 +0000

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

By: Riax

Riax — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 22:06:35 +0000

@will:

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

By: sPiTfIrE-K1LL

sPiTfIrE-K1LL — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 19:40:59 +0000

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.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:54:17 +0000

does this System make everything lowercase to avoid SHOUTING?

Makes kb and KB a bit confusing

By: Will

Will — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:52:17 +0000

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.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:22:09 +0000

The USB guys have a standard for this:

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

By: Marty Capella

Marty Capella — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:59:31 +0000

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

By: blizzarddemon

blizzarddemon — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:26:48 +0000

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?

By: Haku

Haku — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:17:42 +0000

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.

By: narn

narn — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:07:59 +0000

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.