Home consoles were never intended to be made portable, though enterprising hackers have always pushed the boundaries with various tricks and innovative builds. [Robotanv] hasn’t built a fully handheld Xbox Series S, but he has demonstrated one neat trick: making one run on a USB powerbank.
The project starts with an Anker USB-C powerbank, chosen for its ability to deliver a mighty 140 watts. It’s hooked up to a ZY12PDN USB-C trigger board, which enables the powerbank and tells it which voltage to output. It’s set up to run at 20 volts, which is too much for the Xbox, which prefers 12 volts. The reason for this is that the only way to get the full power out of the powerbank is to run at its maximum voltage. A buck converter is used to step down the voltage to 12 volts.
As for the console itself, a lot of disassembly is required, but minimal modifications. Just two wires connect the power supply to the Xbox’s motherboard. Subbing in your own 12 volt supply here is enough to run the console without any problems.
Running the Xbox off the powerbank, along with an external screen, [Robotanv] is able to play Cyberpunk 2077 for an about hour before the juice runs out. While we’d love to see the whole setup duct-taped together into a ersatz Xbox portable, it would probably be a little messy. [Robotanv] has big plans for the future of the project, though, and we can’t wait to see what those are.
That’s very impressive! I wonder if it’d be simpler to use something which delivers 12v directly like power tool batteries? But very impressive.
It would be better and definitely more efficient. Here he’s doing atleast two conversions. Cool project nonetheless!
Multiple voltage conversions in a single system always annoyed me as a tech. I got stuck helping maintain a remote gun system for the Coast Guard at one point. Completely outside of my training and rate, I was relegated to poking things with a multi-meter and reading off numbers to the Electronics Technician that was head down in his own circuit box doing the same.
The ship ran on 24VDC generators like all safe sane marine power systems. The gun however, required something odd like 27vDC for its drive motor and 13vDC for the ammunition feed motor. The fire control system ran on yet another voltage and the user interface console was again something else. I’m sure the electro-optical sight had its own screwball requirements as well because DoD “logic”.
Transformers and heat sinks everywhere.
BAE makes some amazing products but godamightydamn I think their engineers were completely out to lunch when they slapped together that gun. Also, if you’re going to design a weapon system for the marine environment that uses computers, make the damn thing sealed, solid state, and give it all weather gasket connections! Salt water corrosion is a nightmare.
Could be worse, the first Royal Navy warship to be entirely lit but electricity was 1876’s HMS Inflexible, which used 800V DC for its arc lights! 🤣
Yeah, getting an 18v battery pack and using the DC converter board on that would be preferred. You can get EG: knockoff Dewalt 9Ah 18v nominal packs cheap sometimes.
Wonder if there is a way to hack the Xbox to run at a more efficient power profile. Like maybe force it to run at 720p or something. Better cooling improves the power draw because it takes less amps to run cooler chips.
He obviously gets a lot of benefits from the pack, like a charge indicator and low voltage shutoff.
I wonder why no-one uses the power supply spade terminals as is with these hacks
Ryobi 18v batteries have the low voltage cutoff, over-amp protection, thermal protection, and usually have a charge indicator too.
Those batteries are fantastic for projects like this. Especially since you can get them pretty cheap during the holidays.
The main issue is the size of the terminal post, but you can edit that out if you really need to.
“Home consoles were never intended to be made portable”
*glances at the Switch*
*looks over at Steam*
I wonder if you can get a PS4 or ps5 to run on a power bank but that might be impossible because wattage differences I bet a Nintendo Wii could easily run on a power bank