Well-Protected USB Power Strip Makes It Easy To Plug In

February 24, 2019 by Dan Maloney 24 Comments

When we get a new device these days, somewhere in the package is likely to be a wall-wart USB power supply. We look for a place to plug in the little switch-mode dongle, rearrange a few plugs in the mains power strip, and curse its designers for the overly cozy outlet spacing. And all the while that USB-A plug on the power supply cable taunts us with its neat, compact form factor. If only there were a USB power strip.

Unwilling to suffer such indignity any longer, [Scott M. Baker] took matters into his own hands and designed this USB power distribution system. We were surprised to hear that he was unable to find a commercial USB power strip, but even if he had, it likely wouldn’t have had the bells and whistles that he added to his. The circuit went through a couple of revs, but each was focused on protection of the connected USB devices. He included both overcurrent protection, in the form of an electronic fuse built around a TPS2421 hot-swap controller, and overvoltage protection using a crowbar circuit with the usual zener-SCR arrangement. There’s also a transient voltage suppression diode to keep any inductive spikes at bay. Interestingly, each USB outlet has all these protections – it’s not just one protected bus feeding a bunch of USB outlets in parallel, but individual modules with all the circuitry. The modules are gangable and live inside a laser-cut acrylic case. The video below shows the design and build process in some detail.

We have to say that we always learn a lot about circuit design from [Scott]’s projects. You may recall his custom Atari 2600 controller or his dual-port memory retro game console, both interesting and instructive builds in their own right.

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Build Your Own Dumb USB Power Strip

February 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

diy-usb-power-strip

Here’s a USB charging center which [Kenneth Finnegan] built using parts from his junk bin. We’d like to reiterate our claim that he must have the most magical of junk bins (the last thing we saw him pull out of it was a 24-port managed Ethernet switch).

The jack on the side accepts the barrel connector from a 12V wall wart. [Kenneth] mentions that the 2.1mm jack is a standard he uses in all of his projects. Inside there’s a switch mode power supply that provides the regulated 5V to each USB port. We really like the fact that he added some protection; diy is no fun if you end up frying your beloved multi-hundred dollar devices. The yellow components are polyfuses which will cut the power if 600 mA of current is exceeded. This works great for almost all of his devices, but his iPod 4G doesn’t like the system. It sees the voltage dip just a bit and stops charging entirely.

Getting Around The Raspi’s USB Host Current Limit

September 10, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

For being such a revolutionary device, there are still a few problems with the Raspberry Pi. For one, the USB host ports are only able to source 140 mA per port, while the USB ports on your desktop, laptop, and even tablet are able to send a full 500 mA per port.

The official ‘fix’ for this problem is to use a powered USB port for any device that requires more than 140 mA, something that didn’t sit well with [Manis]. He came up with an easy fix , though, that only requires a few bits of wire and a soldering iron.

The USB ports on the Raspi are current limited to 140 mA by a pair of polyfuses. [Manis] bridged these fuses, effectively taking them out of the circuit with a short length of wire. This allowed him to use a USB hard drive (powered by USB, of course) with the Raspi.

There’s one small problem with sending that much current through the Raspi’s USB port. Sometimes, when the high-power USB device is powered on, the voltage will sag, resetting the SoC and rebooting the system. [Manis] did his homework and discovered USB 2.0-spec ports should use a 120 μF, low-ESR capacitor to prevent this. The Raspi comes stock with a 47 μF cap used for this purpose. Replacing this cap (C32) might be a good idea if you’re planning on using high-power devices with your Raspi.