Design Review: USB-C PD Input For Yaesu FRG7700

May 23, 2024 by Arya Voronova 21 Comments

Today is another board from a friend, [treble], who wants to convert a Yaesu FRG7700 radio to USB-C PD power. It’s yet another review that I’ve done privately, and then realized I’ve made more than enough changes to it, to the point that others could learn from this review quite a bit. With our hacker’s consent, I’m now sharing these things with you all, so that we can improve our boards further and further.

This board’s idea is thought-out and executed well – it replaces a bespoke barrel jack assembly, and is mechanically designed to fit the screw holes and the free space inside the chassis. For USB-PD, it uses a CH32V003 coupled with FUSB302 – I definitely did help pick the latter! For mechanical reasons, this board is split into two parts – one has the USB-C port, whereas the other has the MCU and the PD PHY.

In short, this board is a PD trigger. Unlike the usual PD triggers, however, this one is fully configurable, since it has a 32-bit MCU with good software support, plus, the PD PHY is also well known and easily controllable. So, if you want special behavior like charger-power-dependent profile selection for powering a static resistance load, you can implement it easily – or, say, you can do PPS for variable voltage or even lithium ion battery charging! With a bit of extra code, you could even do EPR (28 V = 140 W power) with this board, instantly making it into a pretty advanced PD trigger, beyond the ones available on the market.

Also, the board has some PCB art, and a very handy filter to get some of the USB-C charger noise out. Let’s take a look at all of these!

Current Flow Improvements

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Running The Xbox Series S On A USB Powerbank

February 17, 2023 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

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. Continue reading “Running The Xbox Series S On A USB Powerbank” →

Have JBC Soldering Handle, Will USB-C Power Deliver

April 21, 2020 by Kerry Scharfglass 8 Comments

Frequent converter-of-tools-to-USB-C [Jana Marie Hemsing] is at it again, this time with a board to facilitate using USB Power Delivery to fuel JBC soldering iron handles. Last time we saw [Jana] work her USB-C magic was with the Otter-Iron, which brought Power Delivery to the trusty TS100 with a purpose built replacement PCBA. This time he’s taking a different approach by replacing the “station” of a conventional soldering station completely with one tiny board and one giant capacitor.

If you’ve been exposed to the “AC fire starter” grade of soldering iron the name JBC might be unfamiliar. They make tools most commonly found with Metcal’s and high end HAKKOs and Wellers on the benches of rework technicians and factory floors. Like any tool in this class each soldering station comes apart and each constituent piece (tips, handles, base stations, stands, etc) are available separately from the manufacturer and on the used market at often reasonable prices, which is where [Jana] comes in.

The Otter-Iron PRO is a diminutive PCBA which accepts a USB-C cable on one side and the connector from a standard JBC T245-A handle on the other. JBC uses a fairly typical thermistor embedded in the very end of the iron tip, which the Otter-Iron PRO senses to provide closed loop temperature control. [Jana] says it can reach its temperature setpoint from a cold start in 5 seconds, which roughly matches the performance of an original JBC base station! We’re especially excited because this doesn’t require any modification to the handle or station itself, making it a great option for JBC users with a need for mobility.

Want to make an Otter-Iron PRO of your own? Sources are at the link at the top. It sounds like v3 of the design is coming soon, which will include its own elegant PCB case. Check out the CAD render after the break. Still wondering how all this USB-PD stuff works? Check out [Jason Cerudolo’s] excellent walkthrough we wrote up last year.

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Adding USB-C To The TS100, But Not How You Think

December 26, 2019 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

USB-C has its special Power Delivery standard, and is capable of delivering plenty of juice to attached hardware. This has led many to modify their TS-100 soldering irons to accept the connector. [Jana Marie] is the latest, though she’s taken rather a different tack than you might expect.

[Jana] didn’t want to modify the original hardware or hack in an adapter. Instead, she struck out on her own, developing an entire replacement PCB for the TS-100 iron. The firmware is rough and ready, and minimal work has been done on the GUI and temperature regulation. However, reports are that functionality is good, and [Jana]’s demonstration shows it handling a proper desoldering task with ease.

Files are on Github for those that wish to spin their own. The PCB is designed to snap neatly inside the original case for a nice fit and finish. Power is plentiful too, as the hardware supports USB Power Delivery 2.0, which is capable of running at up to 100 W. On the other hand, the stock TS-80 iron, which natively supports USB-C, only works with Quick Charge 3.0, and thus is limited to a comparatively meager 36 W.

We’ve seen plenty of TS-100 hacks over 2019. Some have removed the standard barrel jack and replaced it with a USB-PD board. Meanwhile, others have created adapters that plug in to the back of the iron. However, [Jana] is dictating her own terms by recreating the entire PCB. Sometimes it pays to go your own way!

[Thanks to elad for the tip!]

Solder Ninja Dabbles In USB Power Arcana

September 9, 2019 by Lewin Day 22 Comments

USB first hit the scene in the 1990s, and was intended to simplify connecting peripherals to PCs and eliminate the proliferation of various legacy interfaces. Over 20 years later, it’s not only achieved its initial goals, but become a de facto standard for charging and power supply for all manner of personal electronic gadgets. If you asked someone back in 1995 whether or not you could build a USB-powered soldering iron, they’d have politely asked you to leave the USB Implementers Forum. But times change, and Solder Ninja is just that!

With a maximum power draw of 40 W, the Solder Ninja required careful design to ensure practicality. It supports a variety of USB power standards, including USB-BC 1.2, USB Quick Charge, and USB Power Delivery. This enables it to draw the large amounts of current required for the heating element. To make it easy to use with a variety of chargers out in the wild, it displays the current negotiated voltage and maximum current draw. This enables the user to understand the varying performance of the device, depending on the charger it’s plugged into.

Given the multitude of different USB power standards, we imagine [Nicolas] has the patience of a saint to perfect a project like this. We’ve seen similar builds before, too. Video after the break.

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Charging LiPos With USB Power Delivery

February 23, 2019 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

DC power bricks were never a particularly nice way to run home electronics. Heavy and unwieldy, they had a tendency to fall out and block adjacent outlets from use. In recent years, more and more gadgets are shipping with USB ports for power input. However, power over USB has always been fraught with different companies using all manner of different methods to communicate safe current limits between chargers and hardware.

These days, we’re lucky enough to have the official USB Power Delivery standard in place. Even laptop chargers are using USB now, and [FPVtv DRONES] decided to see if it was possible to use such a device as a high current power supply to charge batteries.

The test starts with a MI brand USB C laptop charger. A USB power meter is plugged inline to determine voltage and current output of the charger, while a small microcontroller device is used to speak with the laptop charger and set it to high voltage, high current delivery mode. A lithium battery charger is then plugged in, and the setup is tested by charging two large 4-cell LiPos at over 1.4 amps concurrently.

The setup demonstrates that, with the right off-the-shelf modules, it’s possible to use your laptop charger to run high-current devices, as long as you can spoof it into switching into the right mode. This is the natural evolution of USB power technology – a road which started long ago with projects like the MintyBoost, way back when. Video after the break.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Playing With USB Power Delivery

October 17, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

USB Power Delivery is the technology that’s able to pump 100 Watts down a USB cable. It’s been around for half a decade now, but only in the last few years have devices and power supplies supporting USB PD shown up on the market. This is a really interesting technology, and we can’t wait to see the outcome of people messing around with five amps flowing through a cable they picked up at the dollar store, but where are the DIY solutions to futz around with USB PD?

For his Hackaday Prize entry, [Clayton] is doing just that. He’s built a tiny little power jack for USB PD that has a USB type-C plug on one end and a pair of screw terminals on the other. It’s the USB PD Buddy Sink, and once we find some cheap 100 Watt USB power adapters, this is going to be an invaluable tool.

Getting 100 Watts out of a USB charger is a bit more complex than just soldering a few wires together. The power delivery must be negotiated, and for that [Clayton] is using a simple, cheap STM32F0 ARM microcontroller. Plugging into a USB bus is a bit more complicated, but luckily On Semi has a neat little programmable USB Type-C controller PHY that does all the work. Throw in a few MOSFETS and other ancillary parts, and you have a simple, small 100 Watt power supply that plugs right into your new fancy laptop charger.

The design of the USB PD Buddy Sink is complete, and [Clayton] has a bunch of these on hand. He’s selling them on Tindie, but it’s also a great entry to the Hackaday Prize.