USB-C Rainbow Ranger: Sensing Volts With Style

July 15, 2025 by Matt Varian 1 Comment

USB-C has enabled a lot of great things, most notably removing the no less than three attempts to plug in the cable correctly, but gone are the days of just 5V over those lines. [Meticulous Technologies] sent in their project to help easily identify what voltage your USB-C line is running at, the USB VSense.

The USB VSense is an inline board that has USB-C connectors on either end, and supporting up to 240W you don’t have to worry about it throttling your device. One of the coolest design aspects of this board is that it uses stacked PCB construction as the enclosure, the display, and the PCB doing all the sensing and displaying. And for sensing this small device has a good number of cool tricks, it will sense all the eight common USB-C voltages, but it will also measure and alert you to variations of the voltage outside the normal range by blinking the various colored LEDs in specific patterns. For instance should you have it plugged into a line that’s sitting over 48V the VSense white 48V LED will be rapidly blinking, warning you that something in your setup has gone horribly wrong.

Having dedicated uniquely colored LEDs for each common level allows you to at a glance know what the voltage is at without the need to read anything. With a max current draw of less than 6mA you won’t feel bad about using it on a USB battery pack for many applications.

The USB VSense has completed a small production run and has stated their intention to open source their design as soon as possible after their Crowd Supply campaign. We’ve featured other USB-C PD projects and no doubt we’ll be seeing more as this standard continues to gain traction with more and more devices relying on it for their DC power.

PPS Is The Hottest USB-C Feature You Didn’t Know About

March 24, 2025 by Lewin Day 28 Comments

USB Power Delivery is widely considered to be a good thing. It’s become relatively standard, and is a popular way for makers to easily power their projects at a number of specific, useful voltages. However, what you may not know is that it’s possible to get much more variable voltages out of some USB chargers out there. As [GreatScott!] explains, you’ll want to meet USB-C PPS.

PPS stands for Programmable Power Supply. It’s a method by which a USB-C device can request variable voltage and current delivery on demand. Unlike the Power Delivery standard, you’re not limited to set voltages at tiers of 5V, 9V, 15V and 20V. You can have your device request the exact voltage it wants, right from the charger. Commercially, it’s most typically used to allow smartphones to charge as fast as possible by getting the optimum voltage to plumb into the battery. However, with the right techniques, you can use PPS to get a charger to output whatever voltage you want, from 3.3 V to 21 V, for your own nefarious purposes. You can choose a voltage in 20 mV increments, and even set a current limit in 50 mA increments. Don’t go mad with power, now.

However, there’s a hitch. Unlike USB PD, there isn’t yet a whole ecosystem of $2 PPS breakout boards ready to gloop into your own little projects. As [GreatScott!] suggests, if you want to use PPS, you might want to take a look at the AP33772S IC. It’s a USB PD3.1 Sink Controller. You can command it over I2C to ask for the voltage and current you want. If that’s too hard, though, [CentyLab] has a solution on Tindie to get you going faster. It’s also got some exciting additional functionality—like USB-C AVS support. It offers higher voltage and more power, albeit with less resolution, but chargers with this functionality are quite obscure at this stage.

We’ve actually touched on PPS capability before in our exploration of the magic that is USB-C Power Delivery. Video after the break.

Continue reading “PPS Is The Hottest USB-C Feature You Didn’t Know About” →

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

Continue reading “Design Review: USB-C PD Input For Yaesu FRG7700” →

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.

Continue reading “Have JBC Soldering Handle, Will USB-C Power Deliver” →

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.

Continue reading “Solder Ninja Dabbles In USB Power Arcana” →