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Westinghouse Commits to Green Plug's Universal A.C. Adapter
Ian Lamont writes "Westinghouse is the first major electronics manufacturer that has publicly committed to using a 'smart power technology' that will let people use a single universal adapter to power their laptops, cell phones and other electronics. The universal adapters, which use a technology developed by a startup called Green Plug, will act like a hub that several devices can plug into, and will also shut off the power supply when the device is turned off or has finished charging. The first are expected to go on sale in early 2009 for under $100, according to Westinghouse's CTO. Eventually, Westinghouse and other manufacturers that use the technology could stop shipping adapters with their products, because customers may already have universal adapters at home. However, some manufacturers may not be inclined to use universal power adapters: the article notes Apple gets supplementary revenue from the sale of proprietary connectors for the iPod and other devices."
The thing that really sucks about Motorola's USB charge support(at least on mine, could also be verizon's fault) is that it does some sort of check, in software, before accepting a charger.
The Motorola branded charger that came with it works fine, and computers with appropriate drivers work fine; but generic USB chargers and computers without drivers get a little "unauthorized" message and no charge.
I'm sure it enables business models or something; but whoever came up with that one needs to be garroted.
The only thing actually made by "Westinghouse" is nuclear reactors. The brand name is licensed out by CBS to Westinghouse Digital Electronics LLC, which is a front for Chi Mei Optoelectronics, a subsidiary of Chi Mei Corporation (Taiwan).
Chi Mei is probably the world's leading supplier of large LCD panels.
USB has a handshaking protocol for establishing what sort of load is attached and whether the host (hub, PC, whatever) will support the requested load's power. Many wall wart USB chargers are dumb 5V supplies. While this will satisfy some load devices, others will remain in 'low power' mode, awaiting the supply to acknowledge a request for more power. Which will never come. This may result in trickle charging or no charge mode at all.
Experts on the topic may jump in and correct me, but this is my understanding: Some O/Ss handle the USB handshaking in device-specific drivers (Windows), while others implement this function in the lowest level of their USB stack (Linux). Smart USB hubs and chargers have a microcontroller and firmware to support this protocol.
Have gnu, will travel.
USB 2.0 added the ability to draw up to 1.5amps for charging capabilities (the minimum is 100 milliamp). usb 3.0 could up the amperage even more, but again, usb will only ever put out 5 volt DC.
fortunately there are a lot of devices that can run off 5 volt DC, so usb charging instead of wall brick is starting to take off. it's much cheaper to power off usb than to include a 'cheap' wall brick. only window's implementation of usb is 'broken' so that a device needs a device driver and must be in 'active' mode to charge.
besides, if you design the device to charge off usb, you can then 'sell' a brick that costs extra and not include one for the 'price' of the device. both saving money, and adding a revenue stream.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
No Chinese firm owns Westinghouse. The history of Westinghouse is a little convoluted, but it is basically now CBS. Westinghouse was originally called Westinghouse Electric Corporation. In the 90s they bought CBS and then later renamed themselves to CBS Corporation (which then sold itself to Viacom which then renamed to CBS Corporation). Currently, the Westinghouse brand is managed by a CBS subsidiary again called Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Various companies license the rights to use the brand. CBS is, of course, a publicly traded company headquartered in the United States (New York in particular).
So no, the parent is not "interesting".
USB devices have two levels of power they can draw - one very tiny amount, and a larger amount (guess which one charging your phone requires?)
When a USB device is plugged in, it only gets the minimal amount. If it needs more, it has to negotiate for it... and operating systems do this with a driver. If you have no driver (or the amount of power requested would overload the USB bus), the request for the higher power level is denied, and the phone doesn't charge.
Generic USB chargers just accept the request, unless it's for more than they can put out... which might have caused your problem... but it's not the phone that's at fault. (The phone needs what it needs, so if the charger can't or won't supply it, there's nothing the phone can do about it.)
because they don't have a default answer in a generic USB driver. It's one of the little digs they take so that each manufacture has to write a WHQL driver so their device will "properly" talk. This is instead of simply providing the industry standard, or most common, answer to the request when made.
They pulled the same crap with the power management specs on laptops, so OEMS could "optimize" their performance, instead of simply implementing the default optimizations from the chip manufacture directly. The reason is that it keeps devices tied to Windows drivers and keeps OEMS in the Microsoft upgrade treadmill.
When did Radioshack have anything like this?
Radioshack had "universal" adaptors, that basically had several different plugs, and you could select the voltage and polarity, so you could make it work with your device.
Green Plug uses the same plug for all devices, and when you plug in a device, the device and the power supply communicate. The device tells the power supply what its power needs are, and the power supply supplies that.
pins x & 4 are shorted (actually a small resistor) at the phone end on a Moto USB charger. You can easily mod a standard one to work, there's instructions on the web. E.g. http://pinouts.ru/CellularPhones-A-N/razrv3_charger_pinout.shtml
Other similar phones use different but similar schemes.
I'd happily pay an extra $5 or $10 for a device if it had an iPod charge connector.
I travel a bit and it is a royal pain in the ass to have to have to carry multiple chargers. I'm up to 5 now - laptop, phone, ipod, ipaq, and camera chargers (yes, I could scale back what I take, but I don't want to; I use all those devices a lot on the move).
It is probably one of the most common electronic devices so I'm really surprised there's not more out there. I know Apple wants a cut, but I can't imagine its more than a couple of dollars per device and I'd HAPPILY pay the extra for it. In addition to the above 5 devices I have a billion more at home that I don't want either.
While I'd obviously much rather see some generic standard take hold, I can't see that happening because these add-on peripheral things are clearly such an awesome cashcow for consumer electronics makers. In the meantime, I'm happy to let Apple rule the roost.
Hal Porter said:
The computer will supply at least 5V 500mA to a device before it enumerates.
and got moderated Informative for it.
I don't know who did this moderating, but it must be someone who, like Hal Porter, does not know the USB spec.
A USB device may only draw 100 mA before it is enumerated.
When it is enumerated, it may negotiate more power with the driver, up to a maximum of 500 mA.
When it is connected via a USB-powered hub, the driver will decline this request, and current stays 100 mA max. Otherwise, you could draw 2A from any USB port by simply connecting 4 devices through a hub.