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Universal Power Adapter Struggling For Support
Ian Lamont writes "Last year, there was a lot of hopeful discussion surrounding an initiative to have the consumer electronics industry standardize their products on a USB-based universal power adapter devised by Green Plug. Eight months later, the effort has stalled. The reason: manufacturers have balked from using Green Plug's technology. '... Gadget makers seem to have no compelling financial incentive to adopt Green Plug's technology. It would require them to add Green Plug's chip, or similar hardware and software, into every phone, camera, or music player they build, making them more expensive and more complicated to build. Another stumbling block for manufacturers: A universal power supply would kill the market for replacement power supplies. Manufacturers sell these at a steep markup price to customers who lose or break the original one that came with the device, and aren't tech-savvy enough to procure a low-cost generic replacement.' Green Plug is now trying to drum up public outcry through a (slow) website, but the number of supportive comments and votes remains relatively low."
I've got to add that using Apple as an example of leading the way to USB power is a bad joke for me, personally. I have the last gen MacBook Pro and bought an external hard drive for my local back-up. It turns out USB doesn't provide enough power via a single connector, so you have to use a USB A/B connector and splitter to plug it into two USB ports. Apple used to put both USB ports on the same side, but changed it with the previous generation - so now the awkward splitter on the A/B cable can't reach both ports and I have to plug in my USB keyboard to the MB Pro so that the splitter can work.
In other words, USB as a power supply has been a terrible annoyance for me. I like Apple in a lot of ways, but their approach to ports the past three years has been fucked. (Dropping firewire was both stupid and shows they'll throw their customers overboard in order to make two bucks more profit - even when it comes to a technology that Apple themselves talked their customers into using.)
Here is what I remember:
USB stuff was hard to find and expensive. There were some specialty stores on the internet that sold all USB stuff but at local computer stores USB stuff was here or there. Most people seemed to still use PS2 mice, modems were mostly serial, printers were mostly parallel, and so were most scanners.
Then Apple released the iMac.
Within a few months it became trivial to find USB peripherals. They started to have different price points (low, medium, and high end market segments for things like modems). USB mice were everywhere, USB video cameras showed up, things improved.
It was increasing in use, but it was no where near critical mass until Apple forced the issue. It was like SATA. Motherboards came with both (IDE and SATA) but IDE stuff was available for quite a long time after (especially in optical drives). I'm of the opinion that Apple took what was going to be a normal transition (things slowly speed up, pick up momentum, and eventually take over) and put it in hyper drive (made adoption look more exponential that it would have for probably a year or two, if not more).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I was thinking about making something just like this. Currently sitting on my desk, I have my laptop, 2 external hard drives, a wireless router, a USB hub, and a cell phone charger, some speakers, and an LED desk lamp (powered by another cell phone charger). Except for the speakers and the laptop, all these devices take 12V and/or 5V. I was thinking about getting a small ATX (or similar) power supply and adding some connectors for power. Then I would cut the proprietary end off each gadget's power supply and turn them into adapters for my "standard" connectors (.1" headers would probably work well). That way I could make a cord exactly as long as I need, and I only have to have one power cord plugged into my surge protector, instead of 3 wall-warts and 2 power cords. It would also make my desk neater since I wouldn't have bundles of coiled up cords that are longer than I need.
Here is the maximum power requirements of everything that runs at 12V or 5V. During normal use, I will never max out everything, so I could probably get away with a 120VAC to 12VDC power supply and a PicoPSU or something similar.
8A @ 5V; 40 watts
5A @ 12V; 60 watts
USB connectors should be standard. Problem is what manufacturers do with said connector.
;)
Example: my Motorola cell phone uses the standard mini-USB form factor for both charging and data transfer, but other brands of chargers(except those specifically designated for Motorola) with the same form factor will not work. My phone also cannot "talk to" my computer or even charge from my computer's USB without an extra kit(which is just a usb cable and a driver CD) I would have to buy. Until then, I'm going to hook my cable up to a sampling O-scope and reverse engineer that bitch
The USB connections themselves are only a form factor. As the summary stated, any manufacturer can do whatever the hell they want with it after that. The MBA's who came up with that idea should be shot, but they've still made their company lots of dough.
China has enforced the law to require all new cell phone to use standardized USB power adaptors since last year, to cut down adaptors in landfill. Why is democratic, earth-caring nation dragging its feeds?
The spec does not support 1 amp. If you want to talk about manufacturers going off on their own to extend the spec in a proprietary fashion, I think you lose the usefulness of the standard USB interconnect. A good example is the Macbook Air cdrom, which works with nothing except the usb on the Macbook Air.
No, what that says is that initial device current must be limited to 100mA (USB2) or 500mA (USB3) per port, that the current drain of bus-powered hubs must be limited to ((# of ports)*100mA)+100mA (which is why bus-powered hubs > 4 ports are rare), and that that is the minimum a root hub must be able to supply in order to conform with the specs.
According to the full spec, not just the FAQ version, devices are free to negotiate for up to 1A (USB2; dunno about USB3 but I'd guess it's higher), and it's up to the root hub to say "yay" or "nay".
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
You might want to investigate the Kensington model K33197US power supply. It's a counter to your argument. I'd rather it be open source, but the thing is too ingenious and practical to ignore, regardless. The Kensington design is what the Green Plug should have been.