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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."
Yes, I was in an airport recently, and there were power outlets with both AC and USB. The future is here.
USB is 5v. USB2.0 maxes out at "5" units of 100mA, with USB3.0 providing a staggering "6" units of 150mA. Thats .5A and .9A. That gives you 2.5 watts and 4.5 watts. There are proposed additions to let USB source up to 1.8A if the port is not sending data, and up to 1.5A in low speed mode.
Looking at the numbers, the whole notion that USB could ever become the dominant standard for power seems laughable to me. USB may be a convenient means of providing a trickle charge, but with batteries getting considerably higher C rates we need 10x beefier power supplies than what USB will ever be capable of.
Power Over Ethernet+ (PoE+) is targetting 24w: thats no quickcharge, but unlike USB its least enough to run a small computer.
The only problem with USB as a standard for power is that the power output is too low for laptop computers to charge and operate at the same time. I feel that USB and mini USB is ideal for thousands of small devices, but we either need to up the power capacity of USB or have one standard for low power devices, and another for mid-range power users like camcorders and laptop computers.
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USB was around for years, but it didn't explode until Apple forced the issue with the iMac.
I'd say there are two reasons USB took off. The first is Intel. It started putting it on all it's chipsets which made it in most Wintel computers by default. I believe they also didn't charge licensing fees on their controller implementation so others could copy/improve it for free and not have to start from scratch. They just recently did the same thing with their USB3 controller.
The other thing is what it was competing again. There really wasn't that much other there. If you wanted low bandwidth, you'd either hijack the PS2 port or one of the serial ports. If you wanted high bandwidth you either had your own expansion card (tough), piggybacked on the printer port (often didn't work as pass though), or used SCSI (expensive). You couldn't have multiple parallel devices, so you'd need extra cards if you wanted to do that. If you had many serial devices (like a modem, a tablet, etc) you might need an extra serial card. It was a mess. USB just simplified everything, and the hub concept was a nice addition.
Intel forced availability before it became popular, and Intel made it a relatively cheap option. It was a huge improvement over the mishmash of old connectors for the consumer. Then Apple came along and made it mandatory forcing a huge number of devices on the market (where many weren't before since USB wasn't popular).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Either my Google-fu is weak, or GreenPlug's "standard" is of the "Well, if everybody in the entire world licences our technology, it will be standard" flavor. Unimpressive. If you are all fuzzy and care about bunnies and the earth, then come up with an open spec(which, incidentally, we largely have for low power devices, in the form of USB, and could probably come up with pretty easily for higher power stuff by producing a 12 or 24 volt USB analog). If you just want to have every electronic widget ever depend on your proprietary chips, then fuck you.
Sorry it's not USB -- it requires the proprietary Green Plug chip to work.
They are trying to sell their chip by having us push the manufacturers into making mass purchases of the chip ( or chip schematics) because we "demand it".
And they are trying to sell this "initiative" as a standard without releasing the chip schematics to a standards organization.
They have actually, the EIAJ connectors which you are starting to see more often have standardized sizes, such that "If it fits, it will work.". You can recognize EIAJ plugs and sockets because they have a yellow plastic rim.
Between EIAJ for higher voltage/current, and USB for low voltage/current, I think we have the universal DC supply covered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIAJ_connector
Though, I would love it if my laptop could be recharged via power over ethernet. Not quite enough power can be provided for todays laptops, but a netbook should be able to run off of it.
http://notanumber.net/
I fail to see why replacing a myriad of proprietary solutions with a single proprietary solution is supposed to be a good thing.
I would just be happy if all manufacturers would put voltage and polarity indications on their products.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
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?
Huh? All of Apple's portable devices charge over USB or, if it's an older iPod, a Firewire port. This has always been the case. You're looking at the wrong end of the equation. If there's a USB port on the wall, you can plug it in. The other end, on the device, is not the goal of the project, which is to standardize DC power sources to be universal. Plug the device into the USB port and get a charge. You still have to bring your own cords. The idea is to eliminate the pile of wall warts, so that all devices can plug into them. Apple's wall chargers are a near-perfect example of what the Universal Power Adapter hopes to achieve--plugs into the wall, accepts USB cables for charging, delivers 5V DC. On planes and in public spaces where this would make a difference, you'd always have to supply your own cables, so the device end is mostly irrelevant.
Using Motorola as a counterexample is a poor choice, since most Motorola phones won't charge over a standard USB cable unless it's recognized on the other end.
Moreover, no one is saying it's a new thing to charge over USB--it's been done since 1997. Lots of companies have provided the option, and I would tend to agree that claiming that Apple is "leading the way" is something of an overstatement, but not if you accept the underlying premise that those "assorted" mp3 players and scattered other portable devices lack the conspicuousness, weight, and influence of Apple. You seem to be rather wide of the mark, though.