Slashdot Mirror
Cooking With Your USB Ports
tekgoblin writes "Wow, I would never have thought to try and cook food with the power that a standard USB port provides, but someone did. A standard port provides 5V of power, give or take a little. I am not even sure what it takes to heat a small hotplate, but I am sure it is more than 5V. It looks like the guy tied together around 30 USB cables powered by his PC to power this small hotplate. But believe it or not, it seems to have cooked the meat perfectly."
"provides around 5V of power"
I always knew Slashdot is full of uneducated freetards...
Volts measure electromotive force, not power. Watts measure power. I would think nerds would know this.
Dog is my co-pilot.
This is the ALL TIME stupidest use for a computer i have ever seen and the most useless Slashdot article as well
Watt is. The important is how much current he can get from supplied voltage. In any case why not just use the fucking stove.
HA! Bitter much?
I'm sure he was not looking for the simplest way to cook, but just for something new and fun. Looks like he got both. I say mad props to him.
...In any case why not just use the fucking stove.
Because some people enjoy the challenge of creating something fun, new, original and, yes, pointless.
Has anyone considered that like many utube videos, this is faked? He either has 150Vdc at 500ma max, or 5Vdx at 15 amps max. it seems unlikely that a hotplate would be designed to run from either 5V or 150V.
Besides, it would make more sense to jus use a standard 120Vac or 240Vac hotplate, as he would have to have standard mains power to run a desktop PC. C'mon don't be so gullable!
Many people desperately want to do the "hard hacks" that would earn them geek cred. They want to be the guy who builds a 5,000rpm pneumatic Lego engine or who converts a Roomba into an automatic dog-walker. The problem is that most of them are stupid and uncreative, so you end up with "hacks" like cooking bacon with power from USB ports.
Why go through the conversion losses at all? Just plug a hotplate into the wall.
Every conversion has losses. That's why the power supply has heat sinks inside, and usually a fan. It's also why wall warts get warm.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.