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Cooking With Your USB Ports

Posted by samzenpus on from the sorry-your-dinner-crashed dept.

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."

3 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 2, Interesting

    isnt the current limited to 100mA per port if the device doesnt identify itself?

  2. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by Vectormatic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    per USB spec yes, but there are plenty of hubs/ports which supply the full 500mA regardless

    honestly though, this hack is pointless, you might as well get a cheap ass 350w computer PSU, hook up the 12v to a hotplate and hotwire the thing, much easier

    --
    People, what a bunch of bastards
  3. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by hitmark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Err, no. If the hub is powered, it should be capable of delivering .5A to each port.

    If not, then the dual plug cables we see for some external drives would be useless.

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    comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm