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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."

23 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Volt is not a measurement of power by Albert+Sandberg · · Score: 5, Informative

    Watt is. The important is how much current he can get from supplied voltage. In any case why not just use the fucking stove.

    1. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      According to Wikipedia, 500mA per USB2.0 port.
      15A * 5V = 75W

    2. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by arth1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Each powered USB hub supplies a maximum of 0.5 A. Using two or four USB cables against the same hub won't increase that.
      The voltage in USB is a constant +5V.

      So from each powered hub, you can get 0.5 A * 5 V = 2.5 W. Eight of those gives you 20 W, which should be enough to crisp bacon if you make the frying area small enough.

      But hooking up multiple USB cables to each hub serves little purpose (well, you lower the overall resistance a tiny bit, and I guess HiFi freaks would say that it makes the bacon more open and airy).

    3. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by Russ1642 · · Score: 2, Funny

      You have to climb a flight of stairs to get to the kitchen.

    4. 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?

    5. 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
    6. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by mayberry42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...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.

    7. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by sirlatrom · · Score: 2, Funny

      Because the fucking stove is for fucking?

    8. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by marcansoft · · Score: 2, Informative

      None of those "plugs" actually say that, and none of them actually meet the USB spec. They just happen to work... most of the time.

    9. 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.

      --
      comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
    10. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by hitmark · · Score: 2, Informative

      If it uses the recent battery charging spec, each port can allow 1.5A if there is little to no data traffic (and 1.8A if the data connectors at the female port is shorted with up to 200 ohm resistance).

      --
      comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
    11. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by JWSmythe · · Score: 2, Insightful

          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.
    12. Re:Volt is not a measurement of power by History's+Coming+To · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or even better, use a brazil nut. It was a favourite trick of ours in the Scouts - a single brazil nut contains enough oil (read calories/joules) to fry an egg and a couple of rashers of bacon.

      --
      Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
  2. Volts are not a measure of power by Scareduck · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Volts measure electromotive force, not power. Watts measure power. I would think nerds would know this.

    --

    Dog is my co-pilot.

  3. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is the ALL TIME stupidest use for a computer i have ever seen and the most useless Slashdot article as well

    1. Re:WTF? by SpeZek · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You must be new here.

  4. In the words of Dr Ian Malcom by netsavior · · Score: 4, Funny

    "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

  5. well done OP, a superb fail by wjh31 · · Score: 5, Informative

    not only has the gizmodo article disappeared at time of post, but there is no link to the original blog post (http://xe.bz/aho/24/) which is date-stamped for 2006. This is 4 years old!

  6. Re:Overly elaborate setup by ari_j · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  7. 5V of power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Volts are not a measurement of power, I am amazed at the number of people who don't understand this.

  8. Works for telco landlines, too by e9th · · Score: 2, Funny

    For those who still have landline phones, Mike Sandman, purveyor of genuinely indispensable old-school telephony gear, has some telco line powered goodies.

    Don't even try to order any of them, though.

  9. I knew slashdot was slow.... by ninjackn · · Score: 2, Informative

    but I didn't expect a story from over 4 years ago. For those of you who can read japanese the original blog post is here.

    --
    [FUCK BETA 2.6.2014]
  10. Re:Why not use the CPU/GPU as heat source for cook by llamapater · · Score: 2, Funny

    your dorm was a mobius strip too?