At this point, many of us have gone all-in on USB-C. It’s gotten to the point that when you occasionally run across a gadget that doesn’t support being powered USB-C, the whole experien…
If you look at the circuit diagram in their documentation linked from that article, that thing doesn’t even support USB-PD or even just the USB 1.0 device side of the negotiation to increase the current limit from the default (150mA in USB 3) to high (900mA in USB 3). It will look like it works fine if you connect it to a dumb USB power supply (because those thing don’t really do any USB protocol stuff, just dumbly supply power over USB connectors up to the power source’s limit) but if you connect it to, say, a PC USB port (which does implement the USB host side of the USB protocol), your circuit on the breadboard that worked fine when using a dumb USB power supply with that breadboard adaptor might not work because the current it needs exceeds that default 150mA limit for devices that haven’t done USB negotiation (worse if it’s a USB 2.0 port, as the limit is lower for those)
This thing is basically the same as the chinese power breadboard adaptors you can get in places like Aliexpress, but with a USB-C connector instead of a Type-A, micro-USB or mini-USB one, plus its better designed (it has a proper Buck Converter instead of a cheap Votage Regulator, plus better power supply filtering and a polyfuse to protect it and the host from current overdraws).
The headline and the article seriously exagerate this “achievement”.
Yeah, 9v at the very least, but 15V would be a useful option too.
I’m also just now realising USB-PD doesn’t spec for 12V which feels like an odd omission
Edit:
From the article:
Sure, it wouldn’t be much harder to add support the other voltages offered by USB-C Power Delivery, but how often have you really needed 20 volts on a breadboard? Why add extra components and complication for a feature most people would never use?
My friend, you write for hackaday, this is a weird take
Any sort of op-amp circuit would easily make use of a 15V input, or better yet using the full 20V with a 10V reference to get +/-10V voltage rails for an amplifier circuit.
That is a bit more expensive and complex. Looks like this is configured with a couple of resistors for 5v from USB which is simple to get and a voltage reg to drop down to 3v3 optionally. Full PD requires a chip and active negotiation for higher voltage levels. Though there are chips that do that it does increase the complexity and cost and soldering skills a bit. Might not be worth it if all you work on is 5v or 3v3.
Missed opportunity there, not being able to select all the other available USB-PD voltages. Not every circuit runs on 3.3 or 5 V.
If you look at the circuit diagram in their documentation linked from that article, that thing doesn’t even support USB-PD or even just the USB 1.0 device side of the negotiation to increase the current limit from the default (150mA in USB 3) to high (900mA in USB 3). It will look like it works fine if you connect it to a dumb USB power supply (because those thing don’t really do any USB protocol stuff, just dumbly supply power over USB connectors up to the power source’s limit) but if you connect it to, say, a PC USB port (which does implement the USB host side of the USB protocol), your circuit on the breadboard that worked fine when using a dumb USB power supply with that breadboard adaptor might not work because the current it needs exceeds that default 150mA limit for devices that haven’t done USB negotiation (worse if it’s a USB 2.0 port, as the limit is lower for those)
This thing is basically the same as the chinese power breadboard adaptors you can get in places like Aliexpress, but with a USB-C connector instead of a Type-A, micro-USB or mini-USB one, plus its better designed (it has a proper Buck Converter instead of a cheap Votage Regulator, plus better power supply filtering and a polyfuse to protect it and the host from current overdraws).
The headline and the article seriously exagerate this “achievement”.
Yeah, 9v at the very least, but 15V would be a useful option too.
I’m also just now realising USB-PD doesn’t spec for 12V which feels like an odd omission
Edit:
From the article:
My friend, you write for hackaday, this is a weird take
Any sort of op-amp circuit would easily make use of a 15V input, or better yet using the full 20V with a 10V reference to get +/-10V voltage rails for an amplifier circuit.
That is a bit more expensive and complex. Looks like this is configured with a couple of resistors for 5v from USB which is simple to get and a voltage reg to drop down to 3v3 optionally. Full PD requires a chip and active negotiation for higher voltage levels. Though there are chips that do that it does increase the complexity and cost and soldering skills a bit. Might not be worth it if all you work on is 5v or 3v3.