Brad Ideas - I want universal DC power - Comments

totaly agree. having a bulk

Anonymous — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:11:04 -0700

totaly agree. having a bulk of DC adapters is redicilous.
some standartization needs to be done

Question

Emmanuel — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 16:40:09 -0700

i have a big question. Why does the telecommunications systems use negative voltages for their power supplies?

Dr Jonathan Kay — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 22:39:16 -0700

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec7.html?ca=dgr...
includes:

"In some cases, a device will use only part of the USB spec. Nintendo Gameboy SP is rechargeable -- and a third party sells a USB charging cable for it. This uses the physical spec and power, but doesn't even show up as a device. The protocol is ignored entirely. This is common enough that some car and airplane AC adapters now offer a "dumb" USB port which just provides power for rechargeable devices. "

I'm fed up with carting transformer bricks around and have been thinking for a couple of years about ways out of the mess. There are only two widespread low voltage DC "standards": car cigarette lighters and USB.

Any ideas how to promote and publicise USB as a power standard?

Gene Carman — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 12:35:48 -0700

Actually rather than 5V, a standard should be established that can be delivered easily with some multiple of cells... such as 3, 6, 12 or some such, so for the need of totally portable power one could resort to batteries. 5V is pretty arbitrary these days... held over from TTL. Current cell phone tech is running on 4.5 and 3.2V...

Any voltage can be regulated to deliver what ever a device needs, so why not use a 1.5V cell multiple as a starting point.

Craig Hubley — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 09:10:35 -0800

Yeah, you're right, and that's all there is to it.

I have worked for some years on modularity and standardization and e-waste cutting, and having a lot fewer power supplies and disposable batteries sure would help. USB is probably the right way to go for computing and telecom gear, since it exists as a standard and low power equipment is the way of the future. I would advise that as part of a general strategy of "healthy telecom"

http://hubley.org/green/telecom.htm
(lots of other ways to mature the industry there)

12V is important for fuel cells and solar power and replacing our 110-125-220V systems that need wasteful power grids to distribute power. The more you can do on 12V, the better. We should be charging cars with power at an efficient central generation point, driving them home, and hooking them up as 12V or higher supply to our homes. It is the most practical way to move hydrogen power, since pipelines are not a good plan, and neither is powerline transmission beyond the "gas station". Jeremy Rifkin talks about this a lot.

Probably biodieselectric cars must come first as the stopgap, though. These are already around... and they might also be good 12V power sources, and decent generators, but they aren't batteries.

Chad Jenison — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 13:11:39 -0800

As a frequent traveller, I'd love not having to carry notebook and mobile phone chargers on my trips, since the hotel could provide a cable with a standardized connector coming out of a jack something along the lines you've described.

I am carrying the iGo Juice now for charging notebook and mobile phone via one device, which helps, but I love the vision of life without AC adapters.

rayg — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:33:58 -0800

even better: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,106482,00.asp

I want universal DC power

brad — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 09:23:45 -0800

I went around and counted that we seem to have around 30 birick and wall-wart DC power supplies plugged in around the house, and many more that are not plugged in which charge or power various devices. More and more of what we buy is getting to be more efficient and lower power, which is good.

But it's time for standardization in DC power and battery charging. In fact, I would like to move to a world where DC devices don't come with a power supply by default, because you are expected to be able to power them at one of the standard voltage/current settings.

One early experiment is on airplanes. I have an adapter that takes the 12v from the airplane, and has many tips which put out different voltages for different laptops. These are expensive right now, but on the right track.

Our other early venture is USB, which provides up to 500ma at 5 volts. Many small devices now use USB for power if that's all they need. There are devices that plug in to USB only for power, they don't use the data lines. Some come with a small cigarette lighter plug that has a USB socket on it for car use. This includes cellular chargers, lights etc.

I think a good goal would be a standardized data+power bus with a small number of standard plugs. One would be very tiny for small devices and only provide minimal USB-level power, a couple of watts. Another would handle mid-level devices, up to a couple of amps. A third would be large and handle heavy duty devices up to say 20 amps, replacing our wall plugs eventually. There might be a 4th for industrial use.

In full form, the data bus would be used for the components to exchange just what power they want and have. Years ago that would have been ridiculous overkill, today such parts are cheap. However, to make it simple there would be a basic passive system -- perhaps as simple as a finely tuned resistor in place of the data components -- to make it easy and cheap to adapt today's components.

A fully smart component would plug into the smart power and get a small "carrier" voltage designed to run the power electronics only. A protocol would establish what power the supply can provide and what the component wants, and then that power would be provided.