I wanted to share this opinion on Hackaday about a topic that is the usefulness of a something that has become ubiquitous relatively fast.
This techonolgyy has a lot of potential, what do you think?
I wanted to share this opinion on Hackaday about a topic that is the usefulness of a something that has become ubiquitous relatively fast.
This techonolgyy has a lot of potential, what do you think?
What are some of these devices?
Older notebooks, battery chargers, PMR radios, pretty much everything taking less than 100W DC current.
deleted by creator
Oh yeah! I’m dumb! I totally get it. Anytime I buy tech I make sure it’s usb-c if it’s not, then I’m not buying it.
The only non-usbc device left is my wife’s iPhone 13 and a Bluetooth speaker we hardly use.
Have you ever used one of those 9-in-1 usb-c hubs? They blow my mind, how can so much io be handled by that one connection?
I use one of those hubs and it’s enough to charge my laptop.
Simple answer is that higher voltage is easier to deal with than higher current. USB originally ran it 5V, which would take 12A of current to provide 60W. The wire would be 14AWG, which is 1.63mm thick. Conversely, if you increase the voltage to 20V (as USB-PD can do), you now only need 3A, and the wire can be much thinner/cheaper.
The wire doesn’t care about voltage for the most part. The insulation around it needs to be thick enough to keep it from shorting to other wires and stuff around it, but it doesn’t take much insulation to be rated for 300V; way more than we need here.