Need High-Power Li-Ion Charging? How About 100 W

Ever want a seriously powerful PCB for charging a Li-Ion pack? Whatever you want it for, [Redherring32] has got it — it’s a board bearing the TPS25750D and BQ25713 chips, that lets you …

HP WebOS TouchPad Gets With The USB-C Times

Despite HP shuttering their WebOS project some time ago, the operating system has kept a dedicated following. One device in particular, the HP TouchPad, was released just a month before webOS went …

Tiny ’90s Laptop Gets Modern Power

The laptop to have here in the 2020s varies depending on who you ask, perhaps a Framework, or maybe a ThinkPad. Back in the 1990s the answer might have included a now-forgotten contender, because i…

USB PD On CH32V003 Teaches You Everything

How do you talk USB Power Delivery (PD)? Grab a PHY? Use a MCU with one built-in? Well, if you’re hardcore enough, you can do it with just a few resistors and GPIOs. [eeucalyptus] shows you t…

Split A USB-C PD Port Into Three Port-ions

There’s no shortage of USB-C chargers in all sorts of configurations, but sometimes, you simply need a few more charging ports on the go, and you got a single one. Well then, check out [bluep…

Design Review: USB-C PD Input For Yaesu FRG7700

Today is another board from a friend, [treble], who wants to convert a Yaesu FRG7700 radio to USB-C PD power. It’s yet another review that I’ve done privately, and then realized I&#8217…

A Basic USB-C Primer

Over the last five years or so there has been a quiet take-over of the ports on laptops, phones, and other devices, as a variety of older ports as well as the familiar USB A and micro USB sockets h…

USB-C For Hackers: Build Your Own PSU

What if you wanted to build your own USB-C PSU? Good news – it’s easy enough! If you ever wanted to retrofit a decent DC PSU of yours to the USB-C standard, say, you got a Lenovo/HP/Del…

Drop-In Upgrade PCB Brings USB-C To DualShock 4

Despite a somewhat shaky start, it seems like everyone is finally embracing USB-C. Most gadgets have made the switch these days, and even Apple has (with some external persuasion) gotten on board. …

All About USB-C: Example Circuits

In the six months that have passed after the last USB-C article has been released, I have thought up a bunch of ways that these articles could have been improved. It’s, of course, normal to h…

All About USB-C: Replying Low-Level PD

Last time, we configured the FUSB302 to receive USB PD messages, and successfully received a “capability advertisement” message from a USB-C PSU. Now we crack the PD specification open,…

All About USB-C: Talking Low-Level PD

In this USB-C series, we’ve covered quite a bit of USB-C – things that are well known, things that should be  better known, and a couple things that just appeared online for the first t…

All About USB-C: Manufacturer Sins

People experience a variety of problems with USB-C. I’ve asked people online about their negative experiences with USB-C, and got a wide variety of responses, both on Twitter and on Mastodon.…

All About USB-C: Pinecil Soldering Iron

As many people have pointed out, what matters with USB-C isn’t just the standard, it’s the implementations. After all, it’s the implementations that we actually have to deal with,…

All About USB-C: Framework Laptop

Talking about high-quality USB-C implementations, there’s a product that has multiple selling points designed around USB-C, and is arguably a shining example of how to do USB-C right. It&#821…

All About USB-C: High-Speed Interfaces

One amazing thing about USB-C is its high-speed capabilities. The pinout gives you four high-speed differential pairs and a few more lower-speed pairs, which let you pump giant amounts of data thro…

All About USB-C: Power Delivery

USB-C eliminates proprietary barrel plug chargers that we’ve been using for laptops and myriads of other devices. It fights proprietary phone charger standards by explicitly making them non-c…

All About USB-C: Resistors And Emarkers

If you’ve been following along our USB-C saga, you know that the CC wire in the USB-C cables is used for communications and polarity detection. However, what’s not as widely known is th…

Use USB-C Chargers To Top Up Li-Ion Packs With This Hack

In USB-C Power Delivery (PD) standard, the PPS (Programmable Power Supply) mode is an optional mode that lets you request a non-standard voltage from a charger, with the ability to set a current li…

USB-C: Introduction For Hackers

We’ve now had at least five years of USB-C ports in our devices. It’s a standard that many manufacturers and hackers can get behind. Initially, there was plenty of confusion about what …