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Is 5V usb standard past its sell-by?

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smegballs
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PostPosted: 07:03 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Is 5V usb standard past its sell-by? Reply with quote

The 5V micro usb charging standard is pretty damn handy, I can charge my tablet, phone and gps easily all from the same charger. However our batteries are getting bigger and bigger, with longer and longer charge times. Current's are getting bigger which lead to more heat, less efficiency and the need for thicker conductors.

Is it time to move to a higher voltage? Higher voltage but less capacity means you can get the same amount of energy stored faster, or store more energy in the same given period of time.

I'd have thought the tiny pins in micro usb connection would already be sub-optimal for the standard tablet 2A charge rate, let alone further increases.
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orac
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PostPosted: 08:57 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

what about the voltage that the device uses? along side that current is generally more useful than voltage.

when I built the macro rail, high torque stepper motors where able to take 48v but become more affective with lower voltage snd higher current.

also the standard isn't because of USB, although it is slated as USB standard, there are generally other standard that have to be abided by such as logic voltage level - which iirc has 2 standards with one being 4.5-5.5v (USB is 4.75 to 5.25v) for ttl and 12v for cmos logic. the USB standard is more related to the amount of current that needs to be delivered through the port which for a standard is circa 500ma. however the current available for charging is more like 5amp for dedicated chargers.

unfortunately due to the fact that current is more useful for thing like processors the chances of getting batteries that are higher voltage and lower current is very unlikely. not only because of the for mentioned but also due to the move to buck regulators which have their own power restrictions, while being more efficient at reducing voltage flow - also imagine carrying a phone that has to have extra hardware to get the CPU to work, or a pone that has to have transformer to drop the voltage and increase the current that is available. there are a lot more things to consider over the amount of power that can be stored and the rate that can be stored at, you have to be able to interface the battery and charging system to the rest of the tech which ultimately be restricted by the materials that its all made from - you may see a change if or when grapheme become main stream, until such times 5 volts is going to remain the standard.

USB is coming up to is 20th birthday so is doing pretty darn well, it won out over fire wire which didn't even see devise that charged from it, although would lend itself to the higher voltage with up to 30v @1.5amps but for the most part is not used much any more (apple dropped it from ipod usage in 2004).

you could go back the the serial standard which was 12v if you want but I very much doubt it will catch on due to is bulky nature
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dydey90
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PostPosted: 08:58 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maybe when they bring out the next standard, you can convince them that 24vDC is the way to go?

I heard somewhere that someone had decided a reversible usb was required. Reversible like Apple's lightning connector, so you can put it in either way up.
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bamt
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PostPosted: 09:01 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

The micro USB pins are already inadequate for some of the big tablets and phones - my son's devices need their own specific charge cables to charge at full rate, use a generic one and they take forever.

It is a tough call to change it though; the bad old days of needing to cart around loads of different chargers were a real pain. Potentially a future upgrade to standard USB allowing devices to negotiate a higher voltage (like they can negotiate current now) would be an option. There is precedent for this, the old PCMCIA allowed devices to negotiate 3.3V or 5V with the host.
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orac
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PostPosted: 09:02 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

yes a spring loaded key was suggested so that would automatically select the correct pins in the correct order, I don't remember where I saw it now.
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bamt
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PostPosted: 09:11 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

With regards to voltage vs current, pretty much any mobile device is going to need on board regulators to give the varied cores the precisely smooth voltage they need from the battery (which at 3.7-4.2V is exactly wrong for just about anything, including charging from 5v - blame the chemists!).
Cranking up the charging voltage therefore will just need different regulators, rather than new ones, and not have a massive impact on BOM. Being able to reduce the current flow will make it a bit easier on tiny connectors.

The way we are going with bigger screens we can start putting proper connectors back on!
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bladerunner
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PostPosted: 10:20 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

More volts means more cells which at the moment means less capacity for a given space. But granted current usb needs a good cable and charger to hit 2 amps per feed. I use volutz HD cables for my phone charging which speeds up the charge time substantially as well as a good 5 port mains usb charger that can manage 2amp measured per port.
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bamt
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PostPosted: 13:00 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

More volts on the charging input doesn't necessarily mean more cells - the circuitry on the phone will be converting it to whatever it actually needs to charge the cells in use. Even charging a single cell from a 5v supply is likely to use a switching converter rather than linear just for power efficiency. Once you're switching, it doesn't really matter if you are going up or down in voltage to match the cells.
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smegballs
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PostPosted: 16:36 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

I def agree on charging cables, I did some surgery on a usb cable to put a ampmeter in line and was surprised how small the conductors were. I reckon they'd have a pretty big drop, especially at 2A on a 3-4m long usb extension cable.
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smegballs
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PostPosted: 16:37 - 17 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

I def agree on charging cables, I did some surgery on a usb cable to put a ampmeter in line and was surprised how small the conductors were. I reckon they'd have a pretty big drop, especially at 2A on a 3-4m long usb extension cable.
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calyx
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PostPosted: 01:27 - 18 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

usb *cough* type *cough* c
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smegballs
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PostPosted: 13:39 - 19 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

calyx wrote:
usb *cough* type *cough* c


okay.jpg

Welp it sounds a lot better for commercially produced gear but will make homebrew stuff a bit harder I reckon.
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bladerunner
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PostPosted: 14:30 - 19 May 2015    Post subject: Reply with quote

I expect you'll still suffer voltage drop over short cable lengths. .but sure seems like a better option
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