
Utopia: USB power sockets on every wall - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/118187-utopia-usb-power-sockets-on-every-wall
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ars
300 watt sockets? So now I need a high power DC power supply with a fan in
every outlet?

Someone is not thinking this through all the way. Even at 90% efficiency you
are wasting 33 watts of energy at max, and that is a LOT of heat to generate
behind a wall with no ventilation.

Not to mention the power supply is not going to fit in a standard box. Or that
good (read: Efficient) DC power supplies are quite expensive.

And you won't be making central power supplies in the basement either. 300
watts at 12 volts is 25 amps! You would need pretty thick cables to do that.
At 5 volts it's 60 amps - that would be a wire as thick as what an electrical
dryer uses.

He can have as many dreamy smiles as he wants, but this is not going to
happen.

~~~
mrsebastian
What if we chose a voltage that could be transmitted throughout the house
without too many issues -- like 48V?

Then we could step that down in the sockets, to 12 and 5V.

We could also use USB cables that have transformers built in, I guess --
bulges in the cable, or something. But then you're moving away from the 'one
cable for everything' idea.

~~~
bhousel
I like this idea.. I've actually been thinking about something like this for a
while.

You could have a DC distribution panel next to the main one, that converts the
mains voltage to 24/48 VDC for lighting circuits and DC receptacles. 240 Watts
(10 or 5 Amps) could be enough to power a lot of devices on a branch, while
still allowing the wires to be reasonable (14 AWG or smaller).

I think the bigger win would be for LED lighting circuits, but device chargers
could use it too.

~~~
ars
Why? I can't see any gain to converting to 48 volts if you just have to
convert it again anyway. There isn't much difference between converting from
120 vs 48.

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dalke
This looks like a marvelous way to get user data. How much do you trust every
USB plug you use? If you plug your phone/music player/tablet into a USB
"charger" could it pretend to be a host computer, and get access to all your
files without you knowing?

There's no way a USB plug will replace existing power outlets. A 15A line in
the US can handle over 1400 W, which is more than the 100W mentioned here or
the hypothetical 300W in the future. An induction cooktop draws around 2000W
and an electric oven around 7500W.

Plus, a number of devices depend on AC power to drive a induction motor, so
there's a huge installed base that can't cheaply be replaced with DC power
even there's enough raw power available.

~~~
mitakas
Coincidentally, it's the other way around with USB dead drops.[1] Either trust
that the USB won't fry your motherboard or carry a multimeter with you all the
time.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop>

~~~
camtarn
Ouch. I'd thought of the malware risk of plugging into a dead drop, but it
never quite crossed my mind that someone could basically turn one into the
equivalent of the Etherkiller:

<http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/>

~~~
shabble
I suspect some hubs would be suitable for buffering against that sort of
attack. Not sure which though, or whether a more subtle approach (some sort of
pulsed power to avoid tripping polyfuses, perhaps) would still be practical.

If you wanted to be a dick, I think replacing the insides of a USB stick with
a large charged capacitor and leaving them in parking lots would be the way to
go.

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chrisacky
When I built my office last year, I tried to find USB sockets and couldn't. It
was like they didn't exist. I didn't even want ones that could supply a tonne
of power, just a bare minimum would be sufficient.

In the end I retro fitting a hub to the wall that connected to my system which
is hidden in the wall ,with the cables running under the wooden flooring.

~~~
mrsebastian
FWIW, they do exist: <http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/e81a/>

------
nodata
1\. The major flaw with USB is that half the time you have to try again to get
the connector the right way round*

2\. A 5V television? Not likely. This will lead to more _types_ of sockets.
Which is the opposite of what we want.

(* yes I know that the usb symbol should always face up, but that's often
misused)

~~~
brador
I'm not an electrical expert, but:

If you have many USB ports, could you wire something up to run a television
from multiple USB 5V ports or is there a voltage/amp issue of some kind in the
way?

~~~
ars
Depends on how much power the TV took. Theoretically you could do it, but it
would be a huge waste.

Suppose you have a 300 watt plasma TV - that's 60 amps at 5 volts. That's the
kind of wire electric dryers and ovens use. You could take that wire and
divide it into many small ones, but you would still have that much wire which
would not be practical.

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sjs382
Utopia can be simulated by carrying a little USB-to-Wall adapter in your
pocket...

------
rkangel
However much current you can draw over your USB socket, it's still only 5V.
Many devices want a (far) higher voltage than that for charging or powering
themselves. A quick glance at my laptop PSU shows 20V, presumably related to
the voltage of several Lithium Ion cells in series.

Yes, a given psu could transform the voltage back up with switchmode, but then
you've got the horrible transformation inefficiency twice! I wonder how many
devices there are out there that actually want that much current at 5V.

------
kabdib
Standard USB connectors are rated for about 1,500 connect/disconnect cycles.
You'll want something more robust built into your wall.

I've worn out the connectors on several game consoles. :-)

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gonvaled
Which is a clear display of one of the major flaws of capitalism: duplicity
just for the sake of having a competitive advantage.

It just makes me sad to think about how much effort, materials, knowledge and
time has humankind wasted in working against each other.

And, just to avoid trolling, I have to say that I am not criticizing
capitalism per se, but just this one side of it.

There must be a better way!

~~~
spindritf
Is experimenting a wasted effort? Is an experimenter really working against
other experimenters? Is there a better way to choose a solution to (virtually
any) problem than to test multiple solutions? I don't think there is, at least
not without some kind of omniscience.

~~~
gonvaled
Sure, experimenting is a great way to reach an optimum solution to a given
problem.

Now please, go to your cellar and tell me for what kind of experiment are
those 40+ different chargers that you have for all your devices, which most of
them have _exactly_ the same power requirements.

I would say that, in most cases, those chargers were developed in order to
take that extra 1 EUR profit.

And that, *ing the customer, which somehow has been taking this mess for over
20 years.

~~~
spindritf
> go to your cellar and tell me for what kind of experiment are those 40+
> different chargers that you have for all your devices

Right now I can charge almost all my mobile devices (a phone, an mp3 player, a
kindle and the batteries for my camera) with a single charger I picked up in a
regular department store for ~15EUR (first set of rechargeable batteries
included) and two standard usb cables which came with those devices and can
also be used to transfer data. More, the charger is largely optional, I could
just plug them into into my computer -- often connecting to put podcasts on is
enough to charge the mp3 player.

Only my laptop really requires a separate, dedicated power supply. The 40+
different chargers are just remnants of my electronic history because the
current generation of mobile devices didn't even come with the chargers
(except for the htc phone, but it's a standard usb charger, I could use it
with cables and devices other than the phone).

The experimentation phase is largely over and makers are converging. Sure,
there will always be someone who diverges but it's the cost of progress (even
if progress in this context means a prettier hole in your phone).

~~~
gonvaled
Your "experimentation phase" did not ended by magic. It ended, among other,
thanks to regulation:

<http://boingboing.net/2009/02/15/european-commission.html>

Without that interference in the invisible hand of the market, your cellar
would be full with other 40+ chargers. All in name of 1€ profit.

Sure, it is in the interest of the manufacturers to use standardized
components ... unless the customer can be fooled to take pain with minimum
marketing effort. No manufacturer is going to sit down and put in their
priority list the item "how to reduce the junk electronics in the basement of
my customers". They must be forced to it, and if the customer is not able to
unite, the voter must interfere - as is slowly happening.

~~~
spindritf
> Without that interference in the invisible hand of the market, your cellar
> would be full with other 40+ chargers. All in name of 1€ profit.

At most my cellar would contain one additional charger for the phone. Other
devices didn't come with a charger at all (some aren't even covered by the
directive or were made well before its announcement). I guess in the name of
3€ of cut cost which coincidentally also reduces the number of junk
electronics in my basement.

------
spiralpolitik
Ignore the power issues and think about the security issues. Would you give
some random plug in the wall hardware access to your smartphone along the same
cable that data goes?

(See [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-
secu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a-
worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all))

~~~
bhousel
One could easily make "charge only" USB cables with the data pins
disconnected. Or a passthrough dongle which does that.

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jcxplorer
I recently stayed at a US hotel that had a couple of USB ports for charging
devices. Since I don't like having to buy even more adapters just for
travelling abroad, being able to charge all my devices at the same time was
pretty handy. Are USB ports in hotels common in the US?

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freehunter
My first thought was "but only 5v?" Never heard of USB Power Delivery before.
After seeing the picture, I kind of want to rig something like that up in my
house.

~~~
StavrosK
I saw that when it was posted before, turns out you can't. There are problems
with having low-power and high-power ports in the same socket, I seem to
recall electricians saying it was unsafe, so you might be risking a fire with
that.

~~~
imgabe
You can, it's already for sale:
[http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-
outle...](http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-outlet-with-
usb-ports-built-in/)

~~~
ars
That has the voltage converter (power supply) in the box. What's not legal is
having a centralized power supply, and running low voltage wires from it to an
existing box that also has high voltage wires in it.

~~~
bhousel
You're mostly right, but it's legal to separate the mains voltage and low
voltage connections like this: [http://www.smarthome.com/2546/Low-Voltage-
Divider-Plate-SCDI...](http://www.smarthome.com/2546/Low-Voltage-Divider-
Plate-SCDIV/p.aspx)

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jcoder
<http://xkcd.com/927>

