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The option of USB ports on the trains is likely such a small percentage of the overall cost, but it likely gets enough people thinking "The MTA is thinking abou
by giarc 10y ago
The option of USB ports on the trains is likely such a small percentage of the overall cost, but it likely gets enough people thinking "The MTA is thinking about things that matter to me."
- astrodust 10y agoThey cost almost nothing and can help people out when they're in a jam, so why not? I just wonder how long it'll take before they're all broken from people inserting their connectors backwards, or before they become an anachronism since they're the wrong type of USB.
- robotresearcher 10y agoOr full of gum.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoGum if we're lucky.
- jpindar 10y agoI'm picturing a piece of cardboard in the shape of a USB plug that you stick in a jack to see if it's clean and not too broken before you insert your real cable. Maybe wallet-sized cards with a diagram of how to fold them into that shape?
- robotresearcher 10y agoA perfect implement for inserting gum.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- akiselev 10y agoIt'll probably cost quite a bit more than you think. For example, in flight entertainment systems are way more expensive than the cost of the touchscreen monitors because they require a power subsystem that draws from the plane's generators but is completely isolated from the rest of the avionics for safety reasons. This requires literally miles of extra wiring for a jumbojet which is very labor intensive. For something like the Boeing Dreamliner, which has about 60 miles of wiring, that's a significant expense. That's not including the extra cost of maintenance for yser facing electronics that the trains have never had before. That said, airports like SFO and LAX have had charging ports and plugs for a while so there's data to estimate from.
- russdill 10y agoHopefully they use a type of easily replaceable part. Any connector has a max insertion rating. Public places tend to reach that rating fairly quickly.
- Grishnakh 10y agoThese problems are easily solved. 1) The right type of USB is the old, standard USB type A connector. Whatever kind of device you have, you should have a cable which plugs into this connector. The other USB connectors are on the device side; every charger these days has a USB-A connector on the charger side. 2) It should be pretty easy to design such a thing to be robust: all you have to do is make the USB connectors on the train easily replaceable. This can be done by putting the USB-A connectors on their own PCB, with all the charging electronics on a separate board below it. Then the supplier just needs to sell these replacement boards really cheap (because they're just a few type-A connectors plus a pin header strip) in bulk to the MTA. Even better, the MTA should get the design files, so they can farm out production of replacement boards if the supplier goes bust or they want to get a better price. Keep the charging circuitry on the lower board, and make the upper board easily replaceable with a screwdriver (with a security key) so maintenance workers can swap them out as necessary.