6 ms·

Utopia: USB power sockets on every wall

26 points by ukdm 15y ago

freehunter 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
  - ars 15y ago
    Yes, that's true. It's quite illegal to mix them. You are not risking a fire, but rather a shock. The problem is if there is a failure the high voltage might be applied to the low voltage wires which are not insulated to handle that. And neither is the user who might be touching the wire that he thinks is low voltage.
  - imgabe 15y ago
    You can, it's already for sale: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-outlet-with-usb-ports-built-in/ http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-outle...
    - ars 15y ago
      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 15y ago
        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-SCDIV/p.aspx http://www.smarthome.com/2546/Low-Voltage-Divider-Plate-SCDI...
      - imgabe 15y ago
        Well, yeah, but running everything in your house off of a 5V USB connection is a pipe dream anyway, as was pointed out in other comments. If you simply want to plug your phone directly into a wall outlet, that can be managed.
  - dspillett 15y ago
    You can (I'm sure I've seen products on the market), you just need to make sure things are properly shielded such. I believe the concern some people have with such an arrangement is wires carrying the higher power AC inducing unwanted currents in those carrying the lower power DC. How likely this actually is to be an issue I'm not sure.
jcxplorer 15y ago
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?
sebbi 15y ago
I think it would be really inefficient to use 5V to transfer energy over cables longer than a few meters. There is a reason we use 100+ V in homes and 100000+ V over longer distances ... And as an afterthought: who would garantee that an USB port is really only 5V? Could be 10000V and nothing would protect my precious iGadget ... with a power adapter I have at least some protection.
nodata 15y ago
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)
- dalke 15y ago
  Especially when the connectors are on the back of the computer, oriented sideways.
- brador 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
  - sbierwagen 15y ago
    In principle, yes. However, an individual connector may be rated to 100 watts, but the controller may not be able to deliver 100 watts to each of the ports it is connected to. You might have to span the TV across several different hubs.
dalke 15y ago
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.
- bergie 15y ago
  Most of the devices I have enable you to decide how to use the USB connection. For example, on most Nokia phones you can choose between "charging only", "PC suite mode", and "USB mass storage". I think my ICS Transformer Prime only provides "media device" and "digital camera" as modes, though.
- mitakas 15y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop
  - camtarn 15y ago
    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/ http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
    - shabble 15y ago
      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.
gonvaled 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      > 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).
ars 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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.
jcoder 15y ago
http://xkcd.com/927 http://xkcd.com/927
chrisacky 15y ago
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 15y ago
  FWIW, they do exist: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/e81a/ http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/e81a/
sjs382 15y ago
Utopia can be simulated by carrying a little USB-to-Wall adapter in your pocket...
rkangel 15y ago
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.
spiralpolitik 15y ago
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-security-a-worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-secu...)
- bhousel 15y ago
  One could easily make "charge only" USB cables with the data pins disconnected. Or a passthrough dongle which does that.
kabdib 15y ago
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. :-)

26 points by ukdm 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.
- ars 15y ago
  Yes, that's true. It's quite illegal to mix them. You are not risking a fire, but rather a shock. The problem is if there is a failure the high voltage might be applied to the low voltage wires which are not insulated to handle that. And neither is the user who might be touching the wire that he thinks is low voltage.
- imgabe 15y ago
  You can, it's already for sale: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-outlet-with-usb-ports-built-in/ http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-outle...
  - ars 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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-SCDIV/p.aspx http://www.smarthome.com/2546/Low-Voltage-Divider-Plate-SCDI...
    - imgabe 15y ago
      Well, yeah, but running everything in your house off of a 5V USB connection is a pipe dream anyway, as was pointed out in other comments. If you simply want to plug your phone directly into a wall outlet, that can be managed.
- dspillett 15y ago
  You can (I'm sure I've seen products on the market), you just need to make sure things are properly shielded such. I believe the concern some people have with such an arrangement is wires carrying the higher power AC inducing unwanted currents in those carrying the lower power DC. How likely this actually is to be an issue I'm not sure.

jcxplorer 15y ago

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?

sebbi 15y ago

I think it would be really inefficient to use 5V to transfer energy over cables longer than a few meters. There is a reason we use 100+ V in homes and 100000+ V over longer distances ... And as an afterthought: who would garantee that an USB port is really only 5V? Could be 10000V and nothing would protect my precious iGadget ... with a power adapter I have at least some protection.

nodata 15y ago

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)

dalke 15y ago
Especially when the connectors are on the back of the computer, oriented sideways.
brador 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
- sbierwagen 15y ago
  In principle, yes. However, an individual connector may be rated to 100 watts, but the controller may not be able to deliver 100 watts to each of the ports it is connected to. You might have to span the TV across several different hubs.

dalke 15y ago

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.

bergie 15y ago
Most of the devices I have enable you to decide how to use the USB connection. For example, on most Nokia phones you can choose between "charging only", "PC suite mode", and "USB mass storage". I think my ICS Transformer Prime only provides "media device" and "digital camera" as modes, though.
mitakas 15y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop
- camtarn 15y ago
  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/ http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
  - shabble 15y ago
    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.

gonvaled 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    > 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).

ars 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.

jcoder 15y ago

http://xkcd.com/927 http://xkcd.com/927

chrisacky 15y ago

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 15y ago
FWIW, they do exist: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/e81a/ http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/e81a/

sjs382 15y ago

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

rkangel 15y ago

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.

spiralpolitik 15y ago

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

bhousel 15y ago
One could easily make "charge only" USB cables with the data pins disconnected. Or a passthrough dongle which does that.

kabdib 15y ago

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. :-)