USB Requirements for Charging Controllers (Building a Tower of Power)

Hi everyone!
So like many here, I have quite a few consoles that use wireless controllers.
Wireless controllers are nice but having a bazlillion different methods to charge said controllers sucks (I have a small apartment)..

Basically I am in the thought stage of building a 'tower of power', imagine a stand that every wireless controller could plug into like the small ones for specific consoles..


But as tall as a floor lamp...

Haven't 100% decided on using floating stands (where the controller plugs directly into a male jack) or just having a bunch of USB ports...


The PSU side of things is pretty much sorted, i'm going to use a 5v 60 amp PSU, the biggest single load (that is the most any device will draw) would be 2.1amps..

The tricky part is making this universally compliant between the different USB charging standards, seeing as I do own some Apple devices..

The main problem is actually Sony, apart from actually checking with a multi meter, I can't seem to find a USB PSU that will charge PS3 and PS4 controllers..

I've tried Apple compliant, that didn't work. Even tried shunted PSU's (where the data pins are pulled low) and ones that just short out

 

Uhh, what? The U in USB stands for universal.... it just supplies 5 volts. The device handles the charging. In case you do need it, though....

https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/4803

By the way, every wireless controller?!

That would have to be a pretty heavy stand.

 

Yeah, however hes quite right that to get apple stuff to charge they do things differently.

https://learn.adafruit.com/minty-boost/icharging#the-mysteries-of-apple-device-charging

They detect that its plugged into the wall by putting some voltage (around 2.2v off the top of my head) on the Data + and - pins. This is because USB 2.0 doesnt have anything in its spec about providing 2 amps of power. So by detecting this state, they know its plugged into a AC USB adapter and the phone/ipad knows it can safely draw 2amps.

Other companies do it a different way IIRC.

This was all fixed in USB 3 as it can provide more power etc.

 

Hmm, I think people are overlooking two important factors here.....

1. The cradle is a glorified USB socket. It only has to be USB 2.0 compliant. You can plug an iPhone into the USB adapter it comes with, a PC or one of those mains sockets with USB sockets... it'll work. Because the complex stuff is in the phone. The "doing things differently" happens in the phone, not in the USB socket.

2. It's a game controller cradle. Why on Earth would you want it to charge a mobile phone?!

 

Incorrect on point 1 for what the op is trying to build. As he's doing the cradle and making the power source. If he was just going to plug his cradle into an existing usb charger - then he wouldn't have much to worry about.

But, to charge at full speed, the charger end is different. I just gave you a link explaining it as well. If you want to charge at 500ma then yes, glorified power port is fine and just wire up the ground and vcc wires.

If you want real world proof....

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jo44c4dm2hld3fw/IMG_20160410_212651.jpg?dl=0

Point 2, yes I found this confusing. If it's just for controllers, they only charge at around 500ma anyway. So looking to solve problems that doesn't exist for the application.

 

His power source only has to give out 5V at the right current, though, surely? It makes sense for it to be intelligent as he's charging several devices, of course... but technically, does it have to be? For the primary application.

I don't have current gen consoles. Aren't they just on a Mini USB lead? Xbox 360 charges via a cable - is there anything in the cable end, or is it just a USB lead? PS3, wasn't that a mini USB socket with a USB lead? In which case, surely the protection circuit is in the controller?

Realistically, I'd say keep it as a controller charger and plug your other devices in elsewhere... although you could have a couple of USB ports on it.

 

The device needs to know how much current the charger can provide. As you can have 500ma power sources (most pc usb ports, at least older ones anyway). Some are 1amp chargers, some are 2a now. In theory, usb devices are only supposed to draw 100ma until it negotiates with the host how much more it can draw. (in practice, this seems to be ignored for 500ma or lower devices).

If it's all just in the phone end, it can't know how much power it's allowed to draw upto. Usb 2 spec only goes up to like 1amp or so off the top of my head. How to tell the device it can draw 2 amps seems to be vendor specific and the causes of all these headaches. But you can still plug them into any old usb port and get a lower rate of charge.

If you have an android phone, you can go into the battery app and it will tell you if you are plugged into a usb port or an ac adapter too.

From his first post, it seems to be the ps4 controllers that are the issue. I dont know the specifics, maybe Sony as doing proper negotiation and it requires an IC to do it (just like the one you linked in your first reply!). I dont know specifics of the ps4, but it's not as straight forward as you would think.

 

Aha! Yeah, I don't have one (and never plan on getting one) so I wouldn't know. In which case, hopefully that's the only one, which would make it comparatively easy.

How does the official PS4 cradle charge? It looks like some of the third party ones just use USB leads... although I'd say if that's not the case, get one of those and rip it apart. This seems to have a proper charge facility.

 

Apple has a different 'standard' for chargers, it's an easy way to enable current limiting, seeing as they have two types of chargers (iirc they used to have 3).

Basically applying different voltage to each data pin tells the device it's current limit, unlike other phones (Cubot) that can actively test current limit of a charger..

Which is why I'm thinking of using just female USB and using USB cables, that way I can get away with bus bars..

I want to be able to charge my ipads as well (it's next to the couch).. Also I can't get PS3 or PS4 controllers to charge, apparently they need to do a handshake with the console but that makes no sense seeing as there are cradles for them...

Both the 360 and Xbone work fine off a iphone 2.1 charger but as I mentioned, Sony controllers don't..

I'm going to have around 25 USB ports, because reasons

IOS devices won't (last time I checked) do anything until they are 100% sure they can draw at lest 500ma, the phone may say it's charging but in reality it is not (it will still go down). Larger IOS devices will actually tell you "not charging", if they are not connected to a 2.1amp Apple charger (or something the same)..

Some Samsung phones won't charge off Apple chargers either

Yeah I'm waiting for a cheap one to show up locally, I have a feeling the PS3 and PS4 have the same requirements for charging, the controllers are cross compatible or something yeah??

 

Hmm... well, I saw modern iPhones charging on a mains USB socket when I was in California, and my friend uses his like that with just his USB cable.

I'm sure a friend charges his PlayStation 3 controllers using a mobile phone plug-in charger, too.

Anyway, interesting project if you can get it to work... although 60A sounds a touch overkill!

 

Make sure to add suitable, separate fuses (2.5A, less for lower-current outputs) for each output, otherwise a short on one of the outputs may not be low-resistance enough to trip the fuse/short detection of your PSU. Hot wires due to a high-current power supply and an almost-short somewhere that doesn't trip any fuses are Not Fun[tm].

 

I had a quick play with the PS3 controller a while ago - I guess the one for the PS4 is similar. I couldn't find any way of getting it to go into charging mode without successfully completing the power negotiation part of the connect protocol and telling it that it was OK for it to draw 5 units of power (I.E. 500mA) - once you did that, the charger turned on automatically. It doesn't seem to have any support for (USB Forum spec) dedicated charging ports at all.

As you have already found out, the Apple chargers use a different approach, although it's possible to make a hybrid device that both biases D+ and D- to the correct levels for the Apple spec and supplies the right resistance between D+ and D- to comply with the USB DCP spec. Note that the Apple chargers don't do this - they just bias the data pins, so they will only work in high power mode with Apple devices.

The other one you need to watch for is the Qualcomm Quick Charge protocol - this uses a variable voltage power supply (either 5V/9V/12V or 3.6V to 20V with 0.2V steps depending on version) with current limits up to 3A. The full spec for this is covered by an NDA, but there is a copy of the older (V2.0) spec out in the wild, which will support 18W charging power levels (12V @ 1.5A). This is used by a number of HTC devices and (mostly US market specific) Samsung phones.

And I have to echo the comment about using fuses on each feed - a 60A 5V power supply is up in the significant fire hazard area.

 

The smart chrage spec is used here as well, the good thing is the devices that use it are backwards compatible, you can use the older 5v 2amp only chargers on them and they do charge at that rate.

Very true, well for sockets I was going to use usb breakouts ..



I'll need to find suitable axial poly fuses like these: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100pcs-2...hash=item540a9c0890:m:mmLa2dOZQ2KXsuahtA3lgvA

as for bias, I don't know how I could go about that on a large scale...
I wonder if I could get a voltage regulator that accurate

 

That is similar to what I am using now, however I want to do this as a neat little project anywhoo
I might pop a current meter on the output of the psu

 

I am interested in your results with this project, LeHaM, and wish you the best of luck with it. In addition to your electrical design, I am interested in how you handle the structural design.

This project does have me thinking "safety first."

 

if you apply voltage to the data lines correctly they do, apple fast charge is just a 5v 2.1amp supply, it's not like the qualcomm spec.
I don't think they even charge if the charger isn't the correct one.

 

There are some ICs available that try to figure out automatically which charger variant the device connected to the USB port wants to see to charge at the maximum rate - I wouldn't be surprised if they can even handle standard USB negotiation for devices that don't support the charging specs. I think I've seen them in Maxim's(*) portfolio, but other manufacturers may have similar products.

(*) The go-to company for expensive boutique chips with long lead times

 

retros post near the top of the thread has a link to maxim, which covers (some of?) their range and what chip does what.