The SBC power dilemma - LF a multi-USB power supply

I didn’t want to open a dedicated thread for this, but I thought maybe some of the lurkers could use the tips on this thread. Help a lost man in his search for a gawd dang 5V USB charger with multiple ports (between 4 and 8, preferably 4-5) that can output 5V 3A on all the ports simultaneously. And it’d better be some clean power.

The PinePower and PinePower Desktop seem like very good candidates and I would have bought one or two to support Pine64, but they are out of stock everywhere, so nope. And I don’t want to preorder now, I need chargers pretty urgently.

The only charger I found that didn’t look sketchy AF, is the Anker Series 3 with 4 to 6 USB ports, but unfortunately these only spit out 2.4A. FFS Anker, don’t give me your low IQ auto-adjustable voltage crap (PowerIQ), I want something with 5v only, with high amperage. I need to power SBCs with it, and I don’t want to buy separate USB chargers that take up more than 1 socket on my power bars.

I found another charger that didn’t look sketchy, made by Kovol, but when you plug another device in the charger, the other devices get their power disconnected for 2 seconds. That is pure insanity! It may work for battery-powered devices, but when powering SBCs, that is completely unacceptable.

And hell no, I’m not buying Amazon Basics. Actually, if you can find me anything outside of Amazon, I’ll send you a virtual kiss. And no Chinese imports stuff, like AliExpress either, I can find plenty of stuff there, but I’d like to buy something that arrives in 2-3 days.

So, that’s the dilemma. There doesn’t seem to be any quality power supply that has strictly 5V 3A+ on all ports. Most of the chargers I could find had QuickCharge, PowerIQ, USB-C power delivery and other technologies that negotiate the voltage, from 5V up to 20V, but I could find nothing of quality available that can provide 3A on all the ports simultaneously.

At this point in time, I don’t have a lot of devices that require to be powered with something beefier, so I could try to buy multiple chargers that are long on one side, but take just 1 socket space each on my power bar. However, I would prefer the cleanness and ease of accessibility that a desktop bench power supply offers, like the PinePower Desktop. Besides, using multiple power supplies is inefficient, I’d prefer if I can have 2x 4 port 60W PSUs, rather than 8x 1 port 15W chargers.

Recommendations and links are appreciated.

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If you’re willing to McGiver this a good old desktop power supply is what you’re looking for.
If you get one of those and some USB-C power delivery triggering board you can hook each one of these to chopped off ends of the cables from the PSU and you’re good to go.
Maybe even use one of those proprietary PSUs that Dell makes for their computers to keep this extra cheap.

I’m suggesting this hacked and convoluted solution because I can’t relly think of a power supply that’s that specific with it’s outputs and not more sketchy than going full DIY.

The PCBs I suggested you can be set up with a fixed output (I think the first setting is exactly 5V 3A or made able to auto negotiate charging up to 20V).

UPDATE: wrong thing, can’t find the one that steps down 12V to PD outputs, but you get the idea.

UPDATE2: just get car chargers, that’s how you step down 12V to PD or any other usable combination of them lol

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Sorry, can’t help. Like Metslize, I also thought the only way was to go custom/diy.

I was looking for ones that might supply just over 5, so maybe 5.15 or 5.2, so if it drops for whatever reason, won’t immediately throttle, as I got throttling on a couple power supplies I tried.

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@MetalizeYourBrain @Trooper_ish I appreciate your help. Under normal circumstances, I would DIY it, and I may even do that if I need 12V output to my SBCs, and if I’m going with more Odroids, then I most certainly will.

But for a couple of RPis, I would like to not have 12V and 3.3V rails sitting there doing nothing, while I use the PSU’s 5V rail only. And I don’t like the idea of daisy-chaining 5V down-steppers to a 12V PSU. It’s really inefficient.

The reason why I’m looking for this is three-fold: to be efficient with buying stuff, to be efficient down-the-road with the stuff bought and to make a replicable model that anyone can follow. I don’t think DIY is really applicable.

I may need to look into USB-C power supplies, they may be capable of outputting more than the USB 3’s 2.4A rating, and just use type-C to miro-B, or c to c, or c to barrel jack, depending on the SBC used.

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My first reply was a bit of a jumbled mess so I’ll try to make my idea a bit more clear: what I thought you could do is get a bunch of car chargers that run off of 12V and slap them on the 12V connections of the PSU. That way you can use the 5V output to drive anything you want to. Qualcomm QC car chargers (that a mouthful to even think of pronouncing lol) are pretty inexpensive and you almost have unlimited potential.

I wouldn’t use the 5V straight off of the PSU because I don’t know how it would be handled on the other end.

That totally makes sense and I get that not many people are willing to tear into electric/electronic stuff with potential risks if things are not properly done.

What you might want to look into, now that I think of it, are office grade charging stations. Those are used by offices and schools to charge tablets, laptops and whatnot. You might be able to find one that uses just USB outputs, but I can’t pin point a reliable manufacturer for them.

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I did understand your point on the first try.

I know it can be done, but at this point, it doesn’t fit the requirements I’m working with. Again, under normal circumstances, I would do it without putting much thought into it.

Might be an option, never heard of those. I just hope these aren’t like the other chargers that disconnect everything once you connect or power something new in the chain. Again, battery powered devices don’t care about clean power, because they can just grab the juice from their batteries, but SBCs or anything else with no built-in battery, is going to crash / restart when it gets a power brownout or blackout for the 2 seconds when the circuit restarts.

Again, I never heard of office charging stations, so I’ll probably have to look into those.

I know bench power supplies exist, and they would be a wonderful asset to have in general, but those don’t come with USB outputs and jerry-rigging them is out of the question, as described above…

For now I’m waiting on a 40W Anker 5 port charger, I needed one for my phones, tablet and lower powered Pi 2 and 3. They should work with 2.4A, the RPi 2 works with 2A, but given that I only use them headless and only use the WiFi (on the RPi 3) and the ethernet port (on both), they should be well under the USB 3.0 spec, so this will get me started in a pinch. I just need to find something like the PinePower Desktop for future projects, if I need to power a lot of 5V USB devices cleanly.

The thread is still open.

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So something in the 60 to 120W range.

Given how inexpensive a proper PSU (MeanWell RS-150-5) and how cheap USB ports are, it may be faster to DIY.

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Again, I am perfectly fine with DIY in general, but this time it doesn’t fit the requirements. I need something like a bench power supply with 5V high amp and USB female ports basically. This will potentially run 24/7 for years, so any inefficiencies, like converting 110V AC to 12V DC to 5V DC will show up on the power bill.

Maybe if I change the plan and make the system solar powered, I could buy 2 Jackery portable batteries, one for each cluster, but that’s changing the plan dramatically and the plan is to make my setup easily replicable, from a person living in an apartment who can’t do a lot of stuff, including not DIY wiring and soldering, to the most remote individual who can place solar panels and diesel generators to add to the setup.

Any electrical engineers out there, now it’s your time to shine, it looks like this area of our computing lives is lacking a product that thus far, only the PinePower has managed to get right. The market is ready for more entrepreneurial spirits to show up.

MeanWell also has the HRP-series, which has higher efficiency (85 vs 78% according to spec). Is more than twice as expensive though.

When messing with SBCs, wielding a soldering iron should be a skill one is capable off. Point taken though.

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I’ll try to reduce slightly how much I doubt about the way I communicate.

Yeah, I get that you want a neat and compact solution to work with.

They’re gonna work no problem, even if you connect a USB drive to them. Two you’re getting into the danger zone. The Pi4 overclocked, as you know, is the “energy monster” of the Pis at the moment.

That’s gonna be quite the feat! Most reliable manufacturer like Anker go with the market so I think you’ll need to wait for someone like Pine to make another thing like that.

I’m sorry for the chain reaction of comments regarding DIYing it lol

image
Since there won’t be PCB soldering involved someone with an hair dryer and some of these could easly solder cables together.

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Those don’t strike me as great for more than an “out in the field”-repair.

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