Chargers have become much more intelligent in recent years with proliferation of Quick Charge and USB Power Delivery. It’s no longer like in the old days, simply connecting two analog wires, current will start flowing in a way you may want.
To get anything >5V or >2.4A (@5V or above), two ends need to go through a digital negotiation process. It’s handled by a chip soldered on both ends i.e. inside the charger, and inside your device.
Only smartphones/laptops commonly have such a chip. Router/Wifi and etc are essential dumb devices as far as power supply is concerned. They don’t have such a chip to do the QC/USB PD negotiation, and ask for the necessary voltage. Hence, ‘smart Chinese sellers’ come up with “trigger devices” to tap into the rich set of voltages available from QC and USB PD chargers.
Just a quick note on Pine’s power supply. It’s huge, ugly. I don’t know guys at Pine is known for good PSU design. My advice is people can simply get a multi-port GaN charger from well known brands, and pair up with “QC/USB PD trigger devices”. These triggers come in various forms and could be as convenient as an integrated usb cable.
That’s probably all I have to say on this topic. Good luck
Not sure if others have mentioned, but I quite like PoE these days, have USB lights powered by them and the switch has scheduled on/off controls that’s really handy.
I am not sure that will do what you think it will do.
The USB-C connectors, might fit in the peripherals, but I’m not sure you want to be sending more voltage down USB cables than they are designed for.
What is the reasoning in the back end?
Wanting to save space, or to convert stuff to USB?
If USB, you Might be able to find versions of hte devices that un nativley on USB.
then just run one powered USB hub to the cabinet / box that will house them.
Otherwise, line voltage into the cabinet, and one of the 12v DC power supplies Tim mentioned, with a buck / step down converter to any devices needing 5v power?
There was a project last year where someone made an awesome all-in-one box:
Aren’t USBC charging mode negotiations an analog process? Basically a resistor on both ends where the resulting pin voltage determines charging mode? Or is QC a more complicated process?
If you want to transmit/receieve data through the USB ports as well as just power devices, you might just want to stick with powered USB hubs designed for such a purpose.
For poweing wifi devices, you might want to look at PoE.
Check out the Box-of-Everything @Trooper_ish linked to.
It uses a single mains power (120/240v AC) to 48v DC power brick for its input then 2 step down DC to DC converters to drop the 48v DC down to 12v DC to power the modem and 5v DC to power a raspberry pi. The DC to DC converters I used in the project can be adjusted to output anything from very low volatge up to 60v out, as long as you do not exceed the power bricks rated output capacity (amps) you will be good to go.
The Box-of-Everything has been working flawlessly since I built it and it now runs a portable recording studio with 7 cameras as well as wifi and a home assistant on the RP4.
There is a down side to running everything from one power source, and that is realibility. If something goes wrong, your whole setup will fall over.
For a lot of people, good power boards and some cable managment goes a long way. I hope this helps!
