[LINK] Australian energy efficiency standards for personalcomputers and monitors

[Daniel Rose]

grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Tom Worthington wrote:
> 
>> At 03:47 PM 16/10/2007, Pilcher, Fred wrote:
>>> ... one of the major power wasters is the plethora of transformers
>>> that I need
>>> to keep plugged in. ...
>>
>>
>>    Under the new standard, all mobile phones, regardless of the brand,
>> will be able to share one charger with a USB access, allowing users to
>> charge handsets through laptops.
> 
> This seems to be part of the global "RoHS" "Restriction of Hazardous
> Substances"  initiative.   I have about 30 wall warts and line lumps in
> my studio here, to drive various bits of electronic music gear.
> 
> Anyone who has a similar setup will know what an awful pain it is to
> keep track of them all, each with it's own unique polarity,
> voltage and plug format, in fact it's a nightmare that sometimes means
> plugging a 12VAC plug into a 9VDC item, with associated problems,
> because they choose to use identically formed plug packs that have very
> little to tell them apart in a dark corner when you're
> scrabbling around the back trying to plug something in.
> 

I blew a $280 camera with the wrong transformer, it was careless, thoughtless and stupid.

> I do not know why this wasn't resolved at least 25 years ago, when wall
> warts started to become pervasive.  It is only recently you have been
> able to buy off the shelf solutions that allow you to chain several
> devices off one power source and even then they have to be rated the same.
> 

I agree.  This should not be too hard.  I think the idea was that you can keep device manufacturing costs down by making one, say, 12v 1amp device, then making seperate transformers for use in different countries with different power standards.

That way you get economies of scale with your device, and you can outsource the transformer manufacture to a specialist.

> The problem with the wall wart situation now is that a lot of second
> rate gear is coming out of Shenzen, that is capable of driving a piece
> of gear, but for audio gear, the quality of the power supplies
> has to be quite good, to stop unusual hums, squeals and audio artifacts
> creeping into your recordings and it would seem that the new initiative
> fails to take this into account, using switchable supplies that are
> "universal" in that you can plug them into any wall socket and get the
> right rated power anywhere in the world, but these new ones introduce
> all the noise because they are not shielded properly
> and so on.

There's a lot of electronic noise in my PC audio setups; I'm just lucky that I don't care.

> My point is that you are still going to have bazillions (a bushism) of
> wall warts out there, all with the same plug end but ostensibly rated
> differently and with varying degrees of quality and usefulness.

Yes, because many of those are ~12 volts, 500ma = 6 watts, and USB won't do 6W, it's limited to 2.5 watts per port.

What the article doesn't say is if the idea is to use the existing USB 2.0 spec or something new, like this:

http://www.usbpluspower.org/


> Also is the selection of a USB plug actually a good idea?   What if
> <insert clueless user> sticks one of these plugs into a USB port rather
> than a USB power port?

Nothing bad.  The idea uses existing infrastructure, which is the benefit. Any device which accepts a USB connection should expect current on the relevant connectors anyway.

> I believe it is time for the wall wart to go, but only after they come
> up with a much better standard and provide something useful that can
> drive hordes of them in a domestic or even audio situation....
> 
USB isn't it, because it's limited to 2.5w.  The usbpluspoewer above might be it, but I couldn't find anything about adoption or whether it's patented before my attention span expired.


-- 
Daniel Rose
National Library of Australia