Would it be possible to convert a USB power supply to power the Reform?
I have a USB wall plug adapter I use with a USBC cable to power my Pinebook Pro and GPD Pocket 2, and my hope is to be able to use it with the Reform as opposed to a big power brick.
I know that pine64 have an adapter to go from USB to a barrel connector:
So I’m thinking something like that could exist for the Reform?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I’m a programmer not a hardware person ;).
I’m excited for my crowd supply order to be sent soon tho!
This cable will not work. But a USB-C PD (power delivery) to barrel jack adapter should work. The barrel jack plug should be sized with 2.1mm (inner) x 5.5mm (outer) diameters, with positive inner contact.
Great question. I have been looking at the pine power supplies as well, so I can use one power brick for laptop, phone, tablet etc.
Innergie uses the same reference design(but pine64 probably is more safe in a freedom kinda way) and has a multi adapter cable with different barrel to USB adapters.
Might this work?
Yeah, if it requires usb-c, I wondered if you plan to make an adapter so it can be plugged into a usb slot to get recharged. Or at the bare minimum have an adapter, or a plug of some sort. I have what you may call an interesting power bank which I wanted to charge whatever arm laptop or in the case of your newer project, the frankenstein one or w/e with. You may have heard of the omnicharge power bank, I have one of those. Would love to be able to charge it with that. Once the frankenstein one is out I mean and I have it in my possession, etc…
Do you have any plans for processors after the layerscape LS1028A besides, that risc-v processor? Curious I am.
I’ve recently picked up a 19V USB-C/PD to barrel jack adapter similar to the one linked by mntmn above, and have been using that with an Apple USB-C power supply to charge my Reform for the last few days to no ill effect. As far as I can tell it works great.
I bought this adapter to try it out and it works as intended with a PD USB charger. Now I can power all my laptops and almost all electronics from that one brick (not at the same time).
I bought the cable noted above by mntmn and it works flawlessly with my Ravpower 30000mAh usb-c pack. According to the maths, I should get ~12.5 hours out of it (if not more).
I also purchcased the cable linked by @minute above. So far I have tested it with two separate Type-C power sources, a docking station from Lenovo and a brick from Aukey, both appear to be doing the job.
This is an adapter that provides a barrel jack with 12 V using 5 V from the USB port. Since USB is limited to 2 A maximum, charging is very slow but it will work whenever you have access to a USB charger.
Since my USB 2.0 solution above only allows very slow charging, I also invested in the USB-C adapter from amazon linked by @minute above.
But in contrast to other people here who confirmed this to work, I do not see it working. I have the adapter connected to this USB-C wall plug:
Via this cable:
But after plugging all of it together, the red charging LED in the reform lights up for a few seconds and then goes off and nothing charges. What could I be doing wrong?
That usb-c power supply does only 3A@5V and 2.22A@9V.
That usb-c to barrel jack adapter is configured to request 20v from the power supply. If 20v is not available from the power supply it may not fall back to lower voltages and stay at 5v or refuse activate.
Personally I use a usb-c power supply that support 20V@3A power delivery. Terminating with a usb-c to barrel jack adapter that requests 20v https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B092V8SV45
The tricky bit is finding a usb-c PD charger, cable, and barrel jack adapter that all support 20v. Most 60+ watt chargers fit this requirement.
Thank you, that’s it! @minute posted a link to this helpful table from wikipedia to me on IRC:
As one can see, 20 V are only provided by USB PD supplies that are rated 60 W or above. Since the one I have is 20 W it could’ve never supplied 20 V. Maybe this information helps somebody who is also a USB-C newbie such as myself.
I have now acquired all four variants and can confirm the Reform will charge using any of them. I tested all of them with a PinePower Desktop supply, which doesn’t supply more than three amps for these voltages, but the Reform happily charged from all versions of this cable.
