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Panel mounted USB chargers (merged)

tmo
EPKP - Kraków, Poland

The problem is usually not that the converter will support 28 Volts, as most unit will do that. But many will produce serious noise in your radio and or intercom. It will be nearly impossible to telll this in advance so you can just order a few and test them.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

Thanks for your answers. What I will do is to test it in flight to check for additional noise on the radio, I have a spare battery, that cannot provide 2x 2.4amps, but can still help on long trips.

LFMD, France

These interference tests are very difficult, and I would be wary of claims that one product is better than another (above URL is dead).

The reason is that most RF emitted by electronics is on a spikey spectrum. There is no energy on say 99% of the spectrum and then you get massive spikes where the CPU crystal sits, where PCB tracks resonate, etc.

Compliance with some EMC standard means nothing regarding whether it will wipe out your VHF comms or nav on say 123.15 or whatever. It could be years before you happen to fly somewhere where they use a specific frequency and then you find the radio makes nothing but a loud noise when you tune that in.

I have built power units for USB charging, and other stuff, taking massive precautions to shield everything – way in excess of anything a USB outlet manufacturer will be doing – and still found it not easy.

The last URL here shows a nice USB power outlet, which is “reassuringly expensive”

Posts merged with existing thread on same topic.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Thanks for merge, I didn’t find them yesterday…
Reassuringly expensive but impossible to reasonable sit in a cockpit and indeed not approved. And indeed very hard to tell where the frequency spikes are – it will probably depend on the power chip, but also on the current drain.

LFMD, France

It is easy enough to take a quick and dirty look with a spectrum analyser, like I am using here but the tricky bit is knowing how much power (radiated or conducted) is going to affect the existing avionics, which depends hugely on the quality of the wiring.

I am very confident, after this project, that no GA manufacturer ever did this testing

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The Wicked Chili 2.1A unit and its clone from Cabstone did seem to work very well. Quite a lot of my customers seemed to use them without problems. But it seems this product is no longer available so the quest restarts.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

This rather more specific thread is also relevant.

The man from Harkwood has been on the forum.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

USB charging isn’t just USB charging anymore! I just bought this Canon GX7 MIII. It has a USB C, and I thought, great. Then I can charge it with my USB A to USB C cable. I found out that this doesn’t work. I thought my camera was defunct, but doing a google search this was how it was supposed to be. What is needed is a charger with so called Power Delivery (or PD), and this only works when cables are USB C in both ends.

To charge the GX7 on the road/air/out hiking, all my power banks and all my car chargers, the aircraft panel charger – everything I have, is rendered useless. A modern phone wall charger works. My Chromebook wall charger also works, and the Chromebook itself can also work as a charger for the camera.

This USB C, Power Delivery is vastly better than the old USB charging. But be aware that USB C does not automatically mean Power Delivery. The charger/powerbank itself has to have the Power Delivery functionality. As far as powerbanks go, very few have this.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

There is a trick around this for 5V devices. Don’t put the USB-A all the way in, just enough for the outer pads to make contact. It works with my otherwise not-willing-to-charge USB-C phone.

Last Edited by Dimme at 27 Mar 15:04
ESME, ESMS
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