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I’m looking to replace the 2 prong AC plug with a usb plug. The AC plug is bulky and does not fit on my power strip, plus a usb would allow me to me plug it into my laptop etc. as well. Thanks!
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Hi Brendo,
Well, that's going to be an issue, since a standard USB-A plug only puts out 5V. If the old charger puts out 9V at 2A, then that's 18 watts of power it needs, so a 5V USB plug would have to put out at least 3.6A of current. Most computers won't put out that much power from a USB port.
That's beside the issue that I seriously doubt it'll charge correctly on 5 volts, so you'll have to find a way to boost that up to the 9V the light is expecting for charging. All in all really doesn't sound like it's worth it just to open up a little room on the power strip. Be a lot easier to just get a short household extension cord to plug the brick into, then the extension plug will fit just fine in your power strip.
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The battery is a 3.6V with a 4.2V charge voltage. There has to be a way. Have you taken your Glow light apart yet? If so, post some pictures of all the PCB's. Where the AC plug terminates, that is just a charging base where the light sits on, correct? If so a induction charger with 18+W should just do the same thing but I doubt we'll get that from your USB port. USB-C might be possible.... How far are you willing to go with this?
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The charging base just feeds the 9V output from the wall wart to two contact spring pins that touch corresponding ring contacts on the light. So it should indeed be possible to snip off the AC adapter and wire on a USB plug instead, thus feeding 5V to the base instead.
Of course, then you've got to get inside and rewire the charging circuitry to take 5V instead of 9V; if you're going to that much trouble I assume you could also figure out how to reduce the current requirements so you could use a standard 5W USB plug; that way you'd probably be safe to power it from a laptop.
More trouble than what I'd go to personally, but hey, you do you. :)
@dadibrokeit I agree. Hence my "How far are you willing to go with this" It's plenty of work for a mere inconvenience. Possible? Yes. Why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If the OP is willing to tear the device down, they could change it to 5V and use a TP4056 module to charge the battery.
Again, it's how far the OP wants to go. If they just want a smaller power brick, we can just get another 9V 2A power brick.
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2 Comments
@brendo3615 What voltage (V) and amperage (A) does the power supply output?
by Andrew S
9V 2A output
by Brendo