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A comment on Anker PowerPort PD 1 USB-C Wall Charger Teardown. Parent comment

Re:Anker PowerPort PD 1 USB-C Wall Charger Teardown by snops on Monday January 07, 2019 @05:08PM (#18850698)
Since the USB-C port often supports bidirectional power, it may not actually make it that much larger, if at all, as the battery charger IC can often operate in "reverse buck" mode to turn the battery voltage into 5V, which when using synchronous rectification (almost mandatory for efficiency now) means it has all the parts for forward boost, and just needs a slightly cleverer control IC. This is like how many modern power banks can use the same inductor for buck (5V->3.7V) charging and boost (3.7->5V) discharging.

Check this app note from Intersil/Renesas: https://www.renesas.com/eu/en/doc/whitepapers/power/usb-c-bu...

(of course, it may be slightly less efficient in boost charging, but since the 5V usb source has limited power, this may not be a concern in terms of component thermal limits etc).

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Re:Anker PowerPort PD 1 USB-C Wall Charger Teardown by colechristensen on Monday January 07, 2019 @11:53PM (#18853263)
So this reuse is why almost no power banks support simultaneous charge and discharge, I am guessing.

It is super annoying that I can't use any of my power banks as laptop-like batteries for Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and the like.

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Re:Anker PowerPort PD 1 USB-C Wall Charger Teardown by int_19h on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @01:08AM (#18853633)
Take a look at OmniCharge, e.g.:

https://www.omnicharge.co/products/omni-20-usb-c/

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Re:Anker PowerPort PD 1 USB-C Wall Charger Teardown by boundlessdreamz on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @12:53AM (#18853552)
The Xiaomi Powerbank supports simultaneous charge and discharge.
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