A USB power delivery stand-alone sink controller @oxplot
The Oxblog posts about finding a nifty chip to handle power draw from a USB C port.
Chips like the popular FUSB302 which only provide the wire level handling of the USB-PD protocol, require a lot of software work to make them reliably operational. And that software will need to run on a µC which adds to BOM. So I went to search and found a gem called STUSB4500 from STMicroelectronics. In short, you program some registers to chip’s NVM via I2C once which define what voltage range/current you require and the chip will negotiate those requirements with a charger connected to it.
He set out to design a minimal but practical board that could be used with a laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad X250), further generalizing it to fit almost any purpose.
I think STUSB4500 sits nicely between modules out there that require complete software stack and those that can set the voltage with a jumper. You still have fine grained control over how much voltage/current you ask for from the upstream power supply, without the hassle of adding extra controllers with software that may not be robust.
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