This week on EYE ON NPI we’re doing a barrel rooooollll to celebrate Infineon’s CY4534 EZ-PD™ barrel connector replacement starring the CYPD3176. This is a no-firmware USB Type C Power Delivery sink that will make USB C PD EZ PZ with a low cost, minimal BOM and standalone functionality.
We’re big fans of USB Type C Power Delivery as a way to replace the numerous different combinations of DC barrel adapters – with 30 different tips and 2 polarities and 6 different popular voltages – that’s 360 possible combinations.
We do still stock 5V, 9V and 12V, as well as a nifty selectable voltage adapter, but it’s a struggle for product designers to pick which voltage they need, order and package the exact voltage/current adapter, and then make sure that even if users grab the wrong adapter the product wont be damaged.
Being able to use any off-the-shelf USB Type C power plug means less cost and complexity for product sourcing, and it means customers can easily get a replacement even years after support has ended. We’ve seen laptops start to move away from custom connectors and go towards USB type C charging thanks to the 100W standard specification output.
Only problem? The USB PD negotiation process is on par with USB data in complexity, only 5V and 1A output is easy to configure: connect a 5.1K resistor from each of the CC lines to ground. If you want 9V or 20V, or 5A output, you need to send and receive ‘power delivery contracts’ over the CC lines. While you can definitely just program your favorite microcontroller with firmware to do this work – it’s a fair bit of firmware to manage. Also now you have another microcontroller to source and debug.
Instead – you can try a ready to go chip like the Infineon CYPD3176. Just wire it up to the CC lines, add some controllable FETs and passives and you can use resistors or switches to ‘hard code’ in the voltage and current you want.
Inside the CYPD3176 is an Arm Cortex M0 processor – Infineon makes a bunch of those – that is pre-programmed to act like a stand-alone PD Sink controller. Wire up the CC1 and CC2 pins, plus VBus and Ground to start communicating with off the shelf USB PD sources. You’ll also need resistor dividers to set the desired voltage from 5V/9V/12V/15V/18V/20V and current, from 900mA up to 5A.
It’s also possible to configure the chip so it doesn’t use external components to set the voltage/current, either by burning new firmware or sending I2C commands that change the non-volatile memory, for help with that contact Infineon’s FAE or DigiKey.
To get started fast we recommend picking up the CY4534 eval board. It’s super easy to use and lets you immediately test whether USB PD will work for your design. Simply rotate the built in switch to position 1-5 to select 5V-20V out. Then plug in a matching-capable USB PD source supply. Voila … DC voltage out of the terminal blocks that you can immediately use.
Both the Infineon CYPD3176 and CY4534 eval board are in stock right now for immediate shipment by DigiKey. Don’t forget to also pick up a USB PD source wall adapter like the QFWC-45-20-USCR which can provide 5V-20V and up to 45W of power. Order today and they’ll pack up your chips and send them faster thank you can say “EZ PZ Lemon Squeezy” – you’ll be crafting your DC barrel replacement within minutes.
See the video below:
