Power your guitar pedals, amps, synths, and whatnot where you charge your phone.
From MyVolts, the ‘most interesting small device power supply company to come out of Dublin in years’.
Luke Brennan, of MyVolts, writes:
We have just gone live with a kickstarter campaign to launch our new product, ‘Ripcord’.
We think it’s a great alternative to plugging things into the wall.
The journey in getting this product to market included working with half a dozen young Irish designers, development sessions in Cloughjordan ecovillage, expert reviews in Berlin, along with visits to manufacturers in China.
We’d love if you could ask your readers to have a look at our Kickstarter preview page [link below] and leave any comments they might have…
Ripcord – The Plug n Play (Kickstarter)
Leave a comment (for backers only)
Cool! I pledged. Best of luck. I’ll be using mine to power a little HDMI extractor unit that demands a full power adapter. Now can power it from the TV USB socket. It’s the little things.
“It’s the little things.”
Exactly. Clever little ideas. Simple solutions to common problems are the best inventions.
“the ‘most interesting small device power supply company to come out of Dublin in years’.”
Since the eh…. since those eh….. that little steam powered thing… eh…. the…..
Seriously though, looks like something useful for a change instead of yet another app to reduce your requirement to interact with people.
The USB specification provides only a maximum of 2.5 watts from a standard type-A socket (many actually supply even less). There’s no way to magic this up to the claimed 9 watts in a cable, no matter how fancy your electronics.
So, by plugging this into the likes of a computer or mobile, you’re running a very real risk of permanent damage to it.
Yeah, this thing has its uses if it’s connected to a non-standard supply like a car cigarette-lighter USB adaptor or portable boost battery (or some high-power USB connectors), but it’s very misleading not to prominently explain that the vast majority of USB sockets in the world will only provide a fraction of the power claimed.
This was the first thing that struck me about the product too. Very misleading.
“here’s no way to magic this up to the claimed 9 watts”
That reminds me of people (marketing gimps) who think you can make a low resolution image into a high res one, as if the computer just knows what the photographer saw when he took it?
Sounds like in innovative idea in itself, enriching photos.
I wondered about that, had to scroll down reaaaaaaly far to see the v/a rating. But fear not whinging engineer – they can do what every other company did and just use multiple type A cables on one end as you find on external hard drives i.e http://www.toshibadirect.com/images/ui3/accessories/toshiba/to_ba82010_300.png
So yeah BRB I’m off to create a kickstarter…
Hi There
Luke Brennan here from myVolts.
Firstly thanks for the comments they’re all very welcome.
Apologies for this one, it seems we left this one a little unclear.
We’ve beta tested this with musicians of all levels for a number of years, without a single damaged device. Here is what Danny Davies, engineering, pre-production on New Order’s “Music Complete LP” said:
“I used the USB converter with my MacBook Pro; tried it with Boss MZ-2, Boss TU-3, MXR Badass ’78 Distortion effects pedals. All worked flawlessly with the Mac’s PSU in or out, out – there didn’t seem to be any significant battery drain.”
Thanks again for all your support broadsheet.
Luke
Nice bit of mechanical design there, Luke. Have to say that I’d share the concerns expressed by Whingeing Engineer above. You’re claiming 1A at 9V? Really?
Has this device been through the USB compliance program yet?
I know a Luke Brennan but I doubt it’s you because he’s only 9.
But just in case…
Keep up the karate Luke and tell your dad I said hi!
I’d love one. Fair play.
Good luck with it but try and lose the ‘best thing out of Dublin’ spiel. A lot of Irish start ups use this odd marketing message suggesting that it’s friggin amazing to have a good product that is also Irish made. Just shows lack of self confidence.
From my knowledge all host USB ports have surge/overload protection built in which will shut down the port or limit current (I don’t know if it’s part of the spec). Overloading usb ports would be pretty common now and if a host manufacturer did not protect against it they could expect a large rate of returns.
To expand on the 2.5 Watt draw mentioned by Whinging Engineer. The USB 2.0 spec is 2.5 Watt (and this should be read as a minimum), USB 3.0 spec allows for (min) 4.5 watts and battery charging ports allow for 7.5 watts (and guess what, it’s going to jump to 100 watts!).
As most consumer will run a mile when you say Watts, V/A rating etc.. some friendly documents to help them understand this would be nice.