[Q] Gauging Interest | Laptop power brick to G-Tablet Charger

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Trying to gauge interest for a pet project.

How many of you would be interested in an adapter that would allow you to use a laptop "brick" to charge your G-Tab?

First design is going to be for the Dell laptop power supplies (since I have a plethora of them )

If there is enough interest in other laptop supplies I will look at different connectors as well.

No idea on mfg costs right now, need to prove concept first. Cost target (Resale) is ~$10

I'd like to see and adapter that fits the Dell D and E series Latitude chargers.

That's the one I'm aiming for initially. Newer series Dell with the ROUND receptacle. I "think" it might still work with the octagonal receptecles though. Need to get some samples and try it out for fit.

Cost might be sligthly higher than I originally anticipated (Still <$20 though) - the damn Dell connector is a quasi-custom and cheapest I've found is $6+ shipping....grumble....

If the old receptacles work, that brings the cost down.

Haven't priced the tablet side connector yet, but I'm guessing it's going to be a couple bucks with a lead on it.

More to come....hoping to have some parts by next week to start building up protos.

I'd be very interested in something that would plug into a USB port on a desktop or laptop or any USB power supply.

I have a couple of D-Series laptops and would love to use the same charger for them and my G-Tab. I would definitely buy one.

Originally Posted by nunjabusiness

I'd be very interested in something that would plug into a USB port on a desktop or laptop or any USB power supply.

If you have USB3.0 it "might" be possible as that has higher current carrying (3.6W) potential than USB1 and USB2.0 which are ~500mW at best. That's one disadvanage to the big ass battery in these things, which I think are 7.2V, so they usually require a higher input voltage (hence why we get 12V in). Even with USB3.0 though, we are still looking at long (10x+) charging times versus the wall-wart.

It's "technically" possible to step up the current USB 5V to 12V, but the power level is so low that it would take forever and a day to charge ( or about 48x longer than the current 12V/2A wall charger)

without a proper teardown though, it's tough to tell what the charging circuit looks like on the board. My guess is it's a 12V / 7.2V buck charger as it's cheaper than a boost/buck to implement. My bigger question about the internal charging circuit though is what it actually draws in terms of power...the wall wart is rated for 12V/2A, but those are usually overbuilt to prevent them from blowing up. Hoping it's closer to 1A draw, but again without knowing what the charger chip is, there's no (Easy) way to determine this without probing the connections.

Originally Posted by bnovak

How many of you would be interested in an adapter that would allow you to use a laptop "brick" to charge your G-Tab?

Count me in as well. I travel a ton for work and having one less charger to stuff in my carry-on would be great - well worth the sub-$20 price.

I currently pack a PA-4E, stock charger for a Latitude E6510

I would be interested, though I have an ASUS laptop at the moment.

On a side note, if you did only decide to make one and it were for Dell, anyone could purchase a universal adapter and care the one adapter and two tips. Just a thought.