PD Buddy Sink

Name: PD Buddy Sink
SKU: 9612
Price: 30.00 USD
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 4.78 (31 reviews)

(31 Reviews)

Smart power jack for USB Power Delivery

Designed by Clara Hobbs in United States of America

2017-08-07T19:16:26.148Z-DSCN8323_tindie.JPG

2017-08-07T19:16:26.148Z-DSCN8313_tindie.JPG

2017-08-07T19:16:26.148Z-DSCN8321_tindie.JPG

2017-07-05T21:08:08.718Z-DSCN8288_tindie.JPG

$30.00

Out of Stock

Sold out since Jun 03, 2020

Sorry y'all, I started feeling ill this weekend, so as part of my quarantine I'm closing my shop for the time being.

Smart power jack for USB Power Delivery

What is it? PD Buddy Sink is a smart power jack for USB Power Delivery. Configure it with the voltage and current your project needs, then plug it into any USB PD power supply with a high enough powe…

What is it?

PD Buddy Sink is a smart power jack for USB Power Delivery. Configure it with the voltage and current your project needs, then plug it into any USB PD power supply with a high enough power capability. It negotiates with the power supply and turns on its output, giving your project up to 3 A at 5, 9, or 15 V, and up to 5 A at 20 V. With the latest firmware release, the Sink can also make requests from USB PD programmable power supplies, providing any voltage from up to 4–21 V at 20 mV increments.

PD Buddy Sink is simple to configure. Just plug it into a computer while holding the Setup button, and connect to the USB CDC console interface. Alternatively, use the (still experimental) configuration GUI. The configuration interface works with Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows 10.

All units ship with the latest stable firmware (1.2.2), supporting Power Delivery negotiations while in Setup mode. To use this feature with an external power supply, I recommend adding a PD Buddy Wye to your order. The latest release also supports making requests from USB PD programmable power supplies (PPS), which offer voltages at 20 mV increments from a wide range (up to 3–21 V is offered, but the Sink can't run far below 4 V).

Note: Power supply, USB Type-C cable, voltmeter, and breadboarded example circuit not included.

Why did you make it?

One day I was digging through a box of wall warts, trying to find one that would work for my latest project. I needed one with 12–16 V output at no less than 0.5 A, and with a reasonable output connector. Untangling cords and checking labels was taking a while, and I started thinking. “If I could use USB Power Delivery, I wouldn't ever have to do this again.” Since USB PD power supplies can provide a multitude of voltages at sizable currents over a USB-C cable, all you'd need is a little circuit board that takes the place of a power jack and tells the power supply what your project needs. I searched the web, and to my surprise, no such device was available! I realized I'd have to make it myself.

What makes it special?

To the best of my knowledge, PD Buddy Sink is the first complete device that allows any hacker, maker, tinkerer, or electronics hobbyist to easily power their projects from USB Power Delivery.

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Quantity	Price
1-4	$30.00
5-9	$29.00
10+	$28.00

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (4.90)

Documentation: (4.68)

Shipping: (4.77)

Communication: (4.77)

B | June 15, 2020

Works great

Programmed it for 15v, 3A to power a portable HF transceiver using a USB-C PD powerbank. Works great!

Simon | March 24, 2020

Nice PD Sink

Stumbled across this looking for a way to use a USBc power bank to power a small ham transceiver. Somewhat naively thought this was a simple USB-to-15v device when I bought it, and pleasantly surprised to find a sweet programming interface that will make this suitable for a bunch of different power supply projects. Wish I'd bought five now!

Robyn | Feb. 13, 2020

Quality little piece of hardware!

I'm building a bluetooth speaker that I wanted powering via PD. This little thing is perfect.
I'm not familiar with the whole world of programming so I needed a little help from a friend to show me how to communicate with it, but honestly set up was so easy and now I've got 20V from my PD battery to my speaker, genius!
I don't know how many lay people end up buying something like this but a step by step tutorial would have been nice.

Thomas | Nov. 18, 2019

It's great! Nice and stable.

I used this to power a small amateur radio, and nice nice and stable voltage as the morse code key is pressed (large change in current draw).

Grzegorz | Nov. 13, 2019

It works

It simply works and does what I expected. I tried it with 2 power banks and one USB charger. No issues so far.

Jimmy | Nov. 5, 2019

One of a kind

Couldn't find any other product as flexible and robust as this. Great documentation and overall great build for such a crucial power supply device. Thanks, Clara.

Paul | Nov. 4, 2019

Handy device

I made a usb pd to barrel jack adaptor to power a chrome book, works a treat, only wish that the output terminals were bigger for ham-fisted people

Kristian | Oct. 31, 2019

Brilliant little thing

The only product I've found anywhere to allow the constructor to set all of the parameters for PowerDelivery. Great little thing to keep a spare or two of in the workshop.

Malcolm | Sept. 1, 2019

Super happy :D

Does what it says on the tin. So I'm super happy. Would have loved to get a PD Buddy Wyre to go with it but they are sold out. It's all good I can wait :D

This is an awesome bit of kit and I'm super stoked to have one.

Ken | Aug. 24, 2019

Awesome USB C accessory!

I bought this specifically to power a TS80 soldering iron (which only supports USB C QC 3 natively) from a USB C PD battery or PD charger. It was very easy to configure to produce 12v @ 3A and now I have an extremely versatile mobile power and soldering rig! Shipping was very fast, I got a great response from the seller when I had a question, and this is a great little product.

Ying | July 31, 2019

Great product that has many uses.

I'm so glad I came across the PD Buddy Sink. It's exactly the product I'm looking for to help develop USB PD-charging devices. Thanks Clara.

M Jordan | July 6, 2019

Perfect power converter for prototyping

Now I can use a USB-C PD supply for my ~constant power needs for microcontrollers and small SBCs, and free up my variable benchtop power supply for other experiments.

Douglas | June 8, 2019

PD Buddy Sink - a great introduction to USB-C Power Delivery

I needed to be able to power an Nvidia Nano powered JetBot from a battery pack at greater than the normal 5V 2.4A that most USB-A ports put out; I chose this product, programmed it to 5V3A (easy to do) and now get 5V3A from the USB-C Port on the battery pack.

https://github.com/DouglasPearless/jetbot

The seller was helpful and answered my questions, and provided some useful suggestions.

In short, a great product.

Cheers
Douglas

William | May 29, 2019

awesome

Fast shipping, good comunication and awesome product. ggot it very quick and the programing was easy . works as a charm

Glenn | May 23, 2019

Great little product

Took a while to get through customs, but a very nice and good-working product! Only drawback is that it does not provide any power if a non-PD USB Charger is connected to it.

Charles | May 16, 2019

Works great. Does exactly what I need

These worked great for me. Good support as well. Learned that Apple-brand USB-C supplies are picky -- so I recommend to avoid using them.

Frederik | May 3, 2019

Works fine, as expected - but....

Tried different settings with fix voltage (5, 9, 15) on several power adapter- worked fine, but if I select f.x. 18 V on a PPS based Power Adapter (Anker) then the select voltage is ok only for several seconds and then it resets and start over again (loop).

Response from Clara Hobbs | May 3, 2019

I'm sorry to hear about the problem you're having! If you could please send me a message on the Tindie community forums, I'd be glad to try to get it resolved (most likely starting next week; I'm crazy busy this weekend). In particular, if you could include the exact model of charger you're having trouble with it could be a big help. Thanks!

Eric | April 20, 2019

Amazing!

I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago and my overactive brain wouldn't stop. I thought about being able to power all my DC gear via USB-PD, I just needed to design a circuit to negotiate the desired output. I grabbed my phone and did a quick search, this is where I landed. I bought two right away. The PD Buddy Sink is very well designed and executed! I am now charging ham gear via various USB-PD sources, I cannot wait to 3D print cases and add this to my daily gear. I am seriously impressed and grateful. I hope a future revision has dual USB ports for either passthrough or configuration. Thank you!

Aron | April 19, 2019

Does what it's supposed to

I use it in combination with a USB-C PD powerbank / power supply and a DC-DC power supply to generate any voltage I might need; even while traveling. I like everything about this tiny board! Thank you!

Shaheedan | March 2, 2019

must have if you have the usb-c PD powerbank

Just configure the output voltage to 20V 2.25A to suite with my laptop charging port (barrel jack), very easy and straightforward to do using his available documents online. nice product!

Andrew | Nov. 28, 2018

Great product, does as advertised, great docs, happily own 7

This is a great little hack/toy/product that I'm already heavily utilising on a daily basis. The documentation is great, and Clayton has great support as well I reached out to him a bit about a few things, and commented some feedback publicly, all met with responses. +++ would order more if I needed, but with 7 of them I think I'm good forever. Thanks again!

Fabian | Sept. 16, 2018

It just works perfectly!

Hi Clayton. I just want to say thank you for the PD Buddy. Exactly what I was looking for. Small PCB, perfectly crafted and USB connector made by Amphenol. I built an Pigtail-Adaptor to power my Thinkpad X230 via USB-C @ 20V. Works perfectly. Kind regards from Germany.

Kelvin | June 7, 2018

Works well when dialed in, but limited compatibility

The hardware works really well once configured for a specific device. However, it may not be a great option if you need to plug into a variety of different USB PD sources without reconfiguring. I got it reliably functioning with an Apple 87W brick and a 30W Anker 26800+ battery bank, but in this configuration it would not negotiate reliably with another Apple 29W brick or an Anker 30W wall wart. There doesn't seem to be a way to make it gracefully try a few different power configurations or fallback to other configurations. Ideally I'd be able to throw any 30W+ USB PD source at it and get current in the range of my downstream device, but as it stands I need to carry one of the two very specific devices I managed to get working.

Response from Clara Hobbs | June 7, 2018

Unfortunately, many chargers don't follow the USB PD power rules, so it's true that one configuration of voltage and current might not work on another charger with the same advertised wattage. Of the chargers you listed, my research shows that only recent versions of the Anker 30W charger (model numbers ending in 112) follow the power rules, with all the others violating them in some way.

You could still get power from all of these chargers though, by setting a range of voltages that the PD Buddy Sink can request. See the documentation on voltage ranges and alternate configuration types starting at https://git.clayhobbs.com/pd-buddy/pd-buddy-firmware/src/tag/v1.2.2/docs/console_config.md#voltage-ranges for more information.

Adrian | May 24, 2018

Works Well

Had a problem with delivery (Autofill mashed two different addresses together and USPS tried to deliver it) but it all got sorted quickly and professionally. I'm using this to power my TS100 soldering Iron from a 60W USB PD charger from Monoprice or a 30W power bank, both work quite well which means that's one less charger I have to carry around.

I'll probably end up buying more of these at some point, quite useful thing to have. The only complaint is that it's a bit bulky, I'd rather it be smaller so it would fit "in-line" with the cable.

Gavin | April 12, 2018

Does what it says

Works great, and programming is effortless, just connected to my PC and loaded up Putty on COM6 and presto, console!

A couple gotchas on the firmware, when you connect it doesn't pre-load the existing config to the tempcfg so each time you connect you need to reprogram every single setting to change one thing.

If I could make a request for v2 it would be to sacrifice as many features as possible to get it down to an active-cable pcb size and sell it as a plug like this but just the two power pads: http://www.cypress.com/sites/default/files/inline/fckImages/myresources/Type-C_new1.jpg

The only other feature I would look to have is to activate programmable over-current and over-voltage behavior.

Matthew | April 1, 2018

Great power converter board!

This is a great power converter board with endless uses. So far I have made a few different things with them - a 12-15V Anderson PowerPole adapter for ham radio gear, a 20V laptop charger adapter, and a test rig for analyzing the performance of USB-C cables and chargers. With the updated firmware you can also specify a range of voltages instead of a single voltage which makes it very useful if your device can accept a range of voltages (e.g. things that run off car power can usually take 10-16V so you can select 12-15V).

Configuration is easy as pushing a button and plugging into a computer, you input the desired voltage/current using a simple text interface which is explained in the documentation. With the Wye adapter you can also use a computer to determine what modes a power supply supports - sometimes they offer more voltage selections than they advertise it seems.

Firmware updates on the ones I got required bridging a contact to enter update-mode but that was fairly easy, the only difficulty I had was some dependencies to compile the new firmware. Newer versions allow firmware-update to be entered thru a software command without any jumpers.

For my uses of this board I've designed a 3D printed case for these boards and posted it on Thingiverse.

George | March 18, 2018

Excellent little power adapter, well built and versatile

Purchased this little programmable power adapter to power some portable testing equipment previously requiring a proprietary power supply. The PD Buddy Sink allowed me to easily configure the it to the voltage and amperage I needed. Now I can run the device off any USB-C PD jack, keeping me mobile.
The inventor/seller has been very responsive and patient in helping me with any questions I had. I plan on purchasing many more of these in the future to help cut down on the wire clutter.

Jakub | March 10, 2018

Does what it's supposed to do

I created a USB-C to Dell XPS adapter using this board. The only thing I had to do was to choose the desired voltage using serial console - the process was easy and straightforward (I haven't even read specs). I 3D printed a small case, soldered wires and now I can power my Dell XPS with a USB PD charger. I'd convert a few more things to USB C if the board was cheaper.

Chark | March 6, 2018

Works well (as advertised), would like Wye on-board

I have not used all the features yet, but I did test the 9V 2.0 output configuration and it worked flawless. I used a USB A-to-C cable to connect it to a Raspberry Pi. I installed the "cu" program and connected with "cu -l /dev/ttyACM0 -s 9600" command. Typed 'help' and got the menu. I used the pyserial module to bring control of the port into python.
One improvement that could be made to the board would be to have a micro USB connector that could allow for the WYE functionality.
I presently use a QuickCharge 3.0 wall adapter and a MCP4812 two channel DAC to get custom voltages using a SPI interface, but wanted to test a USB PD 3.0 PPS adapter using the PD Buddy Sink.
Great product, no issue so far, did not need any documentation or communication yet.

Edit: Created the Wye function by modifying a type C cable (cut the D+ D- and connected them and GND to a separate USB A cable which connects to my RPi). Was able to query the adapter realtime, set the output on/off and set the new voltage.
Edit2: The output pad (GND and PWR) hole pitch is smaller than 2.54mm. FYI. I needed to bend my 2.54mm pins to solder it down.

Boris | Feb. 19, 2018

Recommendable

Works flawlessly in combination with an Aukey PA-Y10 and a RAVPower RP-PB058. It's smaller than I expected. I found it a little bit hard to bridge the solder pads for upgrading the firmware, but this shouldn't be a problem anymore for new units that ship with the integrated software flash-mode.

There should be a link in the README to http://dfu-util.sourceforge.net/ as I accidentally installed dfuse from STMicroelectronics that is incompatible with the instructions. Please note, that the official STMicroelectronics drivers for windows are incompatible with this tool and need to be replaced as described here https://github.com/libusb/libusb/wiki/Windows#How_to_use_libusb_on_Windows

The configuration process was fast and worked well as described in the documentation.

Lastly i tried to protect the board with insulation tape, but I'm still looking for good ideas how to do it right.

TLDR: It's great :-)

Benjamin | Feb. 9, 2018

Works as advertised

This wonderful little board works as advertised.

I bought it to reduce the number of chargers that I had to take with me when I travel down to 1. Sadly all my devices do not USB PD and several take different voltages, so something like this is a must. My laptop is 16V and portable projector is 12V, so this device is a must-have for traveling light.

Setup was simple. I found a suitable cable with barrel jack, found polarity, and screwed the wires down to the screw terminals. After that I plugged a USB-A-C cable into my laptop and the PD Buddy Sink while holding the Program button, then connected to the serial console that appeared on my laptop. After programming the voltage and current I was able to charge my projector!

I am eagerly awaiting another unit so I can use it to charge my laptop as well.

+ Show 26 more

$30.00

Out of Stock

Sold out since Jun 03, 2020

Clara Hobbs

Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America

Ships from United States of America.

34 Reviews | 539 Orders

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Tindie

PD Buddy Sink

Out of Stock

Smart power jack for USB Power Delivery

What is it?

Why did you make it?

What makes it special?

Rates to

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Works great

Nice PD Sink

Quality little piece of hardware!

It's great! Nice and stable.

It works

One of a kind

Handy device

Brilliant little thing

Super happy :D

Awesome USB C accessory!

Great product that has many uses.

Perfect power converter for prototyping

PD Buddy Sink - a great introduction to USB-C Power Delivery

awesome

Great little product

Works great. Does exactly what I need

Works fine, as expected - but....

Response from Clara Hobbs | May 3, 2019

Amazing!

Does what it's supposed to

must have if you have the usb-c PD powerbank

Great product, does as advertised, great docs, happily own 7

It just works perfectly!

Works well when dialed in, but limited compatibility

Response from Clara Hobbs | June 7, 2018

Works Well

Does what it says

Great power converter board!

Excellent little power adapter, well built and versatile

Does what it's supposed to do

Works well (as advertised), would like Wye on-board

Recommendable

Works as advertised

Out of Stock

Clara Hobbs

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PD Buddy Wye

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Low-Profile USB-C Power Pigtail

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