Vincent Nguyen's PocketPD Is an Ultra-Tiny USB Programmable Power Supply for the Smallest of Desks

Electrical engineer Vincent Nguyen, working with Martin Axelsen and Ryan Trissel, has designed an ultra-portable benchtop power supply, making full use of the capabilities available in the USB Power Delivery (PD) standard — and is preparing to launch the first commercialized version.

"PocketPD [is a] USB-C portable bench power supply," Nguyen explains of his creation, "leveraging the Programmable Power Supply (PPS) of USB PD 3.0 and 3.1 to make an ultra-compact bench power supply. Beside portable soldering iron[s], this should be one of the best portable tools for college electrical engineering students."

The PocketPD has no inductors and no buck or boost converters on board. Instead, it works through USB Power Delivery — a standard by which compatible devices can negotiate for higher-than-standard voltages and currents over a USB Type-C connection. Specifically, the PocketPD uses the newer Programmable Power Supply (PPS) extension to the Power Delivery standard.

In its most recent incarnation, the PocketPD — a surprisingly compact device with rotary encoder and USB Type-C connector at one end and power outputs at the other, with an OLED display in the center providing live readouts and a simple user interface — supports up to 5A of sustained current draw, with a boot-up default of 5V at 1A to prevent damage to connected devices.

Nguyen recently released beta-test hardware on the Lectronz marketplace, priced at $45 — and sold out almost immediately. Now, the firmware is being further developed with a view to launching a commercial version of the device in the near future.

More information on the project is available on Nguyen's Hackaday.io page; the firmware source code has been published to GitHub under the permissive MIT license.