Pirl Charger test & teardown (4x 2.7A 5V USB)
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- Опубликовано: 11 май 2018
- This is a detailed teardown of the amazing Pirl Charger with 4 USB ports, 2.7A per port, 10.8A total. Each port is individually regulated using a DC/DC synchronous buck regulator with independent overload protection, short circuit protection and overheat protection. Each port also has a red/white LED indicator. The Pirl charger is unique for its integrated Wattmeter showing the total power consumed in Watts on an LED display with an adjustable brightness. The input voltage is 7-17V and it can work with an AC/DC mains power supply, a car adaptor, solar panels, 2S/3S/4S Li-Ion battery packs or 12V lead acid batteries. This Pirl charger with a mains and car adaptors was donated to me by Kobby from Pirl Technology:
www.pirlcharger.com
You can support me on Patreon:
/ diodegonewild 
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I have one of the Mean Well DC 24v power supplies. It's better constructed than I had anticipated for the price. The Taiwanese manufacturers are definitely a cut above their mainland counterparts. Love the videos sir, keep 'em coming!
I expect one of these little 60W MeanWell to cost about $20 or more in bulk. Which is to say, you get what you pay for, and you pay a few times more than what mainlandians charge.
Mean Well is just about the best there is. I use them for everything. Top notch.
I imagine that Mean Well power supply would easily pass DiodeGoneWild's safety test with the green Nice banner with almost nothing in it that would give it the yellow/orange Dodgy or red Super Dodgy banner.
@@uzaiyaro Totally agree. One of the best, if not the best, SMPS you can buy for a reasonable cost. Fred
Meanwell has a good reputation.
The control IC is TPS2549 from TI. Very useful chip, I used it in my powerbank project
Really appreciate your detailed forensic research on this charger and the amount of efforts that went into it! You are great!!
Just keep it going and 100k subs will be knocking your door soon!
Big fan of yours!
-Love from India from Arindam!
Thanks :)
That is a nice looking peice of kit.
Mike oliver when I read your comment I read piece of shit
SomeRandomGuyWithAChannelOnRUclips lol naw it looks good.
I'm not sure if I've said this already on this video, but I will say it again: this has to be one of if not my favorite USB charger on RUclips. I remembered the acceptable voltage input range on this charger, and I realized that someone could use an external USB-C supply with 5 amps at 12 volts to run this at the full rated power of 60 watts. Yes, the output power for this charger is technically rated at 54 watts (10.8 amps at 5 volts, which it proves itself more than capable of), but it would have to get its 54 watts from somewhere, and we would have to factor in a few watts for internal losses and up to another watt or so for the LED power meter. Also, PLEASE do a teardown of the AC power supply that came with the Pirl charger!
Wow, What a fantastic product! Thanks for your thorough review.
i watched this video before but im still amazed at how good a unit the Pirl is.....
p.s. this is one of better videos and thats saying something because all your videos are class!! i also love the what you done on the buck converter explanation... pure brilliant!!!
You deserve way more supporters, you are so detailed at stuff and your voice is making video even more interesting 😁😁😁😁
👍
You are listed on Pirl website :) Nice work ! And also a nice charger .
The amount of effort you put into these videos is amazing. I don't know of anyone else in RUclips who gives this detailed an analysis, not even bigclive ;P
Keep it coming...
Thank you for such a detailed explanation of its working.
P.s I've learned more from your videos than anyone else's,, no one eles goes over every component on the board from start to finish an explains what it's doing and how it affects the circuit. Please don't change how you do your videos👌👍
I mean the buck explanation was second to none👍👏👌
That was one of your best videos of seen...
I missed your videos , keep up the good work
0:23 it also has an integrated watermeter😂. Nice video! 👍
It's just a eastern english 😁 like mine 😈😈😈😂😁😂😁
Excellent explanation, I admire your knowledge
Impressive charger i definitely want to buy one , very nice teardown, Dani!!!
Interesting charger, it would be nice to see some heatsinking to the back panel, I really like the longer videos also, I hope you make more!
A lot of good information in this video. Explaining the circuitry is great. You should do a comparison video where you contrast a high quality design like this with one of the dangerous cheap versions you often tear down.
I love your content! Keep up the good work!
That looks like a very nice USB chargers - Kudos Pirl. I dig the use of the MeanWell power supplies. I use only MeanWell supplies on all of my high power lead acid and Lithium/Lithium Polymer chargers for RC use. Color me impressed at the board layout too. I totally love the cut out FR4 boards to make the case. Sweet touch and quite a mod look.
Man, thank you for teaching me so many things
Best usb charger I have seen, full output, with good failsafe features, plus versatile input, very useful. AC adaptor must be good too. Thanks for video..
today I was at work when you uploaeded this video I got happy and I was intersted your video as soon as possible thanks a lot kind man nice job I am from Iran
Bloody well that was complicated! Seriously well done for explaining that! It looks a nice device if I had one Ide put a little fan behind it to cool it 100 centigrade is very hot and could scorch something easily
this device is so powerful and useful that even boils water to cook. I'm dreaming about this device.
Excellent review of this charger. THANX
Mantap gan pencerahannya.
Much appreciated sir!
looking at the site of the pirl I discovered that the piece in your hand is a prototype because they are in crowfunding.
maybe that's why some parts are made in PCB fiberglass.
The tests you have done show that it is a great product, we hope that the final production also maintains the same quality .... certainly at a high price though (I hope I'm wrong)
zola tanaffa 84$ to be precise plus courier
55ß
Nice design and good test session ! 👍
Грамотный и наглядный обзор, спасибо!
I was very pleasantly surprised to see some scope measurements of the output ripple! You have just earned another Patreon supporter. :)
I do have one suggestion though: Could you please measure the temperatures of the actual components which generate the heat when a product gets very hot like this? It would be much more useful to know how close the component gets to its specified datasheet temperature (with proper derating calculated for the power being dissipated at that temperature, of course) and also if the heat is due to bad design decisions, like an overheating resistor or diode for example, or just due to not enough heat sinking.
Somebody posted a thermal imaging of it:
lygte-info.dk/review/USBpower%20Pirl%20Charger%204x2.7A%20usb.html
The buck regulators are the hottest. Also the reverse polarity MOSFET and the square chips (TPS2549 USB Charging Port Controllers) get hot. But the buck regulators are probably the hottest of all. They have a lot of conductive losses and switching losses. Also the resistance of the internal MOSFETs probably gets higher as it gets hot, making it even hotter and so on (a thermal runaway). This could only be solved by a bigger heatsink or using some other chips where the internal mosfets have a lower resistance. The maximum temperature of the chips is 150 °C, so in fact they have enough headroom, but the problem is that the device is just too hot to touch. A bigger heatsing would ruin the nice tiny flat portable design of it. The chips are not overloaded, they run within their specs, but having so many of them on a tiny board .... this just has to make it hot.
DiodeGoneWild; Well, that was pretty interesting! I didn't mean that I expect you to be able to take thermal images, just sticking the thermal probe onto one of the chips would have given enough information.
I was quite surprised that the inductors run so cool, especially at 650kHz! I also expected the switching MOSFETs to get quite a bit hotter than 100°C, seeing as they aren't thermally bonded onto the case or anything and the outside of the case got up to 100°C itself! Still, it's nice to know that their spec'd temperature limit isn't bein exceeded.
Another oddity: Why are those square (charge control?) ICs getting so hot? Are they being used as a current shunt for measurement purposes or something? Not really that important, I just found it really strange to see those chips getting hotter than the power inductors, lol.
One really cool thing about the linked thermograph, is that you can literally see the small die inside of the epoxy packages!
Gotta love that Soviet era oscilloscope... a friend of mine in Hungary had the exact same model... well, it's not like they has a lot of different models to choose from before the 80's... he-he
The power measuring IC with the multiplex display driver is a really common one, I see it being used in all sorts of specialty chargers from China.
By the way, really great explanation of the Buck regulator, even beginners should be able to understand it. :)
@@DiodeGoneWild those spec's were impressive.. that plus your video(which had me already) have me sold!! im getting a Pirl... p.s when i get myself secure money wise, your the first one il be a patron of, iv learn so much from your video explanations i want to give back properly.. maybe the odd gift to like a thermal imagery reader/gun & so on... things you could use & so on... keep up the class work Danny..
After watching this video about 3-4 years ago I ordered 2x units. Both have been perfect chargers for everything I need. I don't get near 100% or even 50% load in normal use but it is good to know that I can push them without worrying. My only issue is with the display, it is virtually unreadable unless you have max squints on and are able to read hieroglyphics for fun. The display is useless but the charger is perfect.
I have visited 3 times this video it is very very useful nice job 100 hundred
Pirl chargers are awesome!!!!! thanks for your review!!
That is a very nice power supply! It could also be USB-C! I would have it sitting in in a metal piece on my desk to act as a heatsink. Very informative video, thankyou.
Excellent video
fire extinguisher is top-shelf, er, notch!
Nice review with proper corrections and pirl charger could have a sitting dock to be in vertical . No schematic this time but the principles were there. thanks
Man that was a great video!
Congratulations to second donation!
Nice explanations:
- Input reverse polarity protection 16:13
- Buck and Synchronous Buck 22:35
When using the 2A setting on that Load Tester does it get so hot that smoke comes from the resistors?
Mine gets to 400F and the resistors start smoking lightly when used longer than a few seconds or so
Hi sir. could you make a video and explain how to build that thermometer that you used in the video??
Pure pcb ART!
how come you didn't vary the load when you showed the duty cycle to demonstrate what a constant on time buck regulator does?
Nice unit.
Even more resistors ...
THE HOLE ROOM IS VIBRATING!!!
Mean Well makes excellent power supplies. Pirl included good quality accessories.
Hey, ever heard of the Imax B6 Charger? What is your opinion about it?
Excellent video!!! And.... nice cat!
So, my first mod would be to replace the bottom aluminum plate with a plate that's double the thickness. Replacing the one on the top requires machining the LED holes. Hmm.
Do you have a thermal camera to highlight *which components precisely* are the ones dissipating the heat?
Hi, why u measure current with a clamp on a negative?
I've seen a few people show this charger, but not as deep as you go with mathmatics.
I really like the seperate channel per output, it beats the rest hands down :-D.
It is supposed to have some cable drop compensation, possibly 200mV higher than 5v.
I would imagine that fully loaded it would not have to cope with 2.7 amps per outlet for long, it would not take long for a phone/tablet battery to charge up, current dropping in no time.
A unique charger, nicely made.
It's definitely nicely made. Just the high temperature. Maybe a simmilar buck regulator chip with a lower ON state resistance would solve this. But anyway, you rarely load all 4 ports at the maximum load. It's definitely a prototype. The input connector has a number 4 written on it by hand. I have seen other youtubers reviewing ones with numbers 3, 5 and 7 hand written. Those are probably the numbers of prototypes. It seems like there's like 7 of them only in the world :).
Nice video!!! Just a tip, turno off the auto white balance function of your camera, will stop this white balance shift.
What you are doing 3:30 hours waiting to see what will happen-drinking fire extinguisher😂
Excellent video but I have to point out that there is an error in your schematic for the buck regulator. The schematics you drew uses high-side switching with an N channel MOSFET. This is not possible in a buck regulator since the pulses applied to the MOSFET Gate would have to be higher than the supply voltage. In a buck regulator with a single input, you need either a P channel MOSFET for High side switching or an N channel MOSFET for low side switching. To make it synchronous, replace the diode with the type of MOSFET not already used for switching. Since N channel mosfets have lower Rdson, most buck regulators use low side switching, and the synchronous ones use a P channel instead of the diode.
were does the wire compensation come from?
Semen-tiosly XD well it looks very cool. Nice explanation.
Impressive test and explanation of how it works - only just watched it for the first time. One minor correction: at 18:40 you multiply 0.04V by 0.4A and come up with 0.16W - it should be 0.016W
No, he multiplies 0.04v by 4a and gets 0.16w. This is correct.
@@FoolhardyEngineer Upon looking again, both you and he are correct. I obviously took my attention off the video briefly, and the period he used in place of the multiplication sign made it look like the the current was 0.4A. My mistake, thanks for pointing it out.
@@will_doherty it's easy to miss things. I'm just getting back into electronics thanks to this guy. Still a lot to learn.
Nice video. Would have liked to see you drop some water droplets on the surface for a steamy effect 😀
It would just slowly boil. You can't expect any Leidenfrost effect or other interesting things to happen at just 101°C :)
That is impressive. You short circuit, it current limits and the power consumption goes down.
The QFN chips are TPS2549, USB charging port controllers. (Like you guessed - to negotiate power levels).
Was that a LM35 you were using on your thermo meter???
Nice unit. Many devices are on the market wich supplies 5 amps on 4 sockets and doesnt get above 50C and is just plastic cased. Much lower losses. Also bare in mind that 95C can damage surfaces and melt plastics, it needs some feet. This will also help on the airflow for cooling.
The soldering was horrible and will most likely lead to failures over time. There were solder sputter all over the board wich can end in shorts. The component marked T48 seems to have its marking drilled into the housing by hand and it seems to go very deep. Lets hope this is a prototype since it is for sure not a finished reliable/safe product yet.
Thanks for the review and walkthrough.
It's a hand soldered prototype. Theres probably like 10 pieces of it only in the world. I hope the high temperature problem gets solved before it goes into a mass production. Even though it's only the case at a full load...
Thanks a lot, DGW :)
Two suggestions:
1. please make playlists of your great videos: Chargers, LEDs, Power Supply Unit, Batteries...etc.
2. Change channel logo to make it close to your nickname Diode ---|>|--- + Gone o-o + Wild some visual drawing effect
You could use a metal diode with 10mm LEDS as wheels and two 1N4007(or bigger one) as antennas.
Probably some of your subscribers are gifted in art/drawing/logo design, maybe you wanna ask some to present such idea.
Thanks and good luck.
How you are measure dc current by clamp meter,
Got a like for that fire extinguisher
Thats niiiiiiiiiice!!! 😂😂😂 This guy is the best! Subbed.
Haha! Sending your product to DiodeGoneWild is a true testament to its quality and performance, if your product is ready! If you're not-so-ready, possible suicide! That was quite a rigorous trial! Thanks for getting granular with the explanation. You put a lot of time into your videos.
Yes, that is a regulator for the ATTiny. TI TPS71550, 5V 4%.
The chip over near the buck converter is TI TPS2549. It does USB charging negotiation, short circuit protection, current sensing, and it loads down the sensing divider on the buck converter upstream to indicate current draw and drive the voltage up.
The DTH marking matches MAX6823, a voltage watchdog for microprocessors. In an unconventional use, you can just drive two LEDs with its RESET/!RESET outputs.
Thanks for identifying the chips ! :) There probably has to be a separate regulator fot the ATtiny, because it has to run even if the USB outputs shut down due to an overload. Initially I thought that the TPS2549 only does the data communication, but now it turns out that it also handles the entire output current. This explains why it also gets so hot (some of the viewers posted a link to a thermal image showing the TPS2549 quite hot).
lygte-info.dk/review/USBpower%20Pirl%20Charger%204x2.7A%20usb.html
The thermal image is here
Kde to môžem kúpiť vizerá to úžasne . A dobré video ☺️ . A skús postavať nejaký tip teslovej cievky SSTC ,VTTC z gu50 ,SGTC zo ZVS driverom a flayback transformer. A keď nie tak skús visvetliť ako fungujú + nejaké tipi. Ďakujem😀☺️😀😀😀
Wanted to see the back side of the pcb and how they are doing the heatsinking.
Also those buck controllers must be running pretty close 150' C at the junction if the outer case itself gets to 100'C
And finally, that PCB looks like atleast a 4 layer one. Internal planes to provide decoupling at 650 khz and for such a densely populated board.
Good Video
Im interested u know ive broke my ass cheking for one thing u see there is 3 aa 1.5 v cable less soldering iron from philips witch has thungston lamp tip with heating element in it can i get some help ? cant find it :/
Very good video, awesome! Just a thing, i think N-channel mosfet in the buck converter need to be bootstraped to operate high side. This is why there is a bootstrap pin on the synchronous buck conveter chip, you can use 2 N-channel otherwise the high side mosfet must be a P-channel. Is it right?
its definitely done on-chip I would guess. Check pin 7 on schematic from manufacturer labelled BST (bootstrap) that requires a capacitor just at the right place ;)
Yes, the BST pin has a bootstrap capacitor connected to it. When the low side mosfet is on, this capacitor is charged from the 15V via a diode inside the chip (the diode probably goes from +15V to the upper side of the capacitor). The voltage of this capacitor is then used to drive the gate of the high side mosfet. It always has 15V referenced to it's source.
Thx for the answer :)
Can you analyze how on earth a quick Q3/4 charger works? If I'm not mistaken it uses 2 data wires for a kind of communication via voltages.
The charger starts at 5v and after some communication wifh the device being charved it switches to 9v or 12v
That was a great video on this charger, so now I want one & unable to find it on the web. Do you have a link to where I can find this at? Thanks for all of your videos.
This is still just a prototype. Not yet in a mass production. There'e about 10 pcs of those worldwide, I guess :).
Nice Charger and nice review as always :)
The Temperatures getting quite hot, maybe they improve it with further progress. The loadcase of 60W is a bit unlikely in normal use, approx. 30W is the "Normal" worst case in most people's conditions.
The only thing: Does it interrupt DAB+ singals? Because 90% of the normal Car USB Chargers interrupt the DAB+ signal heavily.
excelente amigo :)
👏👏👏👏 Please review phone chargers that output different voltage and current based on "negotiations" with the charging device. E.g. 12v if battery is empty, then 9v and finally 5v.
That's nice!
It's sad that they didn't limit the gate voltage which now determines the maximum permitted supply voltage (MOSFETs usually break around 18V). The rest would probably work fine off of a 24V supply. (Edit: The buck regulators seem to also have unprotected MOSFETs.)
29:30 I think the power dissipation of upper transistor is with first duty cycle(33%) but the down transistor is with the second duty cycle(66%) thank you
Normally, I use P-Channel mosfet for rever polarity protection. But I think your explanation on using N-Channel mosfet is little bit confusing. Can someone explain it to me?
N-channel and P-channel protection works the same way, just upside down :). And N-Channel MOSFETs are more common, cheaper and they tend to have a lower on state resistance, so why not use N-channel...
Cool man!
Lack of QC3.0/QC2.0 is a dealbreaker for me. But nice 2-in-1 device, you can charge your devices and brew a cup of tea at the same time with the generated heat!
Hi DiodeGoneWild, I have good idea for you. Could you make a video about Ozone Generator 12V, which are on aliexpress and ebay? I think it would be interesting :)
You can use it as a tea heater while you charge your phone and play games on it. Warning: Don't pull any cables. In case of fire use beer extinguisher Žatec. DiodeGoneWild usually uses it.
You smart man =)
Nice review. The question is when they put it on Kickstarter. I reviewed it some time ago with a lot of measurements (Including IR photos of the circuit board under full load) and the Kickstarter date has moved since then.
Thanks :). Maybe they're still trying to improve it. If there was a similar buck regulator chip with a lower internal resistace of the MOSFETs, it would solve the high temperature problem.
It looks like they are still using the same chips, I wrote this analysis:
At the input is a high current power mos (RS1E200) and a sense resistor (R010) with a current sense chip (Probably ZXCT1022). For showing power is a microprocessor (ATTINY84A) with its own power supply chip (Maybe TPS715).
Each channel has a buck converter (AP65453) and a usb charge controller chip (TPS2549) that handles increasing voltage, protocol and overcurrent. There is also a small chip, I believe it is a voltage monitor (Maybe X6101 series). There is both a white and a red led for each channel (No multicolor led).
And your power estimation for the shunt is a bit misleading, the lowest input voltage is 7V. I tested it with 12V input and the resistor was one of the hot spots, together with the switcher chip and the controller chip.
Hmm,that calculator seems quite interesting , that display tho so nice
Calculators in 1970's used to have a Vacuum Fluorescent display (VFD) instead of an LCD.
I like how the LED glows red while the halogen lamp acts as almost short circuit
You could do this circuit PWM DC Motor 12V-40V 10A
Pulse Width Modulation Speed Control
very thankful
More resistors... even more resistors :D
I'm sure this has already been pointed out, but the NMOS transistor at 17:08 should have the arrow drawn the other way...
Correct me if I am wrong, but if the mosfet is placed like this, you will need a mosfet driver to add the voltage from the load to the gate to turn on the mosfet. Better turn drain and source arround. But i can be wrong. Great video
You can't turn the drain and source around. This would also reverse the internal diode. But thanks to the internal diode, the gate gets positive voltage in reference to source.
Even more resistors :)
Nice
Can you buy and like cheap Bluetooth speakers ? A friend gived me a WSter under 3 dollars
The mosfets in the chip have too high resistance, why not to use external IRF3205 mosfets; 55V 110A 8mOhm...
why did they put 10mohm resistor in the input?
it's for current sensing.
....this is what actually allows the wattmeter to measure the power.