Dart: The World's Smallest Laptop Adapter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/215201435/dart-the-worlds-smallest-laptop-adapter?ref=search

by stoev • 12 years ago

188 130 12 years ago

kickstarter.com

sp3323• 12 years ago

Wow, that got to market quickly!

stoev7• 12 years ago

Not yet, apparently they will start shipping in about six months.

stoev7• 12 years ago

I've been thinking about the overweight (and overpriced) laptop adapters for a while and reading about this project made me very happy. Could anyone suggest some scientific reading on their claimed very high frequency power conversion (or any similar technology)?

sp3323• 12 years ago

It's pretty recent. This is a good overview (especially page 2) http://www.powerpulse.net/powerViews.php?pv_id=48&page=1

stoev7• 12 years ago

Thanks. I read that, but was hoping that I could get more detailed information somewhere.

somid3• 12 years ago

I've know this team for some time (also an MIT grad). I'm so happy they have pushed their product and have moved to the Bay Area.

The Dart might look like a small device but its an incredible feat -- specially since it needs to safely work with all laptops and devices. Very excited about the future of the product.

cliveowen2• 12 years ago

Looks like it'll only work on US outlets, so it's unfit for most of the world.

Jtsummers3• 12 years ago

Global Dart: You live abroad and you want a Dart. This reward is for you. The Dart will work internationally, but you'll need a plug to match your outlet. This reward includes the Dart PLUS a plug adapter for your region. Your Dart, your color holds for this offer. Choose your favorite from among our signature Kickstarter colors. Please note the later estimated delivery date. Not MacBook compatible. Shipping is included.

(Emphasis added)

It seems this is in fact fit for most of the world.

cliveowen2• 12 years ago

If you have to resort to an adapter you lose the main proposition (the small form factor), so the point remains.

vacri• 12 years ago

It depends on whether or not they mean "a plug adapter" as being 'swap out the existing plug with an interchangeable fascia' or an external adapter such as tourists use. The latter is not a solution.

luchs• 12 years ago

This is what an US iPhone charger looks like with an EU adapter: http://imgur.com/fM8iP0n

I usually leave it at home. The adapter isn't large, but you have to take it off for transport which makes it awkward to use.

AceJohnny2• 12 years ago

This looks like a great and promising product.

At the headline, I had the kneejerk doubt that they could fit laptop-level power in such a small adapter, but they claim that's exactly why their product is interesting.

Nevertheless, I'm going to wait for the first wave to prove itself and for them to iron the kinks out (there are always kinks in a first-gen HW product). As such, I hope this is a true "kickstarter" that starts company momentum and isn't, like too many others, a one-shot deal.

robobro• 12 years ago

It's a bit pricey, too.

slg• 12 years ago

One word of warning, the product timeline says you should expect your product in 7-11 months. That is a long time when you are talking about device compatibility. All Kickstarters have risks, but buying an accessory for a device that may not even exist yet is a larger than normal gamble. There were plenty of Kickstarters for iPhone accessories that didn't arrive until after they were already obsoleted by the lightning cable.

Will this work on your next laptop? Probably. Can the Dart team guarantee that the device will "work with all major PC brands" manufactured in the next year? Probably not. Is that risk worth the extra money you save on a pre-order? That is up to you to decide.

stoev7• 12 years ago

I don't think that there is much that the major PC brands can do to prevent the device from powering their future devices. However, you are right that a certain a certain amount of risk exists and I don't think that one would actually save a lot of money by ordering early. Given that they use no custom electrical components (according to the project description), $89 seems like quite a hefty price. I assume that by the time the device is mass produced its price will be lower due to pressure from competitors.

x1024• 12 years ago

Note that it powers a usb device. Every single iOS device and every Android device that I know of have a USB on one end of the cable.

Also, is anyone really innovating in Laptops these days? Is there a reasonable expectation that something like "A new type of charger" can even happen in the next 12-24 months?

nostromo• 12 years ago

It powers one usb port and a laptop.

Nobody is buying it just for the usb port; it's bigger and more expensive than existing usb outlets.

userbinator6• 12 years ago

Unless some radical change happens to laptop power supplies in the next few months - a change from designs that have remained the same for over a decade - it's very likely this adapter will work with the newest (normal) laptops available when it comes out.

Also, laptops have very flexible power input circuits that will accept a wide range of DC input: they'll start running from ~12V (the voltage of an almost-dead battery), and go as high as the voltage specs on the input components allows - 25V (filter caps) is the usual absolute upper limit. Higher voltage means lower I^2R losses but manufacturers like to leave some safety margin, which is why 20V is somewhat of a de-facto standard given the parts available. The general power distribution circuits in a laptop are like this: there's a main power rail, whose voltage varies with battery voltage when running on battery, and is the DC-IN voltage with the adapter plugged in. The voltages for the CPU, GPU, chipset, etc. are all generated by DC-DC converters supplied from this main rail. There's a set of diodes/MOSFETs that wire-OR together the battery and DC-IN to the main rail, preventing current flow in the wrong direction. It also powers the battery charger.

I've read a lot of laptop schematics, and all of them use very similar power circuitry, often with the same components. The only real concern with device compatibility is in the ID schemes that some manufacturers use, either to "lock out" third party adapters or encode wattage selection. The simplest ones are nothing more than a resistor in the plug, different values for different wattages (IBM/Lenovo is one example). More complex ones use a 1-wire interface to an EEPROM or other storage element (Dell, Apple) (http://www.laptop-junction.com/toast/content/dell-ac-power-a... http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-ma... ). Then there's all the others that have no ID at all, just +/- input, and these are the most compatible.

About the Dart itself: the technology used here (VHF SMPS) has been around for a long time in military/aerospace applications, where size/weight is more important than reducing switching losses.

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/vhf-lapto...

sitkack• 12 years ago

Is this a USB 3.1 supply? Because that is where everything is going.

abritishguy2• 12 years ago

"Unless something radical happens" - well yeh, the USB spec now supports the wattage required to charge laptops so I think that's a pretty radical change which will be coming in the next few months.

brianbreslin• 12 years ago

Sadly this isn't directly Apple compatible. It says the mac version they buy an off the shelf apple power adapter and then connect them for you or something. I guess the magsafe connector is patented?

I would hope Apple was working on a smaller power brick, its kind of silly when my power adapter is almost as heavy as my Macbook Air 13". yeah, i know #firstworldproblems

megablast• 12 years ago

Not sure what adapter you are using, but the one that ships with the 2012 or 2013 air is tiny and very light.

dotBen• 12 years ago

To get around the Apple patent, they should have made the device compatible with a cigaratte lighter socket or the old-school plane power socket, which would enable customers to buy the official Apple Travel Adapter. This is how HyperJuice has done it.

Additionally, If you have a MacBook Air it doesn't seem significantly enough smaller than the 45W MBA power brick - not to justify the higher price, anyway.

UPDATE: meant 45W, not 65W, corrected

uncoder0• 12 years ago

My Air came with a 45W power brick which is even smaller than the 65W.

rcthompson• 12 years ago

Which Apple patent is this? The Magsafe thing for the end that attaches to the computer?

userbinator6• 12 years ago

Yes, their magnetic power connector is patented. US7311526. (Not that it ever stopped the Chinese who have had magnetic power connectors on their electric kettles and skillets for years before Macbooks even existed from cloning it, but that's a different story...)

kubiiii• 12 years ago

Very nice product. I have an (fairly) old compaq laptop with a built in adapter and even though its heavier than it should be, pluging the cable is a delight.

I use the HN facebook feed (yes I do) and there is no direct link on it, just the video (maybe specific to KS?). Also the music in the video is distracting. It is way overcompressed.

beambot• 12 years ago

Best way to get me to buy one... Let Ken Shirriff do a teardown. He's done some amazing work analyzing various AC-DC adaptors [1-2].

[1] http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-ap...

[2] http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-...

gcb0• 12 years ago

couldn't agree more.

But besides efficiency, i'd also like to see RF interference measurements on this one. There is a reason good power converters are fixed in one voltage output and use transformers...

drakaal• 12 years ago

High. VHF AC to DC conversion isn't in many devices because it is actually hard to get it to not cause issues with everything else on the same transformer (not even breaker).

Also you notice they use a lighter wire than most laptop power supplies would and no ferro loop at the end to reduce the noise to the device.

Maybe I missed it, but I don't think I saw a UL approval on the device. I also don't think there is enough room in the case to have a thermal cut out, and a fuse/breaker. Which you really need on a power supply.

I'd love to be wrong on all this. I hate carrying a brick (though mine is about the size of half a deck of cards).

yoamro• 12 years ago

Great product. Cant help but feel this will be extremely losable, if consumers are anything like me..

xexers• 12 years ago

I wonder about vampire power usage. If I leave it plugged in to the wall, but not into my laptop, how much power does it consume.

beggi• 12 years ago

This looks legit backed by MIT patents and grad students, but I wonder why a group making this "breakthrough" is going directly to Kickstarter to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, instead of selling the technology directly to companies like Apple or Samsung and make tens of millions of dollars.

stoev7• 12 years ago

Because it is a lot easier to attract new customers and do a free PR campaign this way. It doesn't prevent them from selling the technology later on.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Because Kickstarter is used to get the resource to accelerate the business which they may well eventually sell to Apple or Samsung for far more than they raise from kickstarter. (See, e.g., Oculus Rift.)

probably_wrong• 12 years ago

That's a fairly cynical and negative point of view that goes against the core ideas on which Kickstarter was created.

And yet, there's a high chance that you are 100% right.

I find it sad that we'll have to always consider that particular scenario from now on. Stupid Facebook.

mattgrice• 12 years ago

It seems like they have already received about $5M in funding: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/finsix-corporation

The implications of the technology are a lot bigger than laptop supplies and I am sure they know that. Laptop supplies seem like a good way to raise some cash without dilution while they work on harder problems.

djhworld• 12 years ago

Maybe they want to go down the occulus rift approach, use kickstarter to gauge whether theirs a market, use this buzz as a platform to attract VC, then sell to one of the big players in a few years time?

goeric• 12 years ago

Regarding market and buzz, that's exactly what they're doing. They certainly have proved their market. The rest really depends on their long term goals.

Dorian-Marie• 12 years ago

200$ for "Global Dart for MacBook", that's a lot for a charger

colindean• 12 years ago

I saw this at CES and it was one of the very few products I saw the entire event that made me say, "I want to invest in this company." I wanted to take one home!

Coverage I helped write: http://www.thinkcomputers.org/finsix-shrinks-laptop-power-br...

raverbashing• 12 years ago

Good they're thinking about the regulatory needs

But I doubt they'll make do without the ferrite core.

The smaller the device is, it usually means more interference being generated, and the higher frequencies make it more complicated.

nraynaud2• 12 years ago

there are 2 things made of ferrite in an adapter, for different reasons. There is a ferrite ring around the input cable so that EMI don't go upstream in the socket, and this one they will probably keep. The other one is the core of the transformer and they say they don't need it at that frequency.

zobzu• 12 years ago

not sure how using a better switching regulator is "patentable" but then again...

main reason for chargers to be bulky is costs (nobody "cares" when they buy the laptop, they only realize later..), not technology.

other than that it's dearly needed for many.

nouveaux• 12 years ago

I know this is Hacker News and we love startups, but I think this would have been a better licensing play. It just doesn't seem like its a good business model to try and create all these adapters for old and new laptops. That compatibility list looks really annoying from a consumer standpoint. Its just not something I want to look up every time I'm in the market for a new laptop.

rhizome• 12 years ago

That's just for now. From the looks of the laptop connection they're angling for a buyout/license from iGo, who already makes a zillion nub-ends just like theirs.

pacofvf• 12 years ago

But.. but.. Canada and Mexico use the same socket/voltage, we have to buy the global edition anyway?

gamache• 12 years ago

I am left wondering what's novel/patent-worthy about a VHF power converter. It sounds like an incremental improvement on current systems (which typically operate in the 100kHz-1MHz range), and the link in the Kickstarter doesn't have much substance to it. Anyone know what I am missing?

goldbeck• 12 years ago

According to the company's website, their tech gets them up to the 30-300MHz range.

http://finsix.com/power-platform/#section-frequency-innovati...

gaze• 12 years ago

Parasitics

51Cards2• 12 years ago

US Only. Insert my sad face here. Canada gets no love... sigh.

ama729• 12 years ago

It actually does, check the FAQ at the bottom, it was a mistake on their end.

51Cards2• 12 years ago

Wonderful, thanks! Off to spend some money.

pedalpete• 12 years ago

You mean North America only, they'll ship internationally, but I don't see anything about other plug types :(

yskchu• 12 years ago

Plug included:

Pledge $130 or more

Global Dart: You live abroad and you want a Dart. This reward is for you. The Dart will work internationally, but you'll need a plug to match your outlet. This reward includes the Dart PLUS a plug adapter for your region. Your Dart, your color holds for this offer. Choose your favorite from among our signature Kickstarter colors. Please note the later estimated delivery date. Not MacBook compatible. Shipping is included.

Estimated delivery: Mar 2015

zan2434• 12 years ago

This looks like a funded, experienced, hardware team with an already finished product. Are they only using Kickstarter for exposure? If they're looking for validation/upfront manufacturing costs they should be doing pre-orders instead of "crowdfunding"

SoftwareMaven2• 12 years ago

Please define the difference in this context, especially looking at the funding rewards.

Xylakant3• 12 years ago

Pre-Order gives you a right to obtain the product or at least get some money back in case the company folds and there are assets left, usually even before the investors see any money. You're a customer. Kickstarter gives you "you're a backer" and in case the company folds you get nothing.

hippich2• 12 years ago

Too bad my laptop requires 240W power adapter :)

TheLoneWolfling2• 12 years ago

240W?

How much battery life do you get? Half an hour?

hippich2• 12 years ago

with normal usage - 4.5 hours. But if I run something in dGPU - I can burn through battery in like an hour.

Under windows they told it will get better battery life mostly because of better drivers support. But I never tested it.

This is Dell Precision M6600. This one and most other Precisions will consume similar amount of power from PSU. Not sure why all the downvotes. Even MacBook Pro I have requires 85W

Khao• 12 years ago

Shouldn't a power adapter like that be grounded?

Xylakant3• 12 years ago

Apple power adapters are not grounded if you use the short plug (the cable is grounded) and they supply up to 85W. You sometimes get the slight tingly feeling when touching the case.

TheLoneWolfling2• 12 years ago

My laptop power supply isn't grounded.

I assume that there is a good reason for this.

jarek• 12 years ago

Anecdote: I've been using ungrounded (two-prong) genuine Thinkpad power adapters for close to a decade now with no issues.

nraynaud2• 12 years ago

it's not mandatory in most countries for various reasons. The most simple one is that none of failures modes of the adapters connect the main to the laptop without doing a short first (unless you bought a fake one in which case all the bets are off).

McGuffin• 12 years ago

It's pretty common for power adapters to be double insulated. Which in a way is very useful if you're traveling in e.g. continental Europe, where you can just buy a two prong "europlug" cable to use instead of the NEMA one which fits in sockets of varying design.

wtracy• 12 years ago

I would like to see exact dimensions of this thing. All I see on the page is "2.5 cubic inches".

tdicola• 12 years ago

Very polished kickstarter but I'm left wondering, do I really need an $80-$200 charger? The MacBook air charger is already pretty small and my phone lasts all day without the need to recharge. Although the tech inside it might be novel and interesting I really don't see the cost vs benefit as a consumer.

mschuster91• 12 years ago

My Acer netbook comes with a lightweight but still bulky-as-fxxk charger...

pud• 12 years ago

Give it a retractable cord and I'm sold.

ajb• 12 years ago

Sticks a long way out of the wall. How much, lest's see: the size is given in cubic inches, how useful - not.

It's also only 50% of the size of my current adapter, not a quarter, although to be fair, that one is only 33W. Does have a UK plug though! Dart plus plug adapter is probably no smaller.

derengel• 12 years ago

Its funny how they show it most of the time without the cable.

Theodores• 12 years ago

I can't see many British people queuing up to pay for this - it has the wrong plug on it!

IvyMike• 12 years ago

As someone who's travelled a lot, this looks like a cool upgrade.

But man, what I wouldn't give for an adapter that make it easy to pack by having some clever and clean way to wrap the cord. It doesn't look like this one does.

neil_s• 12 years ago

Wait so what's the advantage of this over the free adapter your laptop came with? It says its smaller, and yes it does look marginally smaller (not enough to make a difference to me personally), but is that it? You can charge another USB device with it, but my Surface Pro charger offers that too. Am I missing some other USP that would make it worth buying this as an upgrade? I can see this being useful when licensed to laptop manufacturers, but not as an aftermarket upgrade.

witty_username• 12 years ago

Me too. I see that it has some new technology; but the benefits don't seem that much. Can the downvoters explain?

ytjohn• 12 years ago

This looks very much like the Rommoss car charger. I have one for my laptop. This gets its source from 12V DC instead of AC, but the rest works the same. Usb port and automatic voltage sensing circuitry. You just need a specific cable for whatever you're charging. Plug in a standard usb cable to charge your phone, you get 5V. Plug in an adapter cable for your Dell laptop, get the desired 19V (or whatever your laptop needs).

http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Portable-Charger-Charging-La...

jebblue• 12 years ago

Good idea but the implementation is gravity challenged which will wear the plugs and the sockets used over time. It would be better to reduce the length and get it closer to the socket.

balladeer• 12 years ago

I am not sure it's just me, or few more, or many more, but after Oculus VR I doubt I'll crowd-fund almost anything other than charity.

macco• 12 years ago

I don't get it. Do they really solve a problem? I have a pretty nice laptop adapter, that is light and about twice the size of Dart.

I is perfectly fine for me.

AndrewDucker• 12 years ago

I'm looking forward to seeing what improvements happen once there's a laptop charging standard:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2319855/eu-pushes-f...

chx2• 12 years ago

Right now the smallest laptop adapter; also has no AC cord; is the http://www.fsplifestyle.com/product.php?LID=1&PSN=771 FSP Twinkle. It's the same 19V 65W adapter this one claims to be. It's made by a reputable power supply maker. While I applaud smaller and lighter adapters I would be extremely wary of an unknown startup meddling with power supplies. Also, regulatory approval is hell and while they do mention it among the risks I am also wary of that. I will pass this Kickstarter...

cordite• 12 years ago

Dart for MacBook costs us an additional $79

Apple sure doesn't like to make it easy for third parties to be physically compatible with them.

graywh• 12 years ago

I'd love to be able to send in my old Macbook power adapters with frayed cords to save $79 on the connector.

Dart: The World's Smallest Laptop Adapter

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