With the advent of larger and larger phones and mobile devices that contained increasingly larger batteries to accommodate their thirst for energy, new types of power sources were created that centered around the 5v USB standard, but also allowed for increased voltage and current, in order to accelerate the time required for them to charge. This led the way for some cool new technologies where a device could request various charging profiles that it supported from new charging devices.

One of the first power supplies with new charging protocols was Qualcomm’s Quick charge. Samsung ran with this charging protocol, and shipped many devices for years with compatible power supplies. Because of this wide adoption, you may find yourself with many of these chargers. Unfortunately however, to make use of the protocol, you must have a device that can make requests to the power supply.

This is why the Peernix Quick Charge module was created. It allows for the request of different charging protocols, or specifically, different voltages. The method of requesting power is fairly simple, different voltages are supplied on the USB data pins for specific charging profiles. This was achieved using a microcontroller, and voltage dividers. The module can request 5, 9, and 12 volts. With many of the Quick Charge protocols chargers being able to also request 20 volts, this was not facilitated with this revision, due to linear regulator limitations. However, changes could theoretically be made using different regulators and revisions in the code.

Two revisions were completed, the first with dual USB ports, and the second, favoring USB type C.