The Art of Creating a DIY USB Type-C PD Powerbank: A Journey of Discovery and Innovation

As I embarked on this project, I couldn't help but think about the complexity of creating a pure DIY solution for a USB Type-C PD power bank. The task seemed daunting, given the need to program the PD protocol negotiations, manage the battery pack's charging and discharging cycles, and incorporate safety features. However, I decided to simplify things by focusing on finding the perfect power bank IC for this project.

My journey began with searching for a suitable IC that could handle Quick Charge functionality, support USB Power Delivery with 5V and 9V as inputs, and output 5V, 9V, and 12V with up to 18W of power. I visited various online platforms, including LCSC, where I found an IP5328P Fully-Integrated Bi-directional PD3.0 Power Management IC that met my requirements.

The first step was to integrate the IP5328P into a circuit board. I started by hooking up an USB Type C PD trigger board to the circuit, which allowed me to cycle between 5V, 9V, and 12V without any issues. Next, I connected a constant load to the output to test whether the circuit could truly output the promised current values.

To my surprise, the circuit was capable of outputting 3.1A at 5V, 2A at 9V, and 1.5A at 12V. I also measured the power the battery had to provide, which later allowed me to create a beautiful graph showing the efficiency of the converter.

One of the most exciting aspects of this project was the discharge test. I let the circuit charge up my Nintendo Switch while monitoring the voltage of the Li-ion battery. At a voltage of around 2.9V, the circuit cut off the power output, which was a suitable cut-off voltage value.

With the IP5328P integrated into the circuit board and tested to perfection, it was time to move on to building the actual power bank. I salvaged six NCR18650 Li-ion cells from an old battery pack and connected them in parallel using nickel strips and my KWeld spot welder.

I positioned all the cells into 18650 plastic spacers before connecting them together according to a rather easy-to-follow wiring diagram. Once that was done, I soldered a wire to the plus and minus terminals and connected them to the PCB.

The next step was creating an enclosure for the power bank. I measured the dimensions of the PCB and the battery pack and created an enclosure using fusion 360 within a couple of hours. After that, I 3D printed the housing with my 3D printer and some awesome-looking PLA filament.

I hot-glued the battery pack inside the enclosure, secured the PCB with screws, once again soldered the battery wires to the PCB, and finally closed everything up using more screws and nuts to keep everything together. And just like that, I had created a supersimple USB Type-C PD Powerbank.

As I looked at my finished product, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. According to its specifications, it sits right between two of my other USB Type-C PD Powerbanks. This DIY project has taught me the importance of patience, persistence, and innovation in creating something truly unique and functional.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enHi there, as you might know during an oldervideo of mine I explained why USB Type C isawesome and just recently I released a videoabout how to make your own DIY USB Type-CPower Delivery trigger board and spoiler warning;it was certainly not a simple programmingtask.That is why I was a bit scared about the nextUSB Type-C subject I wanted to tackle whichis about creating a DIY USB Type-C PD powerbank.The reasons are comprehensible I think; Fora pure DIY solution I would not only haveto program the PD protocol negotiations sothat the powerbank can acts as a source tosupply power and as a sink to charge up itsinternal li-ion battery pack but obviouslyI would also have to manage its battery packby charging it up correctly and adding allkinds of safety features.So I said to myself why do I make everythingalways so complicated and that is why in thisvideo I will keep it simple and show you myjourney of finding the perfect powerbank ICfor this task for which coincidentally a readyto use PCB already exists.Then I will test this PCB extensively andfinally use it in combination with some Li-Ioncells I had lying around and a custom 3D printedenclosure in order to create a simple, yetsuper useful USB Type-C PD Powerbank.Let’s get started!This video is sponsored by JLCPCB, who provideexcellent quality PCBs for a very low price.I have been using their service for yearsand can surely recommend it.So why not upload your Gerber files todayin order to test out their service.Like pretty much always when it comes to findinga special IC, I visited LCSC, who offer thousandsof them.There I searched in the PMIC Battery Managementsection where I got 930 results and thus ittook me a couple of hours to find an IC washappy with.But eventually I found the IP5328P which isaccording to its English datasheet a Fully-IntegratedBi-directional PD3.0 and Fast Charge PowerBank SOC.Sounds complicated, but in a nutshell thatmeans it got Quick Charge functionality, supportsUSB Power Delivery with 5V and 9V as an Inputand 5V,9V and most importantly 12V as an outputwith up to 18W of power which is most of thetime enough for my portable projects.It also comes with all the battery protectionfeatures you need for Li-Ion batteries andas a bonus it can even drive LEDs to showthe remaining capacity of the battery pack.Simply put this was the IC I was looking for.But while going through the 28 pages of thedatasheet I started to realize that creatinga PCB design for this IC might get a bit complicated.So just for fun I searched for this IC onAliexpress and quickly found a PCB based aroundthis IC which not only looked promising accordingto its picture and the functional descriptiontext but the price was also quite tempting.That is why I could not resist and orderedone which after unpacking, made a positiveimpression concerning its PCB and solder quality.The only question was whether this PCB couldfulfill all the features I was hoping for?And by that I mean how fast can it chargeup its battery pack, how much current canit supply at which voltage level with thePower Delivery, how efficient is the circuitwhile doing all of that and does the chargingof the battery pack with all of its protectionfeatures work?So let’s start off with the charging testfor which I got this USB Type C PD chargerand this common phone charger that supportsQuick Charge.Before hooking the chargers up though I grabbedmyself an old Li-Ion cell I had lying aroundand connected its two terminals to my PowerMeter and the B+ and B- Terminal of the PCB.Then I started the charging test by shovinga USB Tester into the phone charger, pluggingall of that into an outlet and connectingthe charger to the board with a micro USBcable.As you can see quick charge seems to workfine since the phone charger provides 9.2Vwith a current of around 1.8 A which is evenabove the chargers limit.That equals an input power of around 16.5W,while the battery only gets charged up witha power of around 13.7W which means that theefficiency is around 83% and thus certainlyacceptable.And if you are wondering if we use a USB TypeC cable for the phone charger then the voltageand current values pretty much stay the same.Now if we replace the phone charger with theUSB type C PD charger and hook up all thecables then we can find out that here thevoltage is also 9.2V but with a slightly smallercurrent value of 1.7A which was not the chargerslimit.So I guess an input power of around 16W isthe maximum.That is not too bad considering that my smallcommercial USB Type C powerbank only featuresa slightly higher input power limit.Now since I later want to add a battery packwith a capacity of 74Wh, it means that theoverall charging time would take around 4.6hours in my case.And considering that the circuit draws a standbycurrent of only 54uA, the battery pack willnever run empty.But anyway while charging up the battery Inot only realized that the LED indicator workedjust fine and the charging method of the li-ionbattery was suitable but also that the overchargecut off voltage was around 4.23V and thusstill acceptable.So all in all I was pretty happy with thecharging/input features of the board and thusit was time for the output tests.I started by hooking up an USB Type C PD triggerboard to the circuit which as you can seecan cycle between 5V, 9V and 12V without aproblem.That is why next I hooked up a constant loadto the output in order to test whether thecircuit can truly output the current thatit promised in it description text.And to my surprise the circuit was truly capableof outputting the promised 3.1A at 5V, 2Aat 9V and 1.5A at 12V.And while doing this test I not only measuredthe output power but also the power the batteryhad to provide which later let me create thisbeautiful graph.As you can the efficiency of the converterpretty much always stayed at around 80% andonly one time dipped down to around 75% whichis pretty decent.Last but not least for the discharge testI let the circuit charge up my Nintendo switchand while doing so I monitored the voltageof the Li-Ion battery.As you can see at a voltage of around 2.9V,the circuit cuts the power output which wasa suitable cut off voltage value.So all in all I can say that I was also happywith the discharge/output test and thus itwas time to turn this circuit into a properpowerbank.For that I firstly got myself these 6 NCR18650BLi-Ion cells which I salvaged from an oldbattery pack.For this powerbank we need to connect themall in parallel to basically form one bigbattery but let me tell you that this is onlypossible because they were previously usedtogether and their voltage values only differvery slightly with a value of around 0.03Vfrom one another.If you would stick together random cells yougot lying around then this could end verybadly, you have been warned.But nevertheless I positioned all my cellsinto 18650 plastic spacers before I connectedthem with one another through the help ofsome nickel strips and my KWeld spot welder.As soon as that was done all I had to do wasto solder a wire to the plus and minus terminaland connect them to the PCB according to thisrather easy to follow wiring diagram.And that is basically how you can make a supersimple USB Type C PD Powerbank but of coursea proper enclosure was still missing.So I measured the dimensions of the PCB andthe battery pack and within a couple of hourscreated this enclosure for it all in fusion360.After then 3D printing this housing with my3D printer and some awesome looking PLA filament,I hot glued the battery pack inside the enclosure,secured the PCB with screws, once again solderedthe battery wires to the PCB and finally closedeverything up and used some more screws andnuts to keep everything togetherAnd just like that you can easily build yourown USB Type C PD Powerbank which accordingto its specifications sits right between mytwo other USB Type C PD Powerbanks.I hope you enjoyed this video, if so don’tforget to like, share, subscribe and hit thenotification bell.Stay creative and I will see you next time.