You might have asked yourself how it is that some phones charge up faster than others. Maybe the same phone charges at different speed when you’re using a different cable or power supply. It even might not charge at all.

There is some very complicated trickery in place to make those cables and power supplies do things in combination with the active devices like phones. Many of this is implemented by standards like “Quick Charge”:

Quick Charge is a technology found in QualcommSoCs, used in devices such as mobile phones, for managing power delivered over USB. It offers more power and thus charges batteries in devices faster than standard USB rates allow. Quick Charge 2 onwards technology is primarily used for wall adaptors, but it is also implemented in car chargers and powerbanks (For both input and output power delivery).

Wikipedia: Quick Charge

So in a nutshell: If you are able to speak the quick charge protocol, and with the right cable and power supply, you are able to get anything between 3.6 and 20V out of such a combination by just telling the power supply to do so.

This is great for maker projects in need of more power. There’s lots of things to consider and be cautious about.

“Speaking” the protocol just got easier though. You can take this open source library and “power up your project”:

The above mentioned usage-code will give you 12V output from the power supply. Of course you can also do…:

Be aware that your project needs to be aware of the (higher) voltage. It’s really not something you should just try. But you knew that.

More on Quick Charge also here.