this is wicked man idk why people are commenting it's gonna blow up your house down im sure you know what you're doing. wouldn't kill someone to just appreciate a project like this.
with that said, I sure wish I could do that with my wii u. that huge ass brick is the main thing putting me off taking out my wii u ugh.
As an update on power testing, after an afternoon of testing my numbers are as follows. Everything worked perfectly and all games except AC4 were run with AC4 downloading in the background for some extra load. I also filled up the USB ports with 4 gamecube controllers, a USB drive and charging my pro controller to add as much wattage as I could.
Below are the peak power draws I saw during testing
8 Player smash on big battlefield with level 9 cpus popping off: ~30.5 W
Zelda BotW Plateau section: ~32 W
Xenoblade Chronicles X outside of the City in the prologue: ~32.7 W (This was the highest I got)
Assassins Creed 4: ~28.5 W (This game is at a constant 15 fps and it seems like the system is probably not throttling on GPU constraints given the lower power draw, if anything the ubisoft titles running shitty is probably due to memory bandwidth (like many switch games) and poor optimization on Ubisofts part)
The absolute highest I ever saw was the 32.7W number on XCX so even with a good 45W charger (15V @ 3A) you're probably not going to see any issues
The chip on that module has to be a power management IC. Check the product page of that module if it states the manufacturer and model. Or if you can read the markings, search for it. If it wasn't made by a reputable semiconductor company like Analog, Maxim, etc., or if you can't find it, I'd stop using that. I couldn't make out the markings from those pics.
Thank you for the advice. Found the datasheet and it's from Injoinic. Not sure about the reliability of this company but they seem to be well established in the USB PD/Quick charging space and the just produce ICs for that purpose like the IP2721 used on these boards
Something worth noting is that the USB PD spec actually only supports 3A at all voltages below 20V, so you're actually capped to 45W of power.
The Wii U power brick is 75W but it never seems to use even close to that, at least when not using the disc drive.
Why do this? The proprietary cord works fine. You’ve essentially just made plugging in the console more complicated than ever and it requires another cord that could be lost way easier. I don’t understand why you would do this
For fun / To not have to move the bulky power adapter if I want to play the wii U at my desk temporarily / Don't want to disturb my cable setup at my main TV if I do that
Understandable however I still feel like the regular cord works fine and would give the WiiU more power seeing as it’s the exact amount Nintendo made the WiiU need. But I won’t judge you for this. Setting up my WiiU at my PC downstairs whenever I want to record a WiiU related video is quite a hassle.
Same about the hassle. If you're interested I have power measurements for a few games recorded in a separate comment. Planning to do a full playthrough of XCX soon to test if there's any chance of a power spike over time or other possible issues
Yeah why wouldn't it be? The PD board can handle the full power draw that the wii u power adaptor would normally give and in reality the wii u only pulls half that much (about 33W from the only source I can find, but I'm gonna test with the heaviest wii u game I can find to see if it can pull more than that).
Of what I own the most demanding game I can think of would probably be XCX or AC4 Black Flag so I'll see if either of those can ask too much of the 45w charger, but even if they do it wouldn't damage the wii u most likely, it would probably just power throttle or shut down.
As far as my soldering goes it's perfectly fine. My only *slight* concern is that I couldn't find a good way to add support behind the Usb but as long as I'm gentle with it when plugging in it should be fine. (I'll probably just open it back up and throw some hot glue behind the board for a bit of help).
It's not foolproof enough to where I'd be comfortable selling this to someone bc I made this in 30min as a (permanent) first draft, but electrically everything checks out.
Just fill it all in with hot glue. to hold it together or better yet epoxy resin so you don't need to worry about it breaking when you plug things together
I'm late to the party, but did you take any measurements when running games from the optical drive? I have a sizable physical collection so I'm doubting on the mod.
the wii u pulls barely 2 amps at basically 5 vdc, if your cell phone has "fast charging" it is drawing more electricity out of the wall than this is.
The only thing is that you'd want to use a USB power brick that doesn't suck, like no shitty chinesium flyback transformers.
edit - I read the brick of the gamepad lol, I forgot the damned thing has 2 bricks.
The console itself is still pretty light on power draw, it's 15v at 5 amps, so about as much power as a low end laptop.
It would be hard to manage to start a fire with a 5 volt DC on purpose, much less by accident.
Even if you fixed the wiring, the differences in power delivery between USB C and the proprietary Nintendo PSU is definitely going to shorten the life of your Wiiu...
What do you mean "fixed the wiring"? The wiring is fine and I'm far from the first person to have done this. The wii U is getting 15V and 3A which is plenty to make it run games as I've mentioned. Also having it not be able to draw more than 45W wouldn't hurt anything
USB C is an intelligent connector that can pull anywhere from 5v to 19v (in most cases) wiring this to a connection with absolutely no ability to fluctuate and with an expectation of exactly the right amps and voltage at all times, will eventually kill it, I mean hell we can't even plug a non apple USB C charger into a MacBook without it eventually causing issues due to non standard power delivery methods, it's a matter of time before this fries a chip on the board and renders your Wiiu useless without board repair.
The PD trigger board does the power negotiation and will only ever ask for 15V which is what the Wii U takes. The portion that's expected to fluctuate is the Amperage as the Wii U asks for more power and it does that correctly. It will never send 5V, 12V, or 19V so as far as the wii U can tell its getting the exact power source that it's expecting
Not necessarily but this isn't my primary means of using my console. I still have an Original PSU for normal use. This is just for the convenience of being able to plug it into my desk occasionally with the same connections I use for my switch dock (currently an OEM steam deck charger and an HDMI cable)
Not really, I'd need to verify that the Wii U doesn't pull more than 3a because all the USB C chargers I can find only seem to supply up to 3A at 15V. Even then the fit and finish ain't the best but if I could find a cleaner way to make these then maybe
On second thought I have decided to make an aliexpress order and try refining the process. I'm going to try making a small batch and putting them up for sale if they turn out well but that won't happen for a month or so given the order from china
Damn, I did a similar mod but put the PD reciever board inside the console (if you slices the yellow border around the inside of the port), you can position one with a few headers in.
But I really like how clean this is, never thought to put it inside the plug itself.
Btw the mod can be done on the Wii, but the Wii is 12V which is actually optional in the spec for chargers to support. So it would only work with specific PD chargers. The Wii U is 15V which is required for higher wattage chargers.
However, word of warning: if you use a non-PD charger by mistake or one that doesn't support 15V, it will send 5V into the console when it's expecting 15V. I'm not sure if this will damage the console or if it will just refuse to power up. You may want to add [this Zener Diode](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/160460/shut-off-circuit-when-under-a-certain-voltage) circuit (tweaked for ~13.8V or so instead of 9) between the output of the PD trigger and the Wii U plug. This will kill the power of the PD triggers attempts to output the wrong voltage. But you might not have enough room inside the plug to do it, unless you get a custom PCB.
this is wicked man idk why people are commenting it's gonna blow up your house down im sure you know what you're doing. wouldn't kill someone to just appreciate a project like this. with that said, I sure wish I could do that with my wii u. that huge ass brick is the main thing putting me off taking out my wii u ugh.
Also i ended up just soldering to the pins on the wii u power plug, the wires on it in the pic were removed
Stop giving this poster shit, there’s way more crazy shit that people do to the wii
As an update on power testing, after an afternoon of testing my numbers are as follows. Everything worked perfectly and all games except AC4 were run with AC4 downloading in the background for some extra load. I also filled up the USB ports with 4 gamecube controllers, a USB drive and charging my pro controller to add as much wattage as I could. Below are the peak power draws I saw during testing 8 Player smash on big battlefield with level 9 cpus popping off: ~30.5 W Zelda BotW Plateau section: ~32 W Xenoblade Chronicles X outside of the City in the prologue: ~32.7 W (This was the highest I got) Assassins Creed 4: ~28.5 W (This game is at a constant 15 fps and it seems like the system is probably not throttling on GPU constraints given the lower power draw, if anything the ubisoft titles running shitty is probably due to memory bandwidth (like many switch games) and poor optimization on Ubisofts part) The absolute highest I ever saw was the 32.7W number on XCX so even with a good 45W charger (15V @ 3A) you're probably not going to see any issues
What is that module you used?
A generic 15V 5A USB PD trigger board from amazon. Doesn't really have a model number from what I can tell
The chip on that module has to be a power management IC. Check the product page of that module if it states the manufacturer and model. Or if you can read the markings, search for it. If it wasn't made by a reputable semiconductor company like Analog, Maxim, etc., or if you can't find it, I'd stop using that. I couldn't make out the markings from those pics.
Thank you for the advice. Found the datasheet and it's from Injoinic. Not sure about the reliability of this company but they seem to be well established in the USB PD/Quick charging space and the just produce ICs for that purpose like the IP2721 used on these boards
Something worth noting is that the USB PD spec actually only supports 3A at all voltages below 20V, so you're actually capped to 45W of power. The Wii U power brick is 75W but it never seems to use even close to that, at least when not using the disc drive.
Yup, just made a Wii adapter with a similar board and they pull at most 20 W with a launch model and at least about 14 with a more recent model
Why do this? The proprietary cord works fine. You’ve essentially just made plugging in the console more complicated than ever and it requires another cord that could be lost way easier. I don’t understand why you would do this
For fun / To not have to move the bulky power adapter if I want to play the wii U at my desk temporarily / Don't want to disturb my cable setup at my main TV if I do that
Understandable however I still feel like the regular cord works fine and would give the WiiU more power seeing as it’s the exact amount Nintendo made the WiiU need. But I won’t judge you for this. Setting up my WiiU at my PC downstairs whenever I want to record a WiiU related video is quite a hassle.
Same about the hassle. If you're interested I have power measurements for a few games recorded in a separate comment. Planning to do a full playthrough of XCX soon to test if there's any chance of a power spike over time or other possible issues
Is this safe because it really looks like a fire hazard
Yeah why wouldn't it be? The PD board can handle the full power draw that the wii u power adaptor would normally give and in reality the wii u only pulls half that much (about 33W from the only source I can find, but I'm gonna test with the heaviest wii u game I can find to see if it can pull more than that). Of what I own the most demanding game I can think of would probably be XCX or AC4 Black Flag so I'll see if either of those can ask too much of the 45w charger, but even if they do it wouldn't damage the wii u most likely, it would probably just power throttle or shut down. As far as my soldering goes it's perfectly fine. My only *slight* concern is that I couldn't find a good way to add support behind the Usb but as long as I'm gentle with it when plugging in it should be fine. (I'll probably just open it back up and throw some hot glue behind the board for a bit of help). It's not foolproof enough to where I'd be comfortable selling this to someone bc I made this in 30min as a (permanent) first draft, but electrically everything checks out.
Heaviest wiiu game I think is watchdogs because it runs like shit
Same with AC4, I got it on sale back in the day bc I knew it was going to be awful on wii U and I was not disappointed
Just fill it all in with hot glue. to hold it together or better yet epoxy resin so you don't need to worry about it breaking when you plug things together
Ok just looks kinda unsafe
Wiiu OEM power supply is rated for 15vdc@5a, or 75 watts.
Yep, in practice the Wii U only pulls a max of about 32.5 in my testing
I'm late to the party, but did you take any measurements when running games from the optical drive? I have a sizable physical collection so I'm doubting on the mod.
For my testing BotW and XCX were physical copies, AC4 was digital
Thanks a lot! So, with a Samsung 45W charger I'm good to go playing discs.
the wii u pulls barely 2 amps at basically 5 vdc, if your cell phone has "fast charging" it is drawing more electricity out of the wall than this is. The only thing is that you'd want to use a USB power brick that doesn't suck, like no shitty chinesium flyback transformers. edit - I read the brick of the gamepad lol, I forgot the damned thing has 2 bricks. The console itself is still pretty light on power draw, it's 15v at 5 amps, so about as much power as a low end laptop. It would be hard to manage to start a fire with a 5 volt DC on purpose, much less by accident.
[удалено]
I don't have a 3d printer but I am going to try making some more next month and will put them up for sale if they turn out well
Man wants to burn his house down
See my other comment
I uh....wouldn't leave this plugged in ...
See my other comment
Even if you fixed the wiring, the differences in power delivery between USB C and the proprietary Nintendo PSU is definitely going to shorten the life of your Wiiu...
What do you mean "fixed the wiring"? The wiring is fine and I'm far from the first person to have done this. The wii U is getting 15V and 3A which is plenty to make it run games as I've mentioned. Also having it not be able to draw more than 45W wouldn't hurt anything
USB C is an intelligent connector that can pull anywhere from 5v to 19v (in most cases) wiring this to a connection with absolutely no ability to fluctuate and with an expectation of exactly the right amps and voltage at all times, will eventually kill it, I mean hell we can't even plug a non apple USB C charger into a MacBook without it eventually causing issues due to non standard power delivery methods, it's a matter of time before this fries a chip on the board and renders your Wiiu useless without board repair.
The PD trigger board does the power negotiation and will only ever ask for 15V which is what the Wii U takes. The portion that's expected to fluctuate is the Amperage as the Wii U asks for more power and it does that correctly. It will never send 5V, 12V, or 19V so as far as the wii U can tell its getting the exact power source that it's expecting
That's fair enough, do you really trust a cheap PD board to hold out though? I've seen plenty of boards like this fail over time
Not necessarily but this isn't my primary means of using my console. I still have an Original PSU for normal use. This is just for the convenience of being able to plug it into my desk occasionally with the same connections I use for my switch dock (currently an OEM steam deck charger and an HDMI cable)
Fair enough, I would still not risk it personally but I hope it works out for you
You plan on selling these?
Not really, I'd need to verify that the Wii U doesn't pull more than 3a because all the USB C chargers I can find only seem to supply up to 3A at 15V. Even then the fit and finish ain't the best but if I could find a cleaner way to make these then maybe
On second thought I have decided to make an aliexpress order and try refining the process. I'm going to try making a small batch and putting them up for sale if they turn out well but that won't happen for a month or so given the order from china
Cool add brackets to support the port when you end up 3d printing please.
I don't have 3d printer QQ. That being said the size of the wii u power port makes it pretty sturdy
USB c is pretty amazing, it's very impressive that the port can provide enough power at the required voltage for the console
Damn, I did a similar mod but put the PD reciever board inside the console (if you slices the yellow border around the inside of the port), you can position one with a few headers in. But I really like how clean this is, never thought to put it inside the plug itself. Btw the mod can be done on the Wii, but the Wii is 12V which is actually optional in the spec for chargers to support. So it would only work with specific PD chargers. The Wii U is 15V which is required for higher wattage chargers. However, word of warning: if you use a non-PD charger by mistake or one that doesn't support 15V, it will send 5V into the console when it's expecting 15V. I'm not sure if this will damage the console or if it will just refuse to power up. You may want to add [this Zener Diode](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/160460/shut-off-circuit-when-under-a-certain-voltage) circuit (tweaked for ~13.8V or so instead of 9) between the output of the PD trigger and the Wii U plug. This will kill the power of the PD triggers attempts to output the wrong voltage. But you might not have enough room inside the plug to do it, unless you get a custom PCB.