Line 6 Pod Go power supply - 2.5-3A is a myth!

Voxman

A theme that regularly crops up is the poor PSU with its horrid wallwart, and short, thin cable. Pod Go is alleged to require 2.5A-3A power requirement and that's caused a problem when trying to buy something more robust.  But that power draw has never tallied with other units eg the Boss GX100 is more powerful than Pod Go yet only requires 1.2A!

Anyway, just seen a post on one of the facebook pages:

"So I popped in to PMT in Bristol. They have an independent electronics guru in there who works out of the back of the store. He confirmed that the Pod Go doesn't need more than 1 amp, and that Line 6 push for 2.5-3a for their own benefit (consistency across their power units). I also wanted a 2-piece power unit with the transformer inline rather than in the plug (too many challenges trying to plug into a 4-way power reel). The tech guy made me up a power pack with the current plug and polarity, and an inline transformer for less than £20."

p90fool

That's interesting to know, and I'm not surprised. I'm happy enough with the supplied power supply but could do with a spare, I was thinking one of these?

https://myvolts.co.uk/product/51037/UK_9V_Power_Adaptor_for_the_Line-6_Pod-GO_Effects-pedal_by_myVolts

guitarcookie1

I power my Stomp with a usb powerbank and the appropriate cable from myvolts, works fine and last a good four-five hours. No reason why the Go would be any different. 

guitarmangler

@guitarcookie1 which powerbank did you get? I suppose if you get the usb cable from my volts it doesn't really matter? If the stomp draws an amp, a 3000ma battery should last 3 hours?

digitalscream

The HX Stomp uses about 1.1A on boot, and 0.8-0.9A while running (also as noted with a USB C power bank). There's absolutely no reason that the Go would use more than that.

guitarmangler said:

@guitarcookie1 which powerbank did you get? I suppose if you get the usb cable from my volts it doesn't really matter? If the stomp draws an amp, a 3000ma battery should last 3 hours?

Power banks are usually rated at 5V, but the Line 6 stuff uses 9V....so a bit more than half the capacity given in the specs.

I use this one for my pedalboard:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09B9DCT3X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Danny1969

I've had mine on a 1.5A adapter ... the original broke after only a few gigs ... cable fractured by the ferrite ring like any idiot could see it would. 

Sometimes manufacturers deliberately over spec the supply because the power in isn't the power supply for the whole unit. Digital modellers are much like a laptop board.  Internally there tends to be a load more power supplies that are basic buck convertors and lower the 12V to a more logic friendly 5 or lower voltage and then maybe 20V or a  higher voltage if the screen is LED backlit and possibly a dual voltage supply for the initial pre amp and AD and then then the output DA driver

This can lead to quite large inrush currents due to the many caps so in some cases it's safer just to insist it needs a larger supply than it does. 

guitarcookie1

guitarmangler said:

@guitarcookie1 which powerbank did you get? I suppose if you get the usb cable from my volts it doesn't really matter? If the stomp draws an amp, a 3000ma battery should last 3 hours?

One of these - https://www.belkin.com/uk/power-bank-20k/P-BPB012.html

Actually two of those, picked them up cheap when Tesco discounted them. 

And the appropriate one of these - https://myvolts.co.uk/Ripcord

nonesuch

guitarcookie1 said:

guitarmangler said:

@guitarcookie1 which powerbank did you get? I suppose if you get the usb cable from my volts it doesn't really matter? If the stomp draws an amp, a 3000ma battery should last 3 hours?

One of these - https://www.belkin.com/uk/power-bank-20k/P-BPB012.html

Actually two of those, picked them up cheap when Tesco discounted them. 

And the appropriate one of these - https://myvolts.co.uk/Ripcord

@guitarcookie1 ;I've just got a 9V convertor cable from MyVolts, which I'm trying to connect to this 30000mAh Bextoo Power Bank:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08QRNYQXW?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

When you plug it all in it powers a pedal correctly, but then after about 30 seconds the power bank turns itself off. I've tried with a few different pedals and it does the same thing.

Any ideas as to how I can stop this happening? Is it the cable or the power bank itself?

Danny1969

Some power banks will turn off if too small a load is being drawn. How to get over this depends on the powerbank .. some will respond to the value of 2 pull up resistors connected to the Data + and - pins .. this give a simple potential divider 
network from the +5V rail to ground and this tells the powerbank what device is connected. 

The right cable will have the correct circuit built into the connector as well as the buck convertor to step the voltage up. The wrong cable will just use the ground and the 5V rail of the USB and the powerbank will generally switch off when it can't detect the load properly. 

nonesuch

@Danny1969 Yeah I've being doing a bit of trial and error, and I realised that it was turning off when the pedal (or pedals) weren't drawing enough current. So when I've got 3 or 4 pedals daisy chained together (or fewer if there's one digital pedal), the power bank stays turned on.

From what you're saying a different power bank could behave differently I guess, but I can live with this, because I do actually want a few pedals on the board.

guitarcookie1

nonesuch said:

guitarcookie1 said:

guitarmangler said:

@guitarcookie1 which powerbank did you get? I suppose if you get the usb cable from my volts it doesn't really matter? If the stomp draws an amp, a 3000ma battery should last 3 hours?

One of these - https://www.belkin.com/uk/power-bank-20k/P-BPB012.html

Actually two of those, picked them up cheap when Tesco discounted them. 

And the appropriate one of these - https://myvolts.co.uk/Ripcord

@guitarcookie1 I've just got a 9V convertor cable from MyVolts, which I'm trying to connect to this 30000mAh Bextoo Power Bank:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08QRNYQXW?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

When you plug it all in it powers a pedal correctly, but then after about 30 seconds the power bank turns itself off. I've tried with a few different pedals and it does the same thing.

Any ideas as to how I can stop this happening? Is it the cable or the power bank itself?

Not sure really, sorry. The power bank I use has a physical on/off switch, maybe that’s the difference? 

nonesuch

@guitarcookie1 ;Mine has an on/off switch too, but that doesn't really make any difference because it turns itself on when you plug in the usb cable. Seems to be the low current issue as mentioned by @Danny1969

Danny1969

It's a basic part of how USB works. It was originally just for Data but people worked out you could draw 100mA or so off a port for charging. So it got redesigned so it could kind of detect what was plugged into it to limit the current. 

USB 1 and 2  has 4 contacts.  That's 5V, ground and 2 data  ... the 2 data lines are a differential pair ... the same data stream on both  but opposite in phase to one another like a microphone cable to reject noise.  These 2 data pins were originally what was used to detect the load. On some very basic wall chargers systems shorting the 2 data pins will keep it powering out a basic 500mA. Other chargers look for 2 x 1.5K resistors between the data lines and ground before it will output.   

USB C is all digital handshaking as it negotiates voltage as well as current 

There's a couple of things that might work. A constant load resistor connected across the 5V and ground (2 outer pins of the socket) or 2 x  1.5K pull up resistors connected from the data lines (2 inner contacts ) to ground. 
Constant load resistor will consume constant power so not so good. 

I expect there's a cable you can already buy wired with said resistors, will have a look 

Hertsfield

Whilst I don't have a Pod Go, I do have a Stomp and a Tonex pedal (connected with the Tonex in the loop of the Stomp) - the Stomp will I assume have the same power requirements as a Go. I power them both from a Fame DC5X3 power supply (£34 from DV247 here:https://www.dv247.com/en_GB/GBP/Fame-DC5x3-Multi-Power-Supply/art-GIT0047652-000#rating-area). This has 2x 1000 mA outputs, which are perfectly sufficient to power each pedal. It claims to be fully isolated but I did not find that to be the case, so also bought a Joyo ZGP noise blocker to use on the Tonex supply (seemingly out of stock in the UK, but £8.60 before shipping from Thomann here:https://www.thomann.de/gb/joyo_zgp_noise_blocker.htm). This solution works perfectly - no noise and no issues with supply. It is cheap and requires no faffing about with rechargeable units or soldering!

nonesuch

Without wanting to hijack this thread, I wanted to share my power bank experience so far, because I hadn't really read anything about this. When I connect 3 pedals, which according to their specs draw in total approx 60mA, the power bank turns off after 30 seconds. However, when I add a forth pedal bringing the total draw up to about 72mA, the power bank stays on.

Or I could power something like a single Ditto looper which presumably takes at least 100mA. So basically you probably can't power only one or two analog drive pedals because they just don't use enough power.

I do have a Pod Go, but I haven't tried that yet - I'm not sure I've got the correct cable...