USB Motor

HAHA I just made a USB motor. It was inspired by an article I read – USB Christmas Light Mod, which basically powers Christmas lights through USB connection. To give a little background on this USB motor, I’ll have to go back 5 years. Then I was in an environmental class. We had a solar panel project which involved making very simple solar powered toy ‘cars’. I quote car because it is simply something with wheels. I would hardly consider them cars. But anyways, afterwards I obtained three solar panels. They were pretty weak. The solar cars barely had enough force to overpower friction. However, despite the weakness, having the solar panels gave me ideas. I connected them to a battery powered toy car and was able to get the motor to spin. With the three panels connected in parallel, I got wheels spinning but only in mid air. Once it hits the ground, it won’t budge. Anyways, that was 5 years ago. Recently, I tried the car again and it stopped working. When I saw that article, the idea of powering the motor with USB came to mind.

Materials Needed for USB Motor:

USB Cable
Toy Car Motor

First I had to make sure that the motor was not busted. I did a simple test with batteries and surely it was working. Then I had to find a USB cable I was willing to let go. I was so sure that I had a ton of camera, MP3 Player cables laying around but I couldn’t find any of them. The only extra cable around was the one I was planning to use for my new printer. It’ll cost $5 to replace. While contemplating between whether to use the free cable or not, I came across an old USB hub I used for my first laptop. It was probably USB1.1 which wouldn’t work with my current laptop. I tried it out and I was correct. So without hesitation I cut off the cable with my swiss army knife. I carefully split the plastic protector and found the four wires, black, red, green and white, as indicated in the article. Red is the positive wire and black is the negative. I connected them to the nodes on the motor. The moment of truths came as I plugged the other end of the USB cable into my laptop’s USB port. The sound of motor spinning immediately emerged. WOOT, I did it! But almost instantaneously, I saw a little warning popping up from tray bar. It read “Power Surge On Hub Port”. LOL. The motor required too much power. I immediately unplugged it. Nonetheless, it worked for a few seconds there. I hope I didn’t fry the USB port. =x

Split USB Cable – from clockwise: green, white, black, and red wires

USB Cable connected with motor

Power surge warning on computer

I ended up researching on power that can be drawn for USB device on Wikipedia. Seems like 5V is the standard. Time to see what requires 5V power to test out my USB power again… Maybe Christmas lights would be a good start.

Posted in Tech
Tagged as DIY, usb