Other uses for a UBEC.

[BrianG]

Ok, I apparently have too much time on my hands. Got a couple of the cheapie $10 UBECs floating around at the house and was wondering what I could do with these things. With some tweaking, they can provide exactly 5v up to 2-3A - sounds like a good candidate for USB powered devices! And since the input voltage is so flexible (~7v to 40v DC), you can hook pretty much any battery pack to it.

I hooked up a UBEC to a USB female port so I can charge my iPod through the dock connector. Since I have a 5g, I also had to tie the USB data+ wire to ground via a 10k resistor and the USB data- to the 5v line via a 10k resistor (otherwise the 5G will run off the battery but not charge). When watching movies, the 5G iPod draws around 400mA. If I use 4s 8Ah lipos, I can watch movies for 57 hours straight! With 10s 5Ah lipos, I can watch movies for 92 hours! OK, that's a bit much, but sure comes in handy.

I was also able to get my Motorola cell phone to charge by playing with the USB data+/- wires as well. All I needed was a CC ESC USB cable.

Sure, there are special adaptors for each of these things, but it might be good for emergencies.