You’ve been waiting for them, USB ports with RGB LEDs are finally here


Robin Lamorlette

March 21, 2023 at 2 p.m.

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RGB USB Port © Tensility International Corporation

© Tensility International Corporation

For the RGB-based party to be complete, all that was missing were the USB ports, and this pitfall is now (partly) fixed.

Digi-Key has listed USB 2.0 Type-A ports manufactured by Tensility International Corporation lit by RGB LEDs, for the modest sum of around 6 euros each.

‘Cause there’s never enough RGB

To light up with a thousand lights in RGB, these ports have LEDs via an anode connected to a pin. To change the colors, it goes through the control of the spindle cathode. Such an operation is ensured by a microcontroller.

Tensility International Corporation ports have two rows of pins. The front ones provide the traditional functions of a USB 2.0 Type-A port, while the rear ones are there to provide the visual show with the colors blue, green, red and voltage.

To take advantage of it, however, you have to use a little elbow grease. It is not enough to install these USB ports for the RGB magic to work. They must indeed be connected to a card equipped with routes to send the necessary signal to the RGB LEDs.

Some voltage settings

On their data sheet, Tensility International Corporation indicates that its RGB USB ports are capable of delivering up to 90 W of power. A few settings menus are therefore also necessary to optimize the voltage.

By going through an adapter or a regulator, it would thus be possible to pass just enough current so that the microcontroller illuminates the colors as it should. The operation is therefore clearly not aimed at the first RGB aficionado.

Especially since these USB ports are satisfied with a 2.0 Type-A standard, which is therefore much less effective than the more recent standards. Let’s bet, however, that it is only a matter of time before RGB invades our PCs by… all their ports.

Source : Digi Key



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