USB connection with overvoltage protection

avrpower supplyusb

I'm trying to design a circuit from scratch with a 5V supply, USB connectivity and an AVR chip, for the sake of learning more about building power supplies, and implementing over-voltage protection on for example USB ports.

The last thing one would want to do is burn a USB port on quite an expensive MacBook Pro.

So where can I get a fairly decent explanation on how overvoltage protection works, and how I could design my circuit?

Best Answer

Overvoltage isn't so much the issue as over-current. The host supplies the voltage and you can reasonably assume that it's not suddenly going to supply more than 5V.

The two most important failure modes to protect against are:

  • if your device is connected to anything else with a power supply of its own, that supply must not feed back into the USB port.

  • if there is a short circuit or overcurrent in the device, it must not draw more power than is reasonable for a USB device. (normally 500mA, although technically you have to negotiate the use of more than 100mA, and some standalone chargers may give you up to 2A)

A standard means of protecting against overcurrent damage is a polyfuse (resettable fuse). Current limiting in normal use can be done by one of many power controller ICs, which are also useful for supplying other voltages, charging batteries, identifying when a high-current charger is plugged in, etc.