Here am I, trying to figure out what the deal is with DC power jacks.
What do PICListers use most commonly?

My experience indicates that there are relatively few commonly used DC
jack types, mostly the ones included with common universal adaptors.
There's the "standard" DC barrel which seems to be the most common (~5mm
outer diameter), EIAJ (yellow tip) plugs, the miniature version of the
standard jack (I've seen this in virtually every USB hub and USB
external HDD), and a few others.

However, when I actually go to buy some, there seem to  be 30 or 40
different types and sizes. Even Radio Shack seems to have come up with
21 different types.

The type I'm most concerned with is the common DC jack, with an outer
diameter of around 5mm. Note that I say "around", because there seem to
be several variants with slightly different sizes that are common. I've
seen 4.5mm, 5.0mm, 5.5mm, etc, with different combinations of inner
diameters.

How do I navigate through all this mess? What sizes should I use to try
to be compatible with the largest number of devices and adapters, both
for plugs and for sockets? What are the consequences of slightly
differing connectors? And why in the hell is there no standard for all
this that people actually use?

I have quite a collection of adapters of different voltages which I use
for several projects. Incidentally, the reason why I'm asking about this
is because I'm about to build a clone of a certain device that was just
fried by an adapter that claimed to output 12V but instead put out 18V.


-- 
Hector Martin (hector@marcansoft.com)
Public Key: http://www.marcansoft.com/marcan.asc

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