EEVblog 1749 - Werewolf VFLEX USB-C Power Supply Adapters - Very Cool!

Hi, this was originally sent into the mailbag segment, but I thought I'd spin it off as a separate video cuz it's rather interesting from a company called Werewolf. Thank you very much for sending it in. I don't know why they call themselves Werewolf. Like, you can't search for that. It's not a unique spelling or something. Anyway, this is the V-Flex system. It's not labeled that, but it's the V-Flex system. I'll link it in down below. It is super novel. The idea is that you can use USB uh your USB-C power delivery product, and they included this power brick here, which just has single USB-C power delivery output, and you can program these are little adapters here that we can program using a ShoePhone app here to any uh voltage supported by USB power delivery. Um and yes, USB power delivery is not just a set uh voltage, not like just like 5, 12, you know, whatever. You can actually program in essentially any voltage up to the maximum uh compliant limit. And the whole idea is that you get one of these little adapters, you program it for whatever voltage you want, and then you use one of these little V-Flex adapter cables here to, for example, we've got these like Wago type connectors here or all these different size barrel jack connectors. And the whole idea is that you plug these in, and they are keyed, so you can only, you know, you can't goof it up. You can't goof up the polarity. You put it in like that, and it converts any power delivery voltage source into whatever voltage you want and whatever adapter you want. It's brilliant. Downloaded the Android app, V-Flex app, the world's best power supply. Continue with Google, continue with Apple. Bugger that. Um continue as guest. Signing in. I don't want to sign in. I want you to just work. Oh, there we go. Um 5 volts. Tap to my LED. Always on. Is there there? Oh, yes, there is. Look at that. So, we can turn that off and on. No, LED always on. Uh. Uh. So, if we tap to modify, we can set that to say 12 V and boom. So, now presumably this will output 12 V or we can modify it. You know, let's say you wanted 12. 12 V. Boom. Boom. So, it's program and that which we will negotiate that voltage from the USB power delivery device which you plug it into. And sure enough, if I plug it into the power brick, there you go. That one I just programmed, it's showing green there. So, presumably ready to go 12. 1 V doesn't have the resolution. So, I program for 12. 12 and let's have a look. 12. 1, you know, it's within the error margin. That is just fine. I'll do something a ball like 17. 8 V for example. So, that's programmed. Take it out. Whack it in there. And should be yeah, 17. 8 V. Ha — This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Seriously, that's great. And your current handling capability are presumably based on what your um source over here, your power delivery source is capable of actually uh delivering there. Um you know, there might be some cable and connector limits and stuff like that, but uh yeah. Oh, wow. Then we can think get things like you know, just the bare wire so you can solder directly onto your board. You can as I said like the Wago like um lever connectors or just a whole bunch of barrel jack adapters. It's insane. I would have supplied like some stickers that are designed to go on here and you can just like handwrite whatever voltage you've got in. I mean, you can get your own stickers, but it just would have been a nice touch to include like a sheet of matching stickers that you can put on and then, you know, write on whatever voltage you've programmed for this particular unit rather than having to check. And these ones that we've got here, these aren't programmable ones. So, if you plug that in, that one ain't going to work because you need That's what these little doohickey adapters are for. So, these are just nice little just, you know, convenient adapters you can get from anywhere. So, we can do is just have a nice set of these, a complete set, and you can have them pre-programmed for whatever common voltages you want or any oddball voltages. Like that one's, yeah, they're factory set to 5 volts, but you can change it anything you want. Beautiful. So, I've programmed this one here for 9. 5 volts, and they also sell this very cool little MagSafe thing that just, you know, magnetically connects onto the back of your shoe phone and charges your shoe phone. There it goes. Um, fantastic little battery pack. It's very slim and cute, 5,000 mA hours, perfectly small and lightweight

for taking around with you, 20 watts capability. So, I've programmed it to 9 and 1/2 volts. So, we just plug that in. It will turn green to show you that it's outputting its programmed voltage. And there you go, 9 and 1/2 volts is going to be, you know, a little bit of tolerance there. It's neither here nor there. Great. For the USB power delivery spec, the maximum is 48 volts. So, it allows me to set 48, but it won't allow me to set 49 volts, for example. I don't know why it even tries. the app just doesn't say, "No, the maximum, you know, inform me, please, that the USB power delivery standard is 48 volts. " Anyway, you can go through inventory here, and you can add a new device, and you can have photos and primary names. So, you know, you get really complicated in what, you know, whether it's center positive or center negative and all sorts of things. Really groovy. Or you can add a new power source. For example, you can take a photo of your own, you know, particular power source, whether it's a power bank or a wall wart or whatever it is and model and power maximum power rating and stuff like that. Now, when you're programming this, if unless you select a power source here, it's not going to know what particular USB power delivery device is what one you're using, what that's actually capable of. So, it just allows you to go up the maximum, but you can actually select those pre-programmed power sources. So, that's pretty cool, but I won't muck around with that. I've set it for 24 volts, for example. So, we've programmed that. Yep, no worries. Take that same adapter, we plug it into here, you'll see and it's going to flash red. So, this power bank, the compliance voltage is not capable of delivering 24 volts. But, let's try that on the big power brick over here. And no, can't do that either. And in that particular case, it's going to default back for safety reasons back to 5 volts. Beautiful. And we can give our individual units a name. So, I'm going to call it Dave. And I've plugged it knows that I've plugged in Dave and it knows Dave is set to 48 volts. Cool bananas. It's just brilliant. And they also sell these very cool magnetic USB-C to USB-C cables as well. Look. Ooh, they're magnetic. It's got a magnetic thread in them. Beautiful. And I'm not sure if these are on the store or not, but these are the actual thing that's inside the V-Flex adapter here. So, we'll get the macro lens out. We'll take a closer look. Ah, there you go. They've got their own werewolf branded chips upside down. All the electrons are going to fall out. There you go. So, I don't know, maybe someone can reverse engineer the pin out there to figure what that about what that is. I doubt they've developed their own custom ASIC that would just be like an off-the-shelf, you know, a power delivery negotiation processor thing and they've programmed it with their own firmware, of course, to you know, talk with their own app and everything. And looks like they've probably done their own spring system there cuz I doubt that's off the shelf and they've just, you know, in the custom aluminum enclosure for it and that's what's inside one of those. That is very cool. This is one of the coolest things I've seen in quite some time. So, there's the little individual parts that they've engineered and that's just a great design. I'm I just thoroughly impressed by that. And just by accident, I discovered that these ones with the orange on the end, most of them are white, but I in my kit I got two orange ones. I'm not sure if that's normal. These are negative. These are center negative adapters. So, they should be labeled like warning Will Robinson center negative because you can blow your product with that. So, that's a bit of a downside. So, if I take that out and then I whack in a white one like this for example, this one will be center positive. There it is. But I didn't RTFM, of course. I just found that out by accident. And you don't have to use your shoe phone to program these. You can just use your web browser here. You go to vflex. app. Unfortunately, it doesn't support Firefox. So, fire up Chrome. Sure enough, it works. Control and reprogram your MIDI devices. Don't have any MIDI devices, but okay, I'll allow. The world's best power supply. Like I don't know why you'd want to log in. Oh, you maybe you can store all of your uh different devices and stuff like that perhaps. But anyway, continue as guest. No wuckers. Come on. You can do it. Plug it in. All right. Here it goes. I've got it going through just into a USB A adapter. I'll plug it into my little box up here. And sure enough, bingo. Look at that. We can now set the voltage. And as I said like

we can set it to maximum of like 48 volts or whatever. But it's uh dependent upon cuz it doesn't know which supply that we're using it with. So it just assumes that you can do the maximum. What is the minimum? No. It can accept that. 3. 3 volts. Oh, it'll do three. It'll do 3. 3. Really? Didn't know power delivery could do that. Learn something new every day. 2. 5 volts. Nah. It's not going to do it. And I do believe the increment is like uh 20 millivolt uh steps as well. So I think 3. 3 is the lowest. It won't probably Well, yeah, it won't let us do 3. 2. There you go. But unfortunately, this uh MagSafe power adapter which they uh sell, you can see it's maybe it's flashing the red LED there. So even though you program this with 3. 3 volts, it tries to negotiate 3. 3 volts from here, but this power bank ain't going to do it. And this supplied uh power brick here, it also will not negotiate 3. 3 volts as well. But you know, it there's probably very few power delivery devices uh that are capable of negotiating 3. 3 volts out. So you know, uh And this was a Kickstarter. I thought I had uh seen this. I mean, you know, someone probably you know, sent it to me. Ditch the brick. Power everything with USB-C. And they got um almost 1,800 backers here. 141,000. And they have delivered on their product. I can verify that they've delivered and real. So yeah, that's fantastic. Um that's just fairly recently, March uh 2026. So, yeah, you missed the early bird one at uh 30 bucks. That was a bargain. Um anyway, yeah, so they got all these accessories and everything with it. And I'm thoroughly impressed. I'm thoroughly impressed they have pulled this off. So, who's behind this thing? Does it say? Endless possibilities. Oh, that's a musician edition. That's the center negative. Right. Yes, because center negative adapters are very like used in like those fuzz boxes and all that sort of thing, I believe. So, um yeah, that's a thing. Um I've done a video on center negative um power like adapters and power supplies. And then the uh V-flat and then the like the Wago type connector. And it's MADE IN THE USA. Uncle Sam. Um fantastic. No, it's a 2025 Kickstarter. That's when they launched it. So, yeah, I thought it was a while ago. But they've just updated it uh recently. But yeah, anyway, um doesn't say who's behind it, but hats off. That's fantastic. They delivered on a unique product. I'm very impressed. I reckon every lab should have one. It's just so handy. You never know when you're going to need it. All right. So, I'm going to power A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE HERE. This is my And Electronic Balance FX 400 for those playing along at home. And it's a special snowflake. It needs 12 volts center negative. So, I've got my center negative adapter and I've programmed it to 12 volts there. No wackers. All right. So, let's plug it in. So, let's see if we can power our electronic balance from our Yep, green. There it is. So, that should be good to go. And I'm here all week. Get it? And Oh, sorry, it's uh really hard to see with the steady light here, but trust me, that is yes the readout is there. It's an old vacuum fluorescent tube thing. It's very low, but trust me, that works. Beautiful. Oddball center negative. Great. The only thing I think it's missing is the ability to actually set a current limit because the USB power delivery standard actually as well as adjusting having adjustable voltage from 3. 3 to 48 volts you can actually adjust the current limit. I think it's in 50 milliamp steps as well, but I don't think I've ever seen a power bank or a power brick or anything like that actually be capable of doing that. So that is maybe that's why they haven't implemented that, but technically it's there and technically this could do it because it's got the negotiation chip in here. It's just got to negotiate the correct command over to your power delivery brick over here and in theory should be capable of constant current as well and that would have been really cool, but yeah, even their supplied power brick like doesn't go to 3. 3 volts for example. So there you have it. That's the Werewolf V-Flex system and that is really something else. That is worth having in your lab just to power up oddball things or if you're on the go and you need to power up various you know oddball boards and things and products you know using barrel jacks or soldering straight on with the wires or you know bare wires with those Wago connectors or whatever. Um this is just an amazing thing. I think every lab should have

like a little mini kit of these. These are great. I'm going to give that a huge thumbs up. Very innovative idea Werewolf. Very impressed. You just need a more innovative name, I think. Anyway, thanks for sending that in to the mailbag. I'll link it in down below. Catch you next time. —