Question Trying to trick an HP laptop to charge from any power source.

I Mess With Windows

Commendable
Jul 9, 2021
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Hello,
I have an HP Pavilion 15 gaming laptop, and it comes with a 200W power supply. The thing is this one has a data line for the laptop to detect the wattage and also make sure it is a genuine charger. Even a genuine HP charger that can supply lower wattage (I tried 90W and a lower wattage one) won't get accepted.
I tried to use a potentiometer as a divider bridge to send various voltages to this data pin, and it would say charging, but it would throttle (more or less depending on the ID voltage) and also the battery wouldn't really charge, the pourcent stays the same forever.

I already tried to charge the battery without using the motherboard, and it works fine but of course the laptop doesn't detect a charger, so it performs a little bit bad as good gaming performance is only possible when it detects the 200W charger.

I really don't want to break my 200W power supply as they are very expensive and yet it's the only one I can use with this laptop.
I have another HP laptop that uses the same connector and comes with a low wattage power supply (I think it's 40W) but also accepts my 90W and 200W power supplies.

I would ideally want to use an arduino nano or similar to trick the laptop to charge. Having to generate 5V is not an issue at all, I just want to be able to use any 19V power source that has enough current capability so that I can use a 12V lead acid battery to charge it without using my inverter, because going from 12V to 230V and back to 19V is stupid and lossy.
 
This:

"I really don't want to break my 200W power supply as they are very expensive and yet it's the only one I can use with this laptop. "

Trying to do what you are trying to do is very likely to end up breaking your HP laptop/power supply.

Stop. Be patient and just plan ahead so the genuine chargers can be used to safely charge the battery even if the recharge takes longer.

Any workaround schemes will likely end very badly.

And any warranty will likely be rendered void as well.

Just my thoughts on the matter.
 
My warranty is already long gone.
The power supply has some active PFC that's made such a way that it wouldn't even work if I plug it into rectified mains (with or without capacitor).
My modified square wave inverter works with it but as I said it is lossy and takes a lot of space when you just want 19V at the end.
And no, I am not going to break my laptop. I have a decent amount of experience, and I think you should never discourage somebody who is repair friendly and trying to do something yet useful.
The reason why I don't want to open my 200W psu is because unlike the laptop, this one doesn't have screws, so if I open it I will likely never be able to put it back together, where as I already opened the laptop several times to redo the thermal paste and some more stuff.
What I want is make the laptop believe that some powerful boost converter set to 19V output is in fact the genuine charger. I do not have much experience in arduino programming, but enough to create a specific waveform.
 
You are not the only person that would like to be able to trick HP laptops into taking non-genuine chargers. There are a large number of Chinese manufacturers also attempting to do the same thing. Selling additional genuine chargers is worth millions to HP, and as such the non-official charger detection on their laptops is pretty crazy and hard to defeat.

The equipment, time and effort involved in this project would cost you a lot more than a used genuine 200W charger on ebay. Heck, even a new one is only £50...

Unless you are doing it for a fun engineering challenge, and filming the project to put it on Youtube, then I cannot recommend this whatsoever.
 
it is not a youtube project, it's me wanting to charge my HP gaming laptop from a 12V lead acid battery. I have an inverter, but again it's taking too much space and yet it's too lossy when you just want to generate 19V at the end. I am interested in a used 200W power supply if it is not too expensive, or actually even a broken one, because I could get the chip and connect any 19V power source, just like it would work to plug my 200W charger to the laptop ut not into mains, and then send 19V at the same time from another psu.

I could even maybe put the chip inside the laptop (but it might cause problems when using the official charger that has the chip in it).
The power connector isn't even on the motherboard, making it quite easy to modify it.
I think companies doing this really suck. And I don't even want to use another charger, but just to charge my laptop from my battery and a boost converter. If HP was selling some official 200W car charger compatible with my laptop, I would probably buy one!