The Oculus Rift developer kit is driven by an external power source – but a resourceful modder has found a way to power the unit through USB, making the wall plug obsolete.
As detailed in a blog post by Michael J. Moffit, the Rift draws a maximum current of 600 mA – which is slightly above the specified USB standard of 500 mA. But since most mainboard manufacturers are actually providing more power over USB than the standard amperage, Moffit concluded that he could do something that most dev kit owners wouldn’t even dare think about.
He came up with a useful Oculus Rift mod which involved his soldering iron and manually adding a “30 gauge stranded wire from the 5V power pin on the (…) USB port to the 5V in on the DC-in barrel jack.” In short, he circumvented the need for an additional power supply by siphoning energy from the USB connector.
This Oculus Rift mod lets the unit “perfectly fine” off of USB power only, assuming your computer puts out the right amount of power. Moffit expects that the Oculus Rift control box won’t draw significantly more power over a play session since effects from changing screen content should be negligible. Additionally, the sensors “should not draw more/less depending on how much one is moving”. With this mod, the Oculus Rift can be run using only a single video cable and a single USB cable, which eliminates the need for a wall adapter – this “makes the Rift a much more portable device”, according to Moffit, and paves the way for the Rift to be powered from a laptop which could open the door for a self-contained portable VR-system-in-a-backpack like Project Holodeck is using.
This gives hope that consumer Oculus Rift version might be powered through USB only. After all, displays for smartphones and tablets need to be less demanding so that your iPhone 7 or your iPad 5 won’t run out of power too quickly. And since Oculus VR will most likely use an existing LCD screen for their coming versions, these power optimizations should find their way into future Rift iterations as well.