PS Vita USB Mod

Had my PS Vita since the launch in Japan and am starting to like it a lot! Lots of eye candy graphics and decent games are starting to come out. But, the PS Vita comes with a lousy feature that prevents you from charging the unit unless you use the adapter it came with. This means that you cant charge it from a Mac/PC USB port or even an iPhone/iPad USB mains adapter.

Being a portable games machine, it becomes particularly annoying that you cant use any USB battery packs to charge it either. Unacceptable! But rather than complain, lets do something about it because complaining never brings about results - only action leads to results and results happen even quicker if you take action yourself.

Today we will see how I made a simple mod that enables you to charge the PS Vita from any USB power source.

First up, you need one of these USB thingies - its a USB bridge adapter that allows a USB to be plugged into awkward places like the back of your left ear. They sell them at Amazon for 554 yen.

Once you got the USB adapter, pry it open using the Force or something like...a screw driver perhaps.

This will reveal 5 wires that are attached to the USB head.

Cut the green and white wire.

What may happen is this - the other wires come loose and fall off!

Now you need to whip out that pocket solder. Here I have soldered the red and black wires back onto the USB head. I have also soldered the middle two pins together. Not sure why this works because all I did was copy this guy ^^; Apparently this "shorts" it.
I tried to self study electronics for a wee bit but never really understood it. How many of you good at electronics and making stuff?

Now that the middle two pins are soldered together, its time to test it out.

Didn't want to test it out on the Vita so I dug up the old iPod Touch and used it as my test victim instead ^^; Tried to charge it from a mobile battery and it worked.

Next I tried it out on the Vita and you can see the electric bolt thingies in the battery - it works!

Once you have established that everything works, then you can glue everything back together.

Yuki is one happy gamer!

You can however buy a mobile battery with a higher output to charge the Vita but I still would not be able to charge it through my Mac.

And this is what the setup looks like - the Vita data cable goes into the USB bridge which is then attached to my mobile USB charger.

And I can even charge through an iPhone USB mains adapter too.

I'm rather pleased ^^;

You can now charge via your computer's USB port.

Want a thinner Vita data cable though.
Just thought I'd mention - do this mod at your own risk. If everything blows up then you may cry but you cant sue me to buy another one for you because I'm protected by the force and this disclaimer.

Games which I'm playing now are Star Strike Delta and Valkyria Chronicles 3 E2.