Customer Reviews

TrickleStar 150PC-US-W PC TrickleSaver

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Be careful, this is a cheap device that only switches power based on whether it sees power on pin 1 and 4 of your USB port.

The problem is that many PCs do not turn off USB power on pin 1 and 4 unless you unplug them. All my PCs continue to power their USB ports when they are off, this is to allow for wakeups from a USB keyboard or mouse, or to allow you to charge your phone while your PC is off.

As a result, this device does not work.

If it were a little less cheap and could talk USB, then it would be able to tell if the PC is actually on or off by emulating a simple USB device, and work as advertised, but it is unfortunately too cheap for that.

The device works great but you doesn't have software, so there is no way to control from the OS if you will like to turn it off or on. So it only works if you have the computer on, and it will only shut down if the PC does... No way to control that as there is no software interface.

This thing was cheap enough to give it a try. I have an amplifier that is not easily accessible, I wanted it to turn off when my home theater PC was off. I was not surprised that the USB ports on my computer stayed on during standby. I was shocked that they stayed on when the PC was shut down, so basically the amp is always on. Haven't figured out if there's a way to change the power settings to turn off the USB ports. Nice idea, but check your PC first.