HOW TO WIRE USB OUTLETS (In a Camper Van Conversion Electrical System)

hey everybody it's nate and steph from explorer style life we teach people how to build diy campers welcome back to episode number 13 in our ford transit diy camper van build series in last week's episode we installed three new windows into our van and in this week's episode we're going to be installing usb outlets let's get [Music] started here's a list of parts that you're going to need for this project usb outlets some spade connectors two conductor and three conductor lever nuts some wire a source of power and some assorted electrical tools like we've talked about in some previous videos this video is based on the diagrams found in the explorers live 12 volt branch circuit guidebook we have also assembled a usb outlet wiring kit with all of the exact parts that we used in this video as well as a few alternative sizes which can be found at shop.explorers.life so before we get into the van i wanted to do a tabletop demonstration showing you how to connect the batteries to the to the fuse block to the end circuit we've already got the fuse block here it's connected to the battery bank so pause the battery terminals to the positive terminal of the fuse block there as well as negative battery terminal to the negative bus bar of the fuse block here and then fuse as we go on this side we don't have any fuses in here so we actually don't have any power flowing to the side of the fuse block these are three usb outlets pretty straightforward simple usb outlet there are no lights on this uh so this will not light up whenever we uh when we get this all connected we do not want lights in here because when we're trying to charge our phone at night or something like that we just didn't want the obnoxious lights but if you want lights and all the other fancy features of other usb outlets the wiring is going to be pretty much the same there's a positive and negative terminal on the back side of each of these usb outlets that we connect with a spade connector and that's kind of the anatomy of this circuit so let's start wiring so to get started we just need a little bit of wire a bit of red and black for this demonstration i'm using 16 gauge wire but the size of wire will depend on how many outlets that you have in your particular circuit as well as how long the circuit ends up being start to finish so first thing we're going to strip back a bit of the insulation off of each of these wires the positive wire here will go into one of the positive terminals on the back of the fuse block and the negative wire will go into one of the terminals on the negative bus bar and remember we don't have any fuses in this so we don't have any power at the ends of these two wires but if you get nervous on this during your install disconnect from battery next thing we're going to do is we're going to strip the insulation off of this end of the wires so the next thing we're going to do is start connecting our lever nuts so we're going to be using lever nuts for this particular project and pretty much all of the branch circuit projects going forward we're using these instead of your typical wire net which you'll find at lowe's or home depot or something like that because over time these will jiggle and they'll loosen as we're driving down the road and when wires get loose they cause resistance and cause things to stop working and could potentially heat up enough to cause a fire so we are not using these we are using these lever nuts so lever nuts are similar in the fact that they join wires together this one is a three conductor wire nut or a lever nut and these levers just snap up we're gonna put the wire in and then snap those back down and it holds the wires in place and there's pretty much no chance of them wiggling free so that's how these work now we're going to connect them so those are the lever nuts on the wires we can see that they are nice and secure all the way from the back and there's no insulation under the metal bar in the very back so the next thing we want to do is connect the lever nut to these so to connect these lever nuts to the usb outlets we need two more pieces of really small wire or two short pieces of wire i should say and strip the ends off of these and then we're going to crimp a spade connector onto the end of each of these um [Music] and then we can go ahead and heat shrink these down because the plastic on these particular spade connectors are just heat shrink and now we have the spade connectors on the end of the wire here this heat shrink spade connector the ends really get small here so you kind of have to be persistent when pushing this over the end of the terminal for the usb connector here but just be persistent and if you need to you can always kind of shave that back with a knife if you can't get that through [Music] just like so now these other little pigtails here they go into our liver nets slide that into place and clamp the lever nut down same thing on the negative one flip the lever up put the wire in clamp it down and then visually inspect the back side of each of the lever nuts to make sure that there's no insulation getting in between the wire and the metal on the back of each of the lever nuts lift this up here so you can see that okay and that is one usb outlet completely connected now i did use three conductor lever nuts here but they also make two conductor lever nuts that we would probably use if we were just doing one usb outlet but i wanted to continue on and show you how to wire multiple usb outlets onto the same circuit so this is all you're doing you could use two here but ultimately leaving one blank isn't a big deal and it's totally fine you could leave that as is so i'm going to go ahead and test this to make sure that this works before moving on so i'm going to put my fuse back into the first position here of the fuse block open up the cover and then get something that can be powered by usb and then plug it in cool see we're charging there we'll test the other port on here as well and that one is also charging so we have power to this usb outlet so we'll put this aside and then we are going to continue on down the circuit and i'm going to add two more usb outlets just so you can see how a multi-usb outlet circuit looks so to get these next two usb outlets wired up we need to make the little short pigtail connectors we've got here with the spade connector on one end for each of the usb outlets i'm going to go ahead and do that right now right so now that we have these four pigtails all made we're going to connect them up in the exact same fashion that we did this first one to the remaining usb outlets positive to positive negative to negative positive to positive negative to negative and then that is that and now we can connect these lever nuts to these lever nuts to these other outlets over here and i've already made the jumper wires that go from one outlet to the next outlet just reading black wire with the ends already stripped off and here's how to connect it all together since we are working with this again i'm going to go ahead and remove this fuse so we don't have any live power [Music] we're going to connect the red wire into this first red lever nut black wire do the first lever nut red wire to the next lever nut down the line black lever nut to the next lever nut down the line go ahead and put our jumpers for the last one red wire to the last connector and this lever nut and black connect black wire to the lever nut over here and then finally i've got a two conductor lever nut right here that will connect both red and black too give all these a visual visual check to make sure they're nice tight and well connected looking for making sure there's no insulation in between that metal bar and the wire it all looks good to go there so we'll take the second lever nuts in the circuit and connect the black wire of our usb outlet to the middle connector there and the red wire to the middle connector of this lever nut and then same on the last lever nut of this of the circuit black black here and red here visual check and all secure so here's how the circuit looks so we have red and black coming off to red and black lever nuts if you will to positive and negative of the back side of the first usb outlet positive and negative wires to positive and negative lever nuts to positive and like negative conductors of the back side of the second usb connector and then finally positive and negative wires to positive and negative lever nuts to the positive and negative terminals of the final usb outlet so that is all good we can now put the fuse back in so fuse is back in place now we should have power to all of this and we're going to double check all the different usb outlets just to make sure the same as we did before i'll check the first one again to make sure nothing happened in between now and the last time i tried it and we have charging on both ports second outlet charging on both ports i heard that one beep so it's good to go and lastly charging there and charging on the third one so that is how you would wire three different usb outlets into the same circuit now you can add pretty much as many many outlets as you want to into the circuit it's very much like in your house let's say around your bedroom you've got multiple different outlets around the outside of your bedroom but all of those outlets are on the same circuit so we are only pulling a certain amount of current for the entire circuit and that's what all of this wire in the fuse and here is size for but there's going to be more information about that in the video description below now that the tabletop demonstration is all wrapped up we're going to move into the van and actually wire everything together and then circle back around and then show you how this looks like in the van where it's a little harder to see [Music] [Music] so we just finished wiring the van and sometimes it's just easier to do it and then show a flow of power so we're going to get started on that so the fuse block will actually end up living right up here but for the sake of demonstration i got this battle board battery in a step stool and just a temporary fab up of this fuse block but ultimately it's going to be up here so this is where all of our wires are starting so they are running through this wire loom down through this cavity here inside of this cavity and out this direction so we have two different circuits one is going to be the driver side usb outlets and the other one is going to be the passenger side usb outlets the driver's side once it comes down to right here it's connected with the lever nuts so all positives together and all negatives together with the spade connector on the back of the usb outlet from the first usb outlet over here positive and negative wires coming over to the second usb outlet which is going to ultimately live about right here we do have quite a bit of extra slack here i would much rather take these wires out and trim them up and then restrip them and put them back in the lever nuts if we decide that we don't need near this much wire it's always easier to cut wire off than it is to add it this is the driver side circuit for the passenger side circuit it's starting up here and going through the same cavity up here and i'll let steph show where that is running currently this circuit is coming out this cavity here and we've got it routing around the door coming down here and then similar to the driver's side we'll just have one usb outlet here and that will live on this side of the window and the other outlet coming around here routing to this side of the window and this outlet will live right here so one thing about the wire routing that we've got going on here all these wires are going to be as close into the corners as they possibly can because they're going to be covered up by the walls but the interesting part about right here that we found is there's this nice little contour that whenever we put the walls on top of the van ribs right there it's a great spot for the wires to come through so this contour right here also lines up with this hole so if you know if you're taking on this project yourself uh you could probably use that for something so that's what the plan is here to kind of keep this nice and neat but you know as this series progresses you're going to see all this get cleaned up a lot more so the next thing we need to do is actually test these outlets to test these outlets we're just going to plug in a phone to each of these usb outlets that one works that one works that one works and lastly that one also works all this work so we are good to go now that we've wrapped up installing our usb outlets next we are going to install 12v outlets and that's coming up next so stay tuned now we hope you found this video helpful and if you did it would be awesome if you would share it with somebody or a group who you think could use it leave any questions you've got or new things you learned in the comments section below and if this video inspired you to build something be sure to share your projects with us on instagram with the explores life tag so that we can see and share your projects be sure to subscribe if you want to see more diy camper building tutorials and we will see in the next video

Channel: EXPLORIST life Mobile Marine & Off-Grid Electrical

Views: 73,407

Keywords: explorist, explorist life, explorist life electrical, explorist solar, explorist life wiring diagram, explorist.life, explorist life solar, explorist life blog, diy campervan, diy camper van, do it yourself, do it yourself camper van, usb charger, usb outlet, usb wall charger, usb charger wall outlet, usb chargers explained, usb outlet install, usb outlets, usb outlet wiring diagram, do it yourself projects, diy camper van build, explorist life wiring diagrams

Id: X1tQWYXY2Fc

Length: 20min 14sec (1214 seconds)

Published: Sun May 08 2022