I recently installed a 5V NES-350-5 power supply in my home office for powering neopixel lighting & Arduinos.
I'm thinking of freeing up some phone/tablet/earpiece chargers by creating a panel of USB jacks. Would it be appropriate to simply hook up the appropriate sized wire & fuses?
Or, is there something truly magical about a USB "charger"?
http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
Note that this is theory and most companies don't follow the specifications when it comes to charging.
Shorting the data pins seems to work for every device I tried to charge so far, but not always as fast as possible.
lg, couka
Hi,
That spec is for 60A supply?
You need fuses on the 5V of each individual USB socket of your distribution board and I hope you have fuses on each of your Arduino projects you have using the supply already.
60A can do a lot of damage to a circuit, especially if its max load is going to be 1 or 2A and a short occurs.
Tom..... 
yes, I have multiple lines from that supply. Each is fused according to current requirements of the devices pulling the current.
So, is the verdict that 5v Supply > 3A Fuse > USB will not do the trick for charging devices such as iPhone/iPad?
On second thought, I found this reply on the Apple discussion forums, which leads me to think that it will not be a bad idea after all.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5299563?tstart=0
This is how I understand the way charging works with these types of devices, and I certainly expect anything I hook up in here to have internal regulation.
Let me know if you see any warnings I don't see.
There's nothing special about the "USB chargers". They output something pretty close to 5v (5.1 is quite common - I think the idea is that the extra voltage helps overcome resistance in the cable), and aren't capable of supplying excessive current. As long as you do that, you should be good.