You cannot plug your laptop into an electrical outlet or recharge your cell phone, iPod or cordless tools without each item’s custom DC adapter. Wouldn’t it be handy if one little black brick covered them all? “My family has 42 DC devices in our house,” says Frank P. Paniagua, Jr., founder and CEO of Green Plug in San Ramon, Calif. “We have adapters and wires everywhere. Instead we could have a single brick in each room.”

The problem? The “brick” would have to ask every gadget what voltage and current to send. So manufacturers would have to agree on a standard communications protocol and a universal connector to join the hardware. Green Plug has devised both and will license them to manufacturers free. It would make money selling a small microchip embedded in bricks and devices that would conduct the power flow.

A universal system would save consumers money, because they could buy one adapter for many devices, and would reduce the volume of dated power converters tossed into landfills. Paniagua is on a crusade to convince electronics makers to adopt his technology. “But they are all waiting for someone to go first. It might help if consumers everywhere started saying, ‘We want this.’ ”

Note: This article was originally published with the title, "One Brick Powers All".

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