Passport - The Ultimate Universal Travel Adapter and Charger

About this project

Can you believe it? It's 2017, and all the travel adapters on the market are still equipped with a single-use fuse that was invented in the 19th century. As a result, every time you go on a travel, there's a high chance that your travel adapter will fail because of the single-use fuse, and you could be one of the reviewers above. That's why we built Passport.

When we began to work on this project two years ago, we simply wanted to resolve the single-use fuse problem so people don't need to worry about charging their devices while traveling. As our project went on, we found many other problems of the current travel adapters on the market, such as child safety issues, not enough USB outputs, and awkward two-handed operation. So we ended up making a truly worry-free ultimate universal travel adapter and charger.

The biggest difference between Passport and other international travel adapters already on the market is the patent-pending auto-resetting fuse. Traditional travel adapters typically use old-fashioned replaceable fuses to prevent an overload, which leads to quite a number of issues. Passport’s use of auto-resetting technology allows the device to recover from an overload on its own within just one minute, making it electronically unbreakable, and the most resilient travel adapter ever.

Auto-resetting fuses are commonly seen in the aerospace industry, but it’s never applied in travel adapters before due to cost and size. It took us a long time and hundreds of experiments to finally be able to customize the perfect auto-resetting fuse at the right cost and size for our product. 

It’s actually a mini switch with a built-in Bimetallic Thermal Sensor. It consists of two thermally different metals stuck together back to back. When it is cold the contacts are closed and current passes through the switch. When it gets hot, one metal expands more than the other and the bonded bi-metallic strip bends up, opening the contacts and preventing the current from flowing. The fuse can stand up to 10,000 reset cycles. 

 

  

From the beginning, we wanted to design something that's world-class. So we partnered with Y Studios, an award-winning design firm based in San Francisco. They have won numerous Red Dot, iF, and Good Design awards in the past and have worked with several esteemed clients, including Microsoft, Activision, TiVo, Sphero, and Sonos. They worked closely with our team in East Palo Alto, California, and China for nearly two years.

Two years may seem like a long time to develop a product like this, but it was a matter of answering several complicated questions: how to fit so many components in such a small body, how to reinvent the something that has existed for decades and make it better, how to find the best auto-resetting fuse at the right size and cost, how to design it so it looks great. The fruits of this process are several pending patents and a unique structure that's second to none.

Note: Please note that colors other than white is only available after we reach certain stretch goals.

Dimensions: 2.24” x 2.8” x 2.5”/57mm x 72mm x 64mm  

Weight: 5.6oz/159g  

USB Output: 2.4A/12W Max per port, 5A/25W Total with ZEN+

AC Input: 100-250V/AC 50/60Hz

AC Output: 6A Max (600W at 100V or 1500W at 250V) 

Note: Passport doesn't convert voltage. Please only use devices that are suitable for the voltage supplied. 

Comparing to traditional travel adapters out there, Passport is unbeatable. 

Passport Type-C PD Add-on is a 30W charger that can perfectly attach to Passport so that you can get rid of your heavy and cumbersome Type-C laptop chargers while you travel. More details of the stretch goals would be announced when we progress towards them.