My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
1–10 of 308 posts
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#2This is the sort of thing that almost (but not quite) pushes me to support mandatory certification (enforced by patents/other IP protections) for consumer devices that use a familiar connector like USB.
Consumers shouldn’t need to worry about the specific output voltage; the presence of a USB-A connector should indicate that it abides by the specification.
The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this, but poor interoperability is such a pain that it would be nice to have stronger guarantees.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#3I have the same fountains and I have already roasted an iPad charger on it fountain (I used the charger because it had possibility to connect cable to it instead of plugin directly to the socket). One day it just went out and burnt a little.
From that time I tend to use the provided one, but I never noticed it provides a different voltage. Thanks for the warning
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#4I wouldn't trust the writing on it; either.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#5I noticed something similar to this on my Insta360 ONE X charger. Initially I thought I could just use any USB power adapter but after many tries it turned out that the vendor implemented their own voltage on their charger sold separately. Quite a disappointment as charger broke after two years.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#6To be completely fair, those power banks should have a diode (or some protection circuitry) to prevent their damage. A loose cable could easily put higher voltage on the port than 5.25V.
That said, what an awful USB port to come across. A little reading wouldn't have gone amiss though. My natural reaction would have been to assume it was an output, not an input.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#7I recently found a Huawei-branded power bank that outputs 9V over USB-A. See https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000209696496.html and look at the label on the seventh picture.
EDIT: I may be wrong. Apparently this is now allowed by the Quick Charge spec. See comments below.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#8This is the sort of thing that almost (but not quite) pushes me to support mandatory certification (enforced by patents/other IP protections) for consumer devices that use a familiar connector like USB. Consumers shouldn’t need to worry about the specific output voltage; the presence of a USB-A connector should indicate that it abides by the specification. The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like t…
Yes, mandating this on consumer devices is quite sensible.
At least adhere to the spec to such a level that it won't destroy other hardware.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#9This is the sort of thing that almost (but not quite) pushes me to support mandatory certification (enforced by patents/other IP protections) for consumer devices that use a familiar connector like USB. Consumers shouldn’t need to worry about the specific output voltage; the presence of a USB-A connector should indicate that it abides by the specification. The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like t…
I think when it comes to safety restrictions should be there. The hacker in me hates it too but just imagine if a small portion of standard-looking outlets did not output 220V (or whatever standard you have) and say 330V.
Many applicances would break, or perhaps even catch fire.
If there were many different USB-A devices and people were used to checking the voltage output before plugging, that might not be needed, but since probably none of us check for a USB-A port to see if it outputs 7.5V, it better be mandatory to be certified.
Though, maybe it is, but still those cheap Chinese adapters slip away.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#10I also applaud who ever came up with 2 strand wire with USB-A at other end and USB-C at other...