Few years ago I bought a 12V led strip from aliexpress, it came with a usb charger.
A "12V" USB charger. You can easily guess who put it near other chargers by mistake and then fried a PS4 controller trying to charge it with that :/
My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
101–110 of 308 posts
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#102> At one point I wanted to see if I could create a sort of a DIY UPS for the water fountain. It would be quite bad if I was at work and a power outage results in cats not being able to drink water (they don’t really care for normal water bowls after getting the fountain).
So another self-made problem then.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#103This 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…
> 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.
For pure consumer products (whatever that means) safety standards are quite reasonable. There are already legal requirements in the USA that plugs have certain shapes controlling orientation, grounding, and expected voltage, as well as building code so that people don’t trip over long power cables. Food safety means you can pick up something at the shop and have some faith it won’t kill you.
This reduces cognitive overhead and doesn’t require you to be an expert in every domain.
It also doesn’t stop you from hacking your own stuff (mostly — please don’t mix ammonia and bleach!) and easily provides you a bunch of dependable items on which you can build your hacks. So you can (briefly!) supply 100 amps of 240V AC over USB A at home if you want, you just can’t sell it. You can make yoghurt at home and store it on the counter in the sun if you want, no problem.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#104This 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…
It’s difficult enough to figure out which side goes up. I can’t worry about this as well.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#1059v or 12v over USB-A is reasonably common here in Asia... You always need to check the voltage rating before randomly plugging stuff in if it isn't from a big manufacturer. For example, the handwarmers I'm using right now are USB-A at 12 volts, but have a dial to adjust the voltage up and down between 0 volts and 12 volts to adjust the temperature (I think it's actually PWM on the 12v power lines, but haven't actuall…
This is absolutely cursed.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#106This brought back a distant memory of when I bricked my very first MP3 player, a Rio 500. See when Rio 500 was being designed the mini-usb B spec was not finalized yet, so when it was released it came with what looked like a normal mini-usb cable for charging, but in fact the pin-out was different. At some point I tried plugging it in with post 2000 cable and it killed the device.
IIRC, just before "miniB" actually hit; there was a lot of confusion and efforts to make something like it. Olympus and Fuji both had a USBC looking wingless connector on some USB cables, they'd used the same connector, but wired it differently.
I was selling cables and adapters on ebay at the time and we had a package with both types. Easier to sell people both versions than deal with "oops i needed the other one."
(I may well have mis-named the parties; apologies if so)
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#107> The idea of a water fountain for cats may sound odd
Cats instinctively love & trust moving water as stagnant water can accumulate bacteria & disease.
So a cat fountain sounds like a gimmick or novelty but it’s a great idea.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
You (or your landlord) should probably hire an electrician to get that checked out – especially the higher voltage might be indicative of some scarier failure modes. A voltage drop of 25% could also mean you have semi-broken wiring somewhere, which can cause fires or shock hazards on faulty appliances.
Dips and spikes are routine in electrical power delivery. In my experience, dips are much more likely to be the culprit of damaging equipment than spikes. People are used to protection from spikes with surge protectors, but the only thing that protects from dips is a UPS. I use a small UPS as part of my entertainment equipment. Not because I want to watch TV during an outage, but to keep from damaging the equipment w…
How would a power dip damage an appliance?
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#109I am concerned that there are no pictures of the adorable cats in the post. It sound like the manufacturers just see USB-A as a convenient and cheap connector for delivering power.
Hi, author here, I've fixed that in the post now.
Your cats are adopting the universally understood pose of their human not being on time to feed them.
Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
#1109v or 12v over USB-A is reasonably common here in Asia... You always need to check the voltage rating before randomly plugging stuff in if it isn't from a big manufacturer. For example, the handwarmers I'm using right now are USB-A at 12 volts, but have a dial to adjust the voltage up and down between 0 volts and 12 volts to adjust the temperature (I think it's actually PWM on the 12v power lines, but haven't actuall…
That’s terrible . Why don’t they just use a barrel plug?
Because it's cheap and easy to implement into designs. No need to spec and use a new part, just use USB-A for all power connections across everything you sell.