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My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

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Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#111

Post by jorvi »

homefree wrote: post #66
londons_explore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An official Apple iPad charger wouldn't fail in this case - it has protection against basically anything on the output side - from short circuits to big back-EMF spikes. 3rd party ones on the other hand....

This is the reason I only use apple chargers for charging everything.

There are much higher quality chargers (and cables) than Apple's.

Anker is well known, and Baseus is getting there. They are especially nice because they make GaN chargers, putting a lot of power in a tiny package.

It honestly kind of baffles me how crappy Apple's cables and chargers are when they simultaneously make one of the best USB-C to 3.5mm DACs on the market, and then sell it for $10.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#112

Post by itslennysfault »

I was once working on an app for a Clover point of sale system. On the side there is a USB-C port. I plugged my new-ish MacBook Pro into it thinking I would be able to debug, but instead my mac instantly went black. I unplugged it, and eventually it rebooted, but the USB ports on that side never worked again.

Turns out that port is intended for connecting a receipt printer, and clearly not in any way a standard USB-C.

There is actually a micro usb port elsewhere on the device that can be used for debugging. Lesson learned the hard way.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#113

Post by samus »

dncornholio wrote: post #43

Isn't this just a lesson to always read the output values on adapters?

It's a USB port. Differently than the dozens of proprietary charging connectors that were ubiquitous before micro-USB and USB-C dominated, consumers have an expectation that it adheres to the specification.

To be on the safe side, one would actually have to check the voltage. Both the output voltage and whether these are really 0V and 5V to ground. The output frequency spectrum should also be checked.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#114

Post by itslennysfault »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #91
dncornholio wrote: post #43

Isn't this just a lesson to always read the output values on adapters?

Well, USB is a standard - you would expect a standard USB output to deliver a standard voltage.

Interestingly, even Samsung phone chargers put out 9v, but I think they only do that when connected to a Samsung device. On the plug is says 5v and 9v, and (I'm assuming) they switch to 9v when they detect a device that can use it for fast charging.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#115

Post by mint2 »

sod wrote: post #96
akx wrote: post #77

Lidl does this too – the rotary tool Parkside PFBS 12 B3 comes with a charger that's obviously not USB-PD, but has an USB-C plug and it puts out a solid 13 volts at all times. (See https://www.kompernass.com/en/accessories/2316/charger-8 for an image.) I sent Lidl a courteous and long mail about this and they didn't really care other than "please open a service ticket with your local Lidl", which I didn't care to do…

> courteous and long How about urgent and short? e.g. One day a kid will charge their toy over night with your 13v usb-c charger and they'll burn their house down.

Just a little too short, add:

“and this email notification demonstrates you are aware of the hazard which will be relevant in lawsuits.”

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#116

Post by dylan604 »

lxgr wrote: post #108
dylan604 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If it's turned off or it is on and not being used, probably not much. But more and more equipment no longer has an off mode and is more of an idle stand-by mode, so current is still always being used by part of the system.

The point is that in electricity delivery, it is normal to have deviations in the voltage as acceptable. Most power supplies have tolerances that can handle these deviations. A dip is something outside of the deviations that most people don't consider as they are only focused on spikes and only use surge suppression devices. Since the only protection from dips is a more expensive battery solution, most people do not bother outside of computer related usages.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#117

Post by ajb »

nicolaslem wrote: post #26
can16358p wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

From my experience appliances tolerate a wide range of voltages. The outlets in my house routinely deviate from the standard 230V, with the lowest I have seen at 170V and highest at about 260V. I have not had any appliance malfunction. Edit: I am not advising anyone to deliberately do stupid things, simply mentioning that from my experience the builtin margin is fairly large.

Lots of devices have switched mode power supplies that will still output the same voltage. Last time I had a brownout the only thing that stopped working was the washing machine, and I thought that was broken.

Paradoxically, it may be the lower voltages that are more dangerous, because it will result in a higher current draw from all the devices.

Mains voltage has a nontrivial allowed range (in fact in Europe they increased it slightly so that devices would work across countries with slightly different original standards) but this is well out of spec.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#119

Post by stephen_g »

cesarb wrote: post #50
can16358p wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

> just imagine if a small portion of standard-looking outlets did not output 220V (or whatever standard you have) and say 330V. We have something like that here in Brazil. On cities which use 127V as the standard voltage (some cities use 220V), you can get 220V by using a pair of phases instead of a phase and the neutral, and it's common to find a few standard-looking sockets which are 220V instead of 127V. They migh…

That sounds incredibly error prone and actually quite dangerous! At least a lot of AC to DC converters are universal voltage and frequency, but not all appliances!

In Australia we have only one voltage that will ever come out of a single phase socket, but the standards took the opposite approach with current ratings - the sockets are cleverly designed in terms of their current capacity so (assuming it’s been installed correctly) you can’t make mistakes without illegal and dangerous modifications. In the standard socket, you can have 10 amp, 15 amp or 20 amp, and they all have different sized pins. For the 15 amp plug and socket, the ground pin is larger, so a 15 amp plug cannot fit into a 10 amp socket. A 20 amp plug has all three pins larger, so it doesn’t fit in a 10 amp or 15 amp socket. But a 10 amp plug can still fit and sit snugly in a 15 or 20 amp socket, and a 15 amp can still fit into a 20 amp socket with no problems. It’s pretty clever.

For bigger stuff, or anything three-phase, you then have big industrial circular ones, which I think have a similar system to not let you plug a higher current device into a socket that can’t supply enough current. I believe there are also three phase plugs and sockets both with neutral and without neutral, and if the plug has a neutral pin it doesn’t fit into a socket that doesn’t supply neutral.

Re: My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

#120

Post by pixl97 »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #65
londons_explore wrote: post #11

9v 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?

Not that barrel plugs are any better...

I wish I would have wrote the model down posterity, but at one point I worked a trading company and a number of the users had ISDN at home. There were two 'different' modems, and I say different because only the model number on them notified you of it.

One had a plug that output DC power. One had a plug that output AC power.

They were the same size wall wart. Same size barrel. But if you plugged the AC adapter in to the DC modem it would make a noise like you curled the modem up into a ball and let the magic smoke out.

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