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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

#141

Post by beej71 »

denotational wrote: post #2

This 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…

OTOH we have tons of crazy non-usb transformers with all kinds of different plugs that might or might not plug into devices they're meant for.

It seems like somehow we're used to the idea that this particular plug will only work with the device that came with it, but we assume that USB-A is USB-A. I know I do.

This does make me wonder about the USB adapter I got with my dash cam. The documentation says all over the place to pretty please with sugar on top use our adapter. I'll have to stick a meter on it. [Edit: 5.1v.]

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

#142

Post by shermantanktop »

jorvi wrote: post #111
homefree wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Anker has been surprisingly good. I worried they were a Chinese faux brand but everything I’ve gotten has been solid and well made.

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

#143

Post by terom »

stephen_g wrote: post #119
cesarb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 installe…

> 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.

That sound dangerous. The larger fuse sized for the 20A socket will not protect the smaller conductors in the cable sized for the 10A plug, they can get overloaded.

The three-phase / industrial CEE plugs and sockets used in the EU are sized for 16A/32A/63A/125A. It's perfectly legal and safe to make a passive adapter that lets you plug a 32A appliance or distribution box into a 16A socket, you just can't load it higher than the 16A fuses on the socket. Going the other way around (16A plug into a 32A socket) you MUST have a circuit breaker in between to provide the required overload protection.

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

#144

Post by MadnessASAP »

cesarb wrote: post #71
lxgr wrote: post #52

Earlier 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.

My first guess would be something like a broken neutral wire, making the neutral voltage depend on the imbalance of the load between the AC phases. From the little I understand about it, you could have up to the phase to phase voltage between the broken neutral and one of the phases, with the voltage dynamically changing as devices are turned on or off. It's very confusing (since everything expects the neutral to be…

That definitely reads like somebody removed/forgot the neutral bond.

You're understanding is correct, if neutral is allowed to float it's voltage will depend on ratio of the load on the 2 phases.

It also creates a variety of hazardous conditions and opportunities to make spicy metal.

You can play with it here courtesy of Paul Falstad and Iain Sharp: https://tinyurl.com/yq4lukm6

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

#146

Post by cesarb »

stephen_g wrote: post #119
cesarb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 installe…

> In the standard socket, you can have 10 amp, 15 amp or 20 amp, and they all have different sized pins.

Yeah, Brazilian NBR 14136 does that too. It has 10A and 20A variants, and the only difference is that 20A has slightly larger pins, so it won't fit into a 10A socket. (And the international standard it was based on, IEC 60906-1, has only a 16A variant with an intermediate pin size, so the 10A plug would fit into its socket and its plug would fit into the 20A socket.) Annoyingly, that's the only difference, making it quite hard to tell just by looking whether it's a 10A or 20A plug/socket; you have to try and see if it fits.

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

#147

Post by hammock »

I thought he was going to say there was current in the water.

I remember showering in Costa Rica at a “hotel” and the shower head was one of those that heats the water (with an electric heater) and it was shocking me the whole time I used it. Probably shouldn’t have used it

Apparently those are common in central and South America.

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

#148

Post by neuronic »

shermantanktop wrote: post #137
MattHeard wrote: post #51

I have/had this cat water fountain too (my cats are now happy with a normal bowl) and I believe I just threw the wall wart into a box with the rest of my unused USB A wall warts. A little bit like electrical Russian roulette now, I guess.

I couldn’t get mine to drink from it. They side-eyed it warily and avoided my attempts to entice them. Cats.

Bought my cat a nice and large bed which is more akin to a throne but anyway. He now happily sleeps directly next to it.
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