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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

#121

Post by kayfox »

can16358p wrote: post #9
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…

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.

Every once and a while an electrician wires up standard US outlets to 480v 3-phase instead of 208v 3-phase, so you end up with an outlet designed for 120v that puts out 277v.

Sometimes noone notices because the switching power supplies plugged into them are just fine with this.

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

#122

Post by pixl97 »

itslennysfault wrote: post #112

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…

"Model 3.0, now with integrated USB-KILL"

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

#123

Post by amluto »

nicolaslem wrote: post #60
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.

I did but unfortunately it quickly turned into all parties involved blaming each other (it's your utility, it's your installation...) and it got nowhere. For the past year it's been much more stable than before so I don't worry too much about it.

See above about a broken neutral. A broken neutral is bad. One could easily load a system or even just have wetter soil so that the voltages are well balanced for a while despite the neutral being open, but that doesn’t make it less bad.

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

#124

Post by ToucanLoucan »

pixl97 wrote: post #120
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Semi-related: My wife has the little Fallout 4 fridge they dropped a while back, not a proper fridge but one of those peltier plate ones that's only really good for like, soda and beer. She was quite upset when it died one day and I toss it on the bench, and stab the power socket with my alligator clips and give it 9 volts. Worked perfectly so it just needed a new power supply.

A quick Amazon order, snip the wire off the old, splice it to the new and a little soldering/heatshrink later and we're back in business. Plug it in and... nothing. Turns out, the original power supply had it's polarity reversed. So then I opened the fridge and swapped the connections on the backside of the socket because it was less fuck-about than re-splicing the wire. Fortunately a few confused minutes of reversed polarity didn't damage anything (not that there's really anything to damage, it's a peltier plate and a fan)

Genuinely, why? The standards make things easier. Why go out of your way to not use them?

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

#125

Post by ajb »

nicolaslem wrote: post #60
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.

I did but unfortunately it quickly turned into all parties involved blaming each other (it's your utility, it's your installation...) and it got nowhere. For the past year it's been much more stable than before so I don't worry too much about it.

I would not assume that this fault is not dangerous TBH. May well be a good idea to hassle them some more. If you're renting, you don't need to care who is at fault - your landlord needs to sort it. If you own, you may need a 3rd party electrician to settle the argument.

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

#126

Post by lxgr »

dylan604 wrote: post #116
lxgr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 out…

Ah, so e.g. something like a device flipping between “powered” and “not powered” states, which then wears out some part that doesn’t expect that state change to happen so often?

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

#127

Post by ajb »

smallpipe wrote: post #98
nicolaslem wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did but unfortunately it quickly turned into all parties involved blaming each other (it's your utility, it's your installation...) and it got nowhere. For the past year it's been much more stable than before so I don't worry too much about it.

Make sure you have good insurance and multiple loud smoke detectors...

Insurance won't cover if you knew there was a fault and didn't fix it!

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

#128

Post by ajb »

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?

It's not power dip, it's voltage dip. An appliance will often draw the same power at the lower voltage, so increase current, which can cause overheating and damage.

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

#129

Post by pjc50 »

wiredfool wrote: post #17
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…

It's got a CE mark, but it's unclear if it's valid or not. This is a mandatory certification in the EU, like the UL listing in the US. The device is specifying the output voltage, which isn't in spec for the connector, but it is (apparently) accurate.

It's mandatory to have the CE mark.

It's a self-certification. You can decide how much that's actually worth for non-EU vendors.

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

#130

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

Yeah, the wiring code says the 220V outlets on 110V areas must be red. Marking is optional.

But I've actually have never seen a red one.

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