Inside some dodgy Chinese USB power supplies from Greece.
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- Опубліковано 2 лют 2017
- I'd like to thank Filippos for sending these VERY shady USB chargers which he bought from a Chinese outlet in Greece. The flat one has one of the scariest transformers yet with no extra insulation between the secondary and sense windings. It also had a rather odd output capability of around just 20mA before the voltage plummeted.
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www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm - Наука та технологія
Is it just me that watches for this guy, I have no idea how electrics work the lot, but for me its almost like an ASMR video watching Clive. Is it just me that feels that way? If it is I'll show myself the door.
I am the same way
Joe well, it started that way and now i'm genuinely interested in low current electronics!
What's ASMR?
Definitely! I have loads of them saved, and have been known to do an afternoon doze with a long playlist of Clive!
I hope his new camera has good stereo sound, a concept vastly beyond the abillity of gestApple!
Then we could do the full headphone experience!!!
+Paul Sengupta A sexual married rat
make sure you label you emails Re: Her Majesties Revenue & Customs - tax rebate. You'll be sure Clive reads them promptly 😉
Paul Gascoigne you?
you mean "Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs"
He is not Spam! Look at his videos, they are relevant for sure!!! He has lots of electronic hacking videos. How is that a spam comment if it is relevant to the topic at hand?
Who's spam? I'm a little lost.. If anyone's unsure what I was on about I was making a joke about Clives email reading and what takes president in his inbox.
Just search "Berner's Vlog" in UA-cam you will find the dudes youtube channel! Don't forget to Subscribe to his channel just like you subbed to bigclives channel. Cheers!
I once purchased a decent quality USB power bank from Amazon and the included power supply was the most horrific thing I have ever seen. It was nothing more than a non-isolated buck converter. The only thing between the USB micro-B output and mains was a crappy NPN transistor, and if you think it couldn't get any worse, your wrong. The output filtering capacitor was so undersized (~10uF) that the voltage ripple was close to 3V.
The only explanation I could think of was that they assumed you would throw it away and use a proper charger with a cable longer than 2cm.
Pro tip: To take the base off a lamp like this, drill out all the punched-in dimples in the base. To reassemble, rotate the base slightly so new metal lines up with the holes in the body and punch in only few of them - that way you can take it apart/reassemble it at least once more.
Had a bulb with this error - drilled a small hole in the plastic just above the rim of the socket. Fed an extra bit of wire through, soldered it to the wire from the board. Pulled wire back outhrough the hole on assembly and soldered to the rim of the socket...
studies have shown that its actually literally physically impossible to ever catch up on a large email backlog. declare electronic bankruptcy, delete them all and start again, its the only way. btw Clive all the photos on your website have been replaced by pictures of a kitten, some hosting issue no doubt.
Yep. I can confirm. The "thin" charger started melting and blew fuses at my house while charging IPhone.
Like a little kid on Christmas Eve with the LED Bulb, you couldn't resist ripping it open without us!!! ;) 😜
The problem is that those tiny transformers are machine - produced, and whilst there's "probably" some degree of basic "does it work" testing per-unit, the batch compliance testing may not always show up defects (especially marginal defects). There's also the problem of "what" they use for interwinding insulation - looks like PVC (about 14 kv/mm), whereas "back in the day" decent Manufacturers used Kapton (22kv/mm), which gave a much greater safety margin.
I was wondering if a simple varistor on the mains input would be sufficient protection against power surges even if the separation gap/transformer fails?
Hey Clive, love your work man! Any chance of seeing you take apart an expensive charger like an apple one of some kind to compare the difference? That would be awesome.
I'm a bit late, but typically they should be the same if not very similar since they're already made in China
That is not true, it all depends on the engineer and the company who finance the development.
Here is a take apart of a IKEA usb charger, most likely build in china but designed elsewhere
ua-cam.com/video/uRe9w5PKmsE/v-deo.html
Those Homebase LED lamps were manufactured by TCP, and have now been discontinued as Homebase have moved over to Osram.
Source: Used to work in their lighting section.
I worked in a transformer factory back in the 70's, often they would be a single bobbin, but you'll find winding in the middle of the tape, and the exit wire would be sleeved where they cross other windings, also for shielding there was sometimes a copper sheet between windings that was grounded.
some transformers went up to 10KV on a single bobbin
also note that these transformers were also dipped in varnish with a vacuum/pressure cycle.
btw, i was the impregnation engineer :D
you worked in a proper transformer factory, not a chinese one, they skip all the safety steps!
Sparky Projects sounds like a shitty pickup oine
_"btw, i was the impregnation engineer :D"_
That's funny, that is my job at home :D
Doom2pro so you work from home? :D
Do you get paid?
The voice of this guy brings dow my stress levels big time 😑
I actually bought the flat one 3 times, first opened one. Then, for testing, I used one for charging up a powerbank. Something disgusting happened: A through hole pin on the secondary side touched the plastic enclosure and got damn hot and it melted in a big hole. After a hour of charging, I was not that happy about that hole. Luckily it was on the seconary side. It is scary thyt there are people actually trusting those things, charging their phones with it. Until now, I was silly enough to keep using them in combination with an USB extension cable and an USB LED torch head as a working light. After your transformy information, I am not that sure about that anymore.
people will always want another charger, what with all the gadgets, but insist on buying them in the cheapest crappiest shop they can find, and wonder why their house catches fire, i used to work selling handtools and the cheap chinese invasion killed the mostly second hand tools we sold, as people wanted it ever cheaper despite that it was trash.
@@jusb1066 < You're right, seems like people all they want nowadays is "Cheap stuff", without realizing that in the long run they will spend more on constantly replacing the faulty/failing "Cheap stuff"... sad.
Wait what? How could a through hole pin melt a hole in the side of the case?
I believe you plugged in your tester set at 800ma for the long unit. Probably fried at initial contact. Shouldn't have happens, but will never know what it was capable of (or not capable of).
Clive Thank you for the videos. I have been looking for "this" channel for a loooooong time.
Just want to say I love your videos, I really learn alot from them. Have a good day bigclive!
It's always interesting to see a full tear down like this. Thanks for the vids and enjoy the coffee! :)
We learn a lot more when you disassemble a dodgy product than a well designed one.
The dodgy stuff is MUCH more interesting than the properly designed stuff. Mainly because of the ingenious shortcuts and sometimes dangerous ones too.
@@bigclivedotcom Doing both, side by side would be very interesting
Love watching you take things apart and explaining it. You actually need a TV show. Would like to see you take a proper USB power supply apart.
You plug it out and it just leaves a live circuit dangling dangerously from your socket. I love that!
Like DGW says "SUPER DODGY" 👍
thanks for the video 😁
I have never seen a full 23 minute long video before. Usually when I see 23 minutes I stay off but this is the first time I've enjoyed every single minute of such a long video
I have no idea what he is talking about but i like these videos because they make me look like a genius for watching them..
I think when they decided to relax the one child policy, they had to come up with something new to try to stem the Chinese population explosion.
USB mains adapters to the rescue!
Right, population control by electrocution... lol
Good to know that you're not just ignoring us and our plethora of crappy electronics ;)
Just make sure to stay away from any "Bang Good" products, cuz they aren't such a Good Bang for your money after all considering the lack of quality. tsk-tsk
Photonicinduction tried running a selection of these mini transformers through his big Variac - only he decided to put the HV input through the LV winding "to see what happened". They certainly popped - but not quite as spectacularly as the audience would have expected!
I bought a rectangle one for .99US and it works great at charging a tablet. And bought 2 of the hexagon shaped ones for .67 US each and they didn't work really. Now I know why! Your great! Thanks.
Nice to know that Future Clive will have obtained bulk quantities of lamp bases and the crimp tool for installing lamp guts in them, and will routinely 3D print lamp bulbs in custom shapes and colors. He will also be able to 3D print custom enclosures for those shock hazard USB testers but sadly will fail to do so.
You should make DIY USB load where you can set constant volatage mode, so you can set 4,90V and it pulls current which reaches these 4,90V, this mode would immedaitely tell what is maximum usable current.
Very often they say on auctions 5V and 1A but these 5V are on 0,5A and 1A is on 4,5V...
If somone is looking for good quality 5V supply in good price its best to choose them from manufacturers like blitzwolf, nillkin and xiaomi.
I just bought a handful of the small cube supplies in Quiapo (shopping district of Manila) for p50 each ($1). I use them for powering my various prototype projects (charging my LED cane, powering a 60 LED clock, powering a 25x5 LED banner, etc.). Never had any trouble with them, but I'll keep an eye on them from now on. Thanks for dissecting these so I didn't need to!
Clive it is really cool that you have no advertising on your channel. It keeps me coming back.
"I have already opened it I couldn't resist sorry" the only problem with being a big clive fan
I don't know much at all about circuitry and the electrical components found on circuit boards but I really enjoyed watching this- and it was quite educational. Thanks a lot! I think I'm gonna go watch more of your vids- eventually I'll have a somewhat better understanding of it all :)
I had one of those oval/octagonal supplies that came with a fake Beats Bluetooth speaker. I kept on getting a nice shock from it. Certainly much more than a standard iPad supply.
I've seen very similar 120v to USB adapters with the same shell design (but in several decorator colors) being sold at CVS drugstores here in the USA.
Regarding the failed LED lamp: I christen that method "destructive repair"! 😂😂
Clive, love your teardowns keep up the good work. I don't understand anything but it's still entertaining :)
I have that white flat charger. Had the same issue of voltage dropping when I connected a high load and powered it on. Though when I attached an USB LED to the thing first through the power meter first and then attached the high load it worked.
I have two of those diamond shaped USB adapters that I bought off ebay to replace the charger of my previous phone that totally disappeared about 4 years ago. They are great little mains chargers.
I had the long hexagonal one, took it to a trip to Italy, and it went up in smoke! Never had a power supply fail on me before.
I have a set of three of the octagonal chargers (US, Eu, and Oz) - been using them for travelling for a few years now. Have worked fine.
I'd recommend not touching exposed metalwork on devices being charged with them. The isolation in these devices is appallingly bad.
Here in Canada if you go to convenience stores and some gas station stores which are basically convenience stores as well, they sell mini USB chargers (some of which are clearly copies of Apple chargers), USB cables and lightning cables for Apple devices. It seems like every store sells the same ones and they are just sold loose in containers without any packaging.
I’ve always wondered what they are like internally and how they compare to authentic chargers.
They're usually terrible. Most clone chargers I've looked at have horrifically low electrical separation between the mains voltage side and the USB output.
playing with the f stop can adjust the actual depth of the depth of field, making it so you can keep the desk and your hands in focus
sup clive I got that current tester u have in this video I love it my inner nerd is testing everything.....much love from minnesota!!
Clive would you be interested in doing a teardown/analysis of a property regulated ecig?
I have the square charger and it actually supplies a solid 1 amp. it does get very hot but I got it from auchan in Italy so I'm guessing it would be more regulated than that one in the video
love watching you in the morning with my coffee
Why does Clive have your coffee?
Paul Sengupta cause you don't argue with a guy named big clive you just give up the coffee.
I've bought that exact charger in Turkey before - and yeah it came apart in my hand
Subscribed. This was great. Thanks for the lesson, going to learn a lot form you.
Yeah, I have a little orange one much like that white cube you've got there which is essentially the same construction. The only difference being that it's a little smaller due to the fact that it was made for US 120v mains instead of UK 240v. Now I've written "Unsafe for charging" right on the thing in sharpie and coated over that with clear nail varnish to keep it there. I mainly use things like this to drive USB powered LED strings which is as you have before mentioned, relatively safe. As I do have this thing though I decided to play along at home so to speak and was quite shocked to find just how similar they were so I thought I'd share that bit...
I've got similarly looking slim charger that was supplied with my Cubot cell phone about four years ago. It can go up to about 1,14A at 5V. Although, it's output must have substantial ripple - when I was charging my Cubot phone with it, touch screen was behaving erratically.
i had a charger with the plug problem so when i took it out of the socket i touched the 220v live contacts that were inside i must say i never used one of those again and it was really painful
amazing series
Clive, I'd really love you to take a look at a modern desktop computer motherboard. maybe the power delivery circuitry. like an Asus z97 or something.
I have that smallest one,, black, bought 4 years ago. Still working perfectly providing nice 1A at about 4.90-5v
Bought it for about 2euro. I also have similar, slightly longer that say it have 2A but it barely get 1.5, but work nice and never had problem with it.
I actually found out that there is more problems with bigger power supplies that smaller ones. Especially those with two-three USB slots, they always stop working after few months... :/
I love how the worst one had CE markings.
I have some Philips 5W GU10s that are almost identical in design to that first LED light you showed.
I keep old lamp caps to replace ones that have to be cut off. Another way is to use a PCB drill to drill-out the crimp points.
Haha the postoffice could probably save money by moving next door to Clive.
So I’ve been looking at those Chinese clamp meters, and a couple Japanese models, you helped me by explaining the DC clamp meter basics recently.
Anyway was just thinking it would make a cool video to show what a cheap meter is made of & how the design differs from a fluke etc. and what the consequences are, longevity, accuracy etc. and why.
i litterally just got into circuitry and stuff(today) i dont know why but this all looks soo enjoyable.
in most countries that's the normal size of chargers. we don't have an epidemic of people touching the prongs while plugging in, and it's way more convenient
I have one that looks just like that oblong, hexagonal charger. I pluged a short 1m long string of usb powered led Christmas lights into it last season and left it running for a few hours. When I went to unplug the lights before going to bed, the darn thing had gotten so hot that the the usb plug on the Xmas lights was a bit melty. I've not used the usb charger since. Maybe I'll pull it apart tonight and see if it's the same as yours on the inside.
My local chinese shop had one of those chargers. They were claiming to be 2A, but they were as small as those and very light.
2a claim because the newer apple chargers are 2.1 amp, so they pretend they are them, they are the same 500ma device they first ripped off 15 years ago
Very disturbing that products like these are available in shops !
How about recommendations for good quality and safe chargers ?
Search for 'bigclive koppla', that's a video where clive reviews a well-made IKEA usb power supply.
Ian Clarke All the Anker products I've tried have been rather good.
Not cheap, but not too expensive.
recommendations, anker, ravpower, the amazon own ones, for the real apple or samsung dont buy them online only in the real stores.
OEM, Anker, Aukey, IKEA
Buy OEM or trusted second part such as Anker.
Makes me wonder what the USB supply I got with my Cubot is like (one of them slim europlug types rather than the cube type), electrically speaking of course, I have had it apart, but never looked at it as in-depth as this... :P
Remember how in the early days of cell phones there was a choice of switch mode or iron core for quite a few years and I used to hunt down the iron core ones because those early switch mode ones which were oem had an inclination to disappear in a cloud of smoke and bright light as though the wrong spell of witchcraft had been cast on that day.
I am going to disassemble the transformer on one of my usb chargers, which are all Samsung brand, and I've checked the separation on them previously and it's quite good, but now this video has me wanting to know what's in the transformer.
I enjoy this channel despite my ignorance.
The little square one started to melt here. Luckily I got it out before it started a fire. Bought in Chania, Creete for about €3.
Can you please do a video on how you have been doing video with the iPad once you get your new camera? Thanks!
They sell those here in Thailand often in packages of 2 for the equivalent of $.60 or 60 cents. (0.3 USD each). They do put out 5 volts but no fuse or any other type of protection. Frequent to read stories of people being electrocuted by their cell phones here.
I have these all over my home charging and powering toothbrush, beard trimmer, my modem and a lot of tiny accessories.
you don't need tape if you use polyamide layered insolution. its not scary because it meets the isolation requirements. look it up breh, also the feedback for a flyback winding can be another primary winding. as long as the creepage and clearance is a minimum of 8mm.
Had a flat one that came with a phone battery, the phone battery was original to my surprising, the charger made a bang and my room was suddenly dark in the middle of the night... and i did not save my game.. sad story.
Did the phone die? And of course those chargers are completely horrific, not only from the point of fire safety in case of failure but also the isolation in the transformer is dodgy, and if there is an interference capacitor, it is never a class Y1 capacitor, so you can very easily get a shock and die!
Clive could you PLEASE post links to the Keweisi analyser and the Load tester you use in this video? Thanks Mr Bear :)
This? www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-Power-Charger-Current-Voltage-Detector-Tester-Monitor-Meter-for-Phone-Tablet/351929638914
Did you get your hands yet on the IKEA powerbank? I did not even knew we carried until we got one in the returns.
would be nice to know the efficiency of the dropper power supply in the lamp, how much power is getting to the LED?
You should consider getting one of those small digital microscope setups. Then you could take pictures during the disassembling, to be edited in to the video during post. You could bring the image up full screen for a moment, then reduce it to the corner while you continue talking about it. Just a thought.
I wonder why they even bother with the Y capacitor when they're not building these to real standards anyway. Maybe the interference affecting the operation of touchscreens is prevented somewhat.
i dont know anything about electricity but when i watch these videos somehow i know what you talking about :) love know what the inside of things look like and if safe lol
I have just disassembled an LED lamp (Lloytron) that was running extremely hot, somewhere in the region of 70-80 degree's C. It didn't have 10 1watt LED's but 20 1watt LED's
Did you measure the current they're being driven at? Maybe they're being driven at half power which would be good for their longevity.
That 'fuse' makes me think it's engineers might have taken the phrase "fight fire with fire" a little too seriously.
Show us Your LED lamp.. Place.. Im so curious how much you have!
Clive, for the LED lamp you could drill a hole through the bottom of the plastic base (where there is no metal), take the cable out through it and solder it to the top of the thread :-).
good review
I have a flat one that look exactly the same with a US plug, it's rated for 0.15A. Now I want to take it apart. I don't use it for charging of course. It came with an optical audio DAC from eBay.
Hmm...different PCB inside. Better quality. Looks to be about 1mm isolation, proper Y rated blue capacitor between the input and output side, full wave rectifier on the AC input, bigger transistor (MOSFET? it's a larger package with a hole through it, but no heatsink), slightly taller transformer. I have used this one to charge my phone before and it at least shows as charging.
The cubical one does ape Apple's USB power supply in a couple of ways, at least the North American version. The overall size and shape seems the same, except for the difference in the mains pins. It also has the green dot on the back, which later Apple units had to distinguish them from some very early faulty ones.
EDIT: I looked to see what the mainland europe (CEE?) style adapter looked like, wondering if it was just like the North American one but with round pins like that, and instead discovered that's the hexagonal sort of one is apeing.
Okay, peoples, lets vote on if you want big Clive to put the thing back together, fill the case with salt water, and plug it in for a bang-up ending! :)
My friend had one of those bad usb power supplies although it wasn't as bad as the one that could only put out 20ma although it was missing the capacitor across the transformer that stops you feeling a tingle then you plug it in so I gave my friend a proper apple charger
i had one that made the headphones hum when i plugged it in, when i touched the fingerpringt reader the hum stopped
Watching the voltage slowly crawl up to barely 5V @ 20mA got me laughing so hard I ended up in a coughing jag. And the we discover the crap circuit doing that. What a hoot. They should sell ‘em as photoshopped NFTs ;-)
Instead of those adaptors you can jam a pair of scissors in the earth of the British plug to get the Europe ones in. They also sell little plastic thingamabobs here that plug in the socket and open the shutters with a dummy earth pin but leave the business holes exposed through two openings in the thingamabob.
I have that exact same wedge power supply. It came with a phone that was purchased off of ebay. With it being the american version, you could literally bend the prongs off with minimal effort
can you take apart a brand name wall adapter to compare?
15+ years ago, energy efficiency wasn't much of a concern for most electronics users and switching supplies operated at relatively low frequencies where good coupling between windings was not critical. To meet today's requirements for high efficiency, high power in tiny form factors though, coupling between windings has to be much tighter to reduce leakage inductance while switching frequencies had to go up drastically to enable the use of smaller magnetic components and capacitors, cutting the amount of separation you can afford before incurring performance penalties by that much.
Regulations-wise, how seemingly well built the transformer might be is of little importance as long as it passes hi-pot tests. Put 1.5kVDC between primary/feedback and secondary, see how much current it leaks. If the transformer is good, that should be in the micro-amps. (Or hook up a 2.2uF capacitor charged to 1.5kV and see if you get a bang.)
Enamel dipping might be an option to seal and bind the windings to make them less likely to fail over time from vibrations and environmental conditions but that might cause performance and EMC issues due to parasitic capacitance coupling.
That said, the only reason I can think of for the first adapater to lack any sort of additional separation between feedback and secondary is reckless cheapness.
I wonder if your USB power meter wouldn't measure the current as it powered up under load?
In my local Chinese outlet that sells unregulated products they are selling chargers that say “designed by Appvy in California”...
Have you decided which camera you're going to get?
If not, take a look at the Canon G7XII. I'm using that for M$my channel, it is also a top-down view channel mostly.
So, where would one plug in the second USB charger? it wouldn't fit into any standard power sockets i know of.