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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

The TCO for something that can operate similarly to a computer, should be around 50 USD (micro-USB cable, HDMI cable, eth/wlan adapter, case).

But all in all it's an impressive little machine that can do wonders for small home/school projects.

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Don't be ridiculous. $5 will get you 80% of these peripherals from eBay. Especially if you're on the budget.

Sure if you fancy the risk of your house going up in flames because you bought some dodgy no-name power supply knocked out in a Chinese electronics sweatshop.

How big is that a risk, though? Serious question - because I'm really considering using Chinese USB power supply units as power sources for my home automation project. I've been using one of those units for the last 5 days with no visible problems - no overheating, no noise, etc.

For that application it is better to get officially imported ones (eg. CE-marked in Europe), where at least the importer is vouching that the design meets minimum safety requirements.

See http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-ap... for some horror stories about crap USB chargers.

Mine[0] has CE on the back, but this is China, they print anything and everything on the back...

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10632118

I guess there's a market for importing Chinese USB chargers from Europe into China then ;)

But yep, the CE mark is related to the importing paperwork so only signifies something inside EU, would be interesting to know if it's a positive or negative quality signal inside China...

CE stands for Chinese Engineering :D

Close.. I believe it actually is 'Chinese Export' when you ask but the goal is the same, to imply certification (o;

CE is worthless, what you want is a proper certification such as GS, TUV, UL or CCC (possibly others).

I used to think that until I read these articles:

http://www.righto.com/2014/05/a-look-inside-ipad-chargers-pr...

http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and...

Yes the articles are about fake and counterfeit power adapters but I expect these el-cheapo units have many of the same design and safety flaws due to cost cutting. Personally I'm taking no chances.

Anecdotal, but I replaced my eeepc's charger with a cheap compatible charger from ebay and about a year later, I heard some buzzing on the speakers at my desk followed by a bang at my feet. The caps blew the wall wart's case right open. :\

I'm not sure that low voltage 0.5-2amp power supplies can short that badly to cause fire, but heck anything is possible. That said you can find lots of old original cellphone chargers on Ebay or just get them at yard sale or thrift/goodwill stores for about a 1$ each easily. Even if it's not a micro/mini USB power adapter most of the old Nokia chargers have pretty much the same voltage output as USB, those that are close enough can still be used (normal USB power isn't overly reliable and it's heavily rectified on the consuming end any how), worse case you'll need to add a resistor but even that's not an issue. I've powered USB powered devices with 5.5V power bricks and none of them failed on me ever (due to power supply issues any how).

Yes most Chinese cheap power supplies are very dodge indeed, but unless you are using them to charge a device with power-sense and fast-charge that drives much higher current through than USB would normally provide it shouldn't be an issue, the normal USB power specifications are very dirty and lose, in many PC's USB is grounded to the case itself which makes it a very noise power source, but considering it's only 5v and 0.5amp usually it's easily rectified with cheap solid state components so it's not an issue.

I always dismount cheap power supplies, to see their quality for myself. I check for creepage, clearance distances, noise filtering circuits, transformer quality, grounding quality if appropriate, build quality, circuit sophistication, appropriate wire gauge, protection fuses, etc.

Some of those I checked had none of the above.

I enjoy understanding electronic circuits.

But it is also important, I believe. Just reading the list of unsafe banned products from EU markets, a lot of the time it is these cheap power adapters. And I can absolutely understand why.

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