Archive for August 2015

Car USB charger teardown

Here is a teardown of a cheap car USB charger (few us dollars). It worked well for years, but started to be unreliable one day. So I had to take a look what is inside: The issue seemed to be bad ground/- connection. A little bit of soldering could fix this.. Posted from WordPress for →

Biltema grounded universal travel adapter

I bought this is universal travel adapter from Biltema to be able to connect my laptop power supply with grounded schuko plug hopefully safely to UK power outlets. Many other travel adapters only work well with ungrounded loads (typically either accept only ungrounded plug or leave ground not connected). This is one rare product that →

PLC teardown

PLCs have a long and storied history, with Allen-Bradley itself coining the term “programmable logic controller” in 1971 when it introduced its version of what was then called the “programmable controller.” For anyone who cut their teeth on ladder logic can testify, PLCs at the time were an elegantly simple solution to an age-old problem: →

UK power outlet adapters part 2

I wrote earlier about bad UK power socket adapter. Here is another one – better but not ideal. I used this to connect smart phone charger. The basic construction looks good. You can’t touch the live parts with finger. The UK pins are all metal and not insulated on the upper side like in newer →