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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 devic

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 this, but poor interoperability is such a pain that it would be nice to have stronger guarantees.

yreg 3y ago
Yes, mandating this on consumer devices is quite sensible. At least adhere to the spec to such a level that it won't destroy other hardware.
can16358p 3y ago
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, but since probably none of us check for a USB-A port to see if it outputs 7.5V, it better be mandatory to be certified. Though, maybe it is, but still those cheap Chinese adapters slip away.
- nicolaslem 3y ago
  From my experience appliances tolerate a wide range of voltages. The outlets in my house routinely deviate from the standard 230V, with the lowest I have seen at 170V and highest at about 260V. I have not had any appliance malfunction. Edit: I am not advising anyone to deliberately do stupid things, simply mentioning that from my experience the builtin margin is fairly large.
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    Anything with an AC/DC transformation would be fine, anything with an AC motor would be not. Partially, not the every compressor in a refrigerator would tolerate that. But 170V... yikes!
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Most of them are either 110-240V appliances, or lose performance when it goes around 170, and you may not notice. 260V is in +/- 10% threshold and is possibly falls within "engineered in tolerance" range, but will probably shorten the life of many appliances if supplied constantly.
  - etimberg 3y ago
    Are you measuring RMS voltage or just the instantaneous voltage? An RMS voltage of 230V corresponds with a peak voltage of ~325V so reading of 260V could theoretically happen.
    - nicolaslem 3y ago
      That's the reading from my UPS, I believe it's RMS since it reads 234 V currently.
    - mike50 3y ago
      That's not how it works. For a sine wave the integral converts to Vpeak/Sqrt(2)
  - lxgr 3y ago
    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.
    - nicolaslem 3y ago
      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.
- cesarb 3y ago
  > 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 might be colored red, they might have a yellow sticker saying "220V" next to it, or they might be completely unmarked. If your device is 127V only, or it has a manual 127V/220V switch which is on the 127V position, and you plug it into one of these 220V sockets, it will be damaged. (The standard we use for consumer AC power plugs and sockets, NBR 14136, does not make a distinction between voltages; the same plugs and sockets are used for both 127V and 220V.)
  - _3u10 3y ago
    Plus there’s 240V in Paraguay. I travel with cheap universal adapters and never have any problems.
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    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 installed correctly) you can’t make mistakes without illegal and dangerous modifications. In the standard socket, you can have 10 amp, 15 amp or 20 amp, and they all have different sized pins. For the 15 amp plug and socket, the ground pin is larger, so a 15 amp plug cannot fit into a 10 amp socket. A 20 amp plug has all three pins larger, so it doesn’t fit in a 10 amp or 15 amp socket. 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. For bigger stuff, or anything three-phase, you then have big industrial circular ones, which I think have a similar system to not let you plug a higher current device into a socket that can’t supply enough current. I believe there are also three phase plugs and sockets both with neutral and without neutral, and if the plug has a neutral pin it doesn’t fit into a socket that doesn’t supply neutral.
- kayfox 3y ago
  > 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.
- baq 3y ago
  > 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. Overvoltage is now routine in places where there's lots of PV installed in homes and not enough load nearby. If you live in such a place, you have a deep appreciation of varistors and should have either good insurance or a little bit of soldering skills... preferably both.
  - xenadu02 3y ago
    > Overvoltage is now routine in places where there's lots of PV installed in homes and not enough load nearby. Every solar inverter / microinverter manufactured in the past two decades (if not older) must monitor the grid voltage+frequency and disconnect if it falls outside of a certain tolerance. If things go out of tolerance there is a defined period of time where it must recover or the inverter is required to trip out. There are also hard safety limits that cannot be exceeded whatsoever. I am not aware of any conditions that would result in overvoltage. In CA as of (IIRC) 2021 these systems must be hooked up to some kind of online monitoring so the utility can temporarily command them to exceed tolerances. If the grid is going unstable due to load the last thing you want is everyone's PV system tripping off making the supply situation worse. So the utility can inform the system to exceed the normally tight tolerances by a larger deviation. They can also command PVs systems to shut off but there are strict limits on how often and how long they can do that and it must be driven by grid stability needs.
    - baq 3y ago
      Yes, absolutely, same here. The problem is varistors blow out before the safety measures work. Perhaps due to wear or low quality, but this still happens.
      - xenadu02 3y ago
        I'm not sure how a single inverter failure could drive voltage high. Or how a varistor failure could cause a problem... The inverter has to perform a DC-AC conversion and has many more ways to fail safe than unsafe but I'm not saying it is impossible. I've seen some oddball things. But it certainly isn't a widespread issue. Smart meters report voltage, the utilities would know if this was happening and given how much they hate rooftop solar they'd be yelling about it if they could.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wiredfool 3y ago
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.
- currency 3y ago
  There's a deceptively similar mark that stands for China Export and does not indicate EU certification[0]. [0]https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-china-export-markings/ https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-c...
  - cjrp 3y ago
    Wow, that's incredibly close. I assumed there would be a public database of CE (European) approved devices or manufacturers, but I can't find one from a quick search.
    - blibble 3y ago
      CE mark (the real one) is self certified
    - dagw 3y ago
      The CE marking is a self certification program, and there isn't an approval process. All the can happen is that you can get fined after the fact for applying the mark to products which don't fulfil the necessary requirements.
      - anilakar 3y ago
        Technically it is a self-certification program, since it's the device manufacturer who signs the certificate, but that's not the whole truth. A manufacturer still needs to prove compliance (in the case of the EMC directive, either Annex II or III) or slapping on the mark is just fraud.
  - 3y ago
thriftwy 3y ago
Why not have efficient law and just sue large sums out of misbehaving manufacturers? Then you no longer punish the innocent.
- lxgr 3y ago
  If you can get a hold of the manufacturer, sure. But don’t count on Amazon or other marketplaces helping you with that: They’re not a reseller, as they’ll be happy to tell you; no liability! (And no responsibility for collecting customs payments either.)
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    Make Amazon sign up for compulsory customer protection insurance if they want to share the liability with somebody, otherwise it's all theirs.
ricardobeat 3y ago
That CE marking on the adapter is probably fake - how would it have passed certification while outputting a voltage 50% higher than spec?
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  All the CE marking indicates is that the product complies with European specifications. As far as I know, there are no EU/EEA specifications regarding the voltage of an USB port. This may violate the USB spec and burn out phones, but it's not necessarily undeserving of the CE mark.
  - ricardobeat 3y ago
    Turns out the new regulation for chargers and USB-C universal compatibility actually demands USB Power Delivery [1] support, but I guess it's too early to expect compliance with that. Even without that, one would hope that part of the compliance tests includes actual compliance with whatever port specification is being used - I don't think any part of the USB spec allows for 7.5V, but I might be wrong. You just wouldn't expect, say, a portable battery to have a standard Schuko plug but output 330V while bearing the CE mark. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32022L2380 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      I quote from the regulation you linked: > The requirements set out in points 2 and 3 of this Part shall apply to the following categories or classes of radio equipment: > 1.1. handheld mobile phones; > 1.2. tablets; > 1.3. digital cameras; > 1.4. headphones; > 1.5. headsets; > 1.6. handheld videogame consoles; > 1.7. portable speakers; > 1.8. e-readers; > 1.9. keyboards; > 1.10. mice; > 1.11. portable navigation systems; > 1.12. earbuds; > 1.13. laptops. Unless you can convince your local standards authority that the cat water fountain you bought is actually a weird looking portable speaker, I don't think this law applies her. Unfortunate, really, because USB port really shouldn't use non-standard voltages. I'm sure there's some consumer protection law you could use in court to make the manufacturer pay for damage if they damaged your devices (there are a bunch of "a product should work like you would expect" types of laws sprinkled across consumer protection laws) but I don't think this violates CE standards.
lucideer 3y ago
> mandatory certification (enforced by patents/other IP protections) > The hacker in me hates the idea If the hacker in you really hates this, then why insist on enforcing via means that restrict both vendor and user freedom (IP) instead of regulatory enforcement that exclusively targets vendors & leaves hackers free to hack?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Hackers want not just hack for themselves but share the product of their craft with other parties without going through fences.
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    Some do. Some don’t. The various uses of the term “hacking” do not universally require tech to be shared. Long before RMS and other ideology-oriented types, people were adapting commercial tech to local purposes which the vendor didn’t intend and wouldn’t endorse.
  - lucideer 3y ago
    Are you implying that regulation need put up more such fences than IP restrictions?
- denotational 3y ago
  What would the regulatory enforcement look like? If I develop a new connector, how do I get the regulator to start enforcing that everyone who uses it is following my standard? What happens when I find a way to extend the specification in a safe, backwards compatible manner, but this conflicts with the standard as enforced by the regulator? I’m not saying that these are insurmountable problems, but I feel like the regulator should focus on issues such as safety, and interoperability should be enforced by the company/consortium that develops the standard in the first place.
ReptileMan 3y ago
I don't see how making sure that when something looks and quacks like a duck is actually a duck conflicts with the hacker ethos. The more standardized things are - the easier it is to build something. I love that I can take any combination of DIN parts and suppliers and know they will play nicely. Also there are a lot of standardized higher voltage connectors. this case is incompetence or negligence from manufacturer - and those are against everything hacking is about
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
I think the thing that would let me stomach it is 1. Only legally mandating it for consumer devices / sold on the open market / commercial entities manufacturing it, or whatever the sensible way to structure that sentiment is, and 2. USB supports negotiating higher power settings, so you're not artificially limiting what's possible, just enforcing a safe worst case. If you need some USB connector that carries a kW you can theoretically still do that, you just have to not default to putting 100+ volts across the power pins the moment the thing is plugged in.
- verandaguy 3y ago
  Re: 2: as you likely already know, this is a (major, pretty well thought out) part of newer usb standards. Unfortunately there’s no realistic way to backport this to older usb accessories. You can’t push an OTA update to the author’s wall wart.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    I thought it worked fine with devices that had never been updated because you start from the very oldest spec and the lowest power and then both devices have to negotiate up? I mean, sure you won't get better performance or power out of an old device but it's at least safe which is good enough for me, and for bonus points it's likely to work at some reduced level.
    - verandaguy 3y ago
      Yup, that's how it works, but you unfortunately can't retrofit out-of-spec devices like the author's to be within spec at scale.
gumby 3y ago
> The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this, but poor interoperability is such a pain that it would be nice to have stronger guarantees. For pure consumer products (whatever that means) safety standards are quite reasonable. There are already legal requirements in the USA that plugs have certain shapes controlling orientation, grounding, and expected voltage, as well as building code so that people don’t trip over long power cables. Food safety means you can pick up something at the shop and have some faith it won’t kill you. This reduces cognitive overhead and doesn’t require you to be an expert in every domain. It also doesn’t stop you from hacking your own stuff (mostly — please don’t mix ammonia and bleach!) and easily provides you a bunch of dependable items on which you can build your hacks. So you can (briefly!) supply 100 amps of 240V AC over USB A at home if you want, you just can’t sell it. You can make yoghurt at home and store it on the counter in the sun if you want, no problem.
avgcorrection 3y ago
It’s difficult enough to figure out which side goes up. I can’t worry about this as well.
maxerickson 3y ago
USB does control use of their marks, it would probably be new law to prevent use of the physical arrangement.
- denotational 3y ago
  > new law to prevent use of the physical arrangement Even if the connector itself were patented?
insanitybit 3y ago
> The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this As long as you are free to modify the hardware or purchase specific non-conforming hardware I see no reason why this would be painful for a hacker.
alexpotato 3y ago
> pushes me to support mandatory certification It wasn't mandatory but this is one of the main reasons Underwriter's Laboratory was started. The market needed a certification to say "yes, this things does what it's says it does and in a safe manner". My dad owned a retail store in the 1970s and he distinctly remember being told "Lots of retailers won't carry a brand/item unless it has the 'UL' sticker on it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)
- latchkey 3y ago
  These days, any thing can have any sticker.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    Decent chance there is a little ul logo on the cat water fountain.
  - f1shy 3y ago
    Specially TÜV. Means near nothing.
- zwirbl 3y ago
  Would this be comparable to a CE marking in Europe or more like a TÜV certification?
  - Robelius 3y ago
    Sort of. UL and CE are certifications that declare a a product confirms to the standards defined by those groups. The main difference is that UL only focuses on product safety (i.e. Shock and mechanical hazards), while CE covers product safety plus environmental and health requirements. UL is technically a global standard, but mostly used in USA/Canada. That's only two countries which already have laws governing what can and cannot be put in a consumer device. I'm not as familiar with the history of CE, so I don't know why CE decided to cover environmental standards. But my speculation is that it's because CE covers ~30 countries with a larger range of laws.
beej71 3y ago
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.]
- dehrmann 3y ago
  It's not just USB-A. You can assume your US-style wall outlet is ~115 V, 60 Hz. Cigarette lighters in cars are 12-ish V.
- creaturemachine 3y ago
  It's likely that they are trying to avoid support calls from users plugging into whatever USB port is on their dash that might not supply enough current, or is intended for media/AA/Carplay and forcing the camera into interfacing with the infotainment system.
jayd16 3y ago
Mandatory how? Won't they just ship an uncertified adapter anyway?
- denotational 3y ago
  Patent the connector and enforce it aggressively.
JohnFen 3y ago
> The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this Why? I'm not sure what being a hacker has to do with it, but this sort of thing would benefit everybody and harm nobody except for the negligent.
rollcat 3y ago
This. Nintendo comes to mind; charging the Switch (the earlier models IIRC) with a third-party adapter was a lottery, and the losing prize was a fried console. They've been guilty of this practice for as long as they've been making electronics - I think it was the NES or the SNES that used a standard barrel jack and voltage, but reversed the polarity, with no circuit to protect the console. Also - using Ethernet ports/cables for serial console access is not even evil, it's just stupid. Granted the switches/routers that do this are not exactly SOHO equipment, but you need to let students in a lab near that, and it's just asking for trouble.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > Nintendo comes to mind; charging the Switch (the earlier models IIRC) with a third-party adapter was a lottery, and the losing prize was a fried console. The problem you're thinking of was caused by a Nyko third-party docking station with a faulty hardware implementation of USB-PD. While Nintendo's software implementation of USB-PD was flawed in some ways, it didn't cause this problem. > I think it was the NES or the SNES that used a standard barrel jack and voltage, but reversed the polarity, with no circuit to protect the console There is, sadly, no "standard" polarity for barrel power jacks. Center-positive and center-negative are both fairly common.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    > While Nintendo's software implementation of USB-PD was flawed in some ways, it didn't cause this problem. I stand corrected. The dock however, still rejects non-Nintendo chargers. I have an MBP, a Thinkpad, an iPad, and a Switch - every device works with each other's (and third-party) chargers, except the Switch, when docked.
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      I think these usb-c pd (and other) issues were corrected in the oled switches and the docks that come with them but the fixes might not have been total. This comment, specifically about some of the technical details of the video out stuff points to at least some changes were done in the new generation: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/171c3mj/comment/k3q0we2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/171c3mj/comme... Someone can correct me on this as well. I've noticed that my switch will charge properly and quickly on their provided charger and a few other usb-c chargers I have but not certain other ones where it charges much slower. My theory has been that not all usb-c chargers are compatible with all voltages and that perhaps the switch's 'preferred fast-charge voltage' is somewhat uncommon (i think it's 17v?). Can anyone confirm this is how these things work? I just assume there is a negotiation where the charger says 'I can supply these voltages, and perhaps at these max amps, and the device choses one or none of them depending on it's needs.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Could that ever really help? The vast majority of devices do this correctly, even from the cheap, nameless manufacturers cranking stuff out for sale in marginal retail outlets. I suspect even if there was some sort of legislation or accountability that this particular culprit would have pulled the same stunt. They'd have relied on the fact that it's difficult to track down who manufactured the item, that there'd be little incentive to do so by anyone who became aware of it, and that they'd be safe from repercussions across some international border. I think your initial instinct is right.
eternityforest 3y ago
I'd rather see specific laws against bad voltages on USB. Isn't there already some law somewhere against things that are so obviously not what a consumer would expect?

yreg 3y ago

Yes, mandating this on consumer devices is quite sensible. At least adhere to the spec to such a level that it won't destroy other hardware.

can16358p 3y ago

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, but since probably none of us check for a USB-A port to see if it outputs 7.5V, it better be mandatory to be certified. Though, maybe it is, but still those cheap Chinese adapters slip away.

nicolaslem 3y ago
From my experience appliances tolerate a wide range of voltages. The outlets in my house routinely deviate from the standard 230V, with the lowest I have seen at 170V and highest at about 260V. I have not had any appliance malfunction. Edit: I am not advising anyone to deliberately do stupid things, simply mentioning that from my experience the builtin margin is fairly large.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Anything with an AC/DC transformation would be fine, anything with an AC motor would be not. Partially, not the every compressor in a refrigerator would tolerate that. But 170V... yikes!
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Most of them are either 110-240V appliances, or lose performance when it goes around 170, and you may not notice. 260V is in +/- 10% threshold and is possibly falls within "engineered in tolerance" range, but will probably shorten the life of many appliances if supplied constantly.
- etimberg 3y ago
  Are you measuring RMS voltage or just the instantaneous voltage? An RMS voltage of 230V corresponds with a peak voltage of ~325V so reading of 260V could theoretically happen.
  - nicolaslem 3y ago
    That's the reading from my UPS, I believe it's RMS since it reads 234 V currently.
  - mike50 3y ago
    That's not how it works. For a sine wave the integral converts to Vpeak/Sqrt(2)
- lxgr 3y ago
  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.
  - nicolaslem 3y ago
    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.
cesarb 3y ago
> 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 might be colored red, they might have a yellow sticker saying "220V" next to it, or they might be completely unmarked. If your device is 127V only, or it has a manual 127V/220V switch which is on the 127V position, and you plug it into one of these 220V sockets, it will be damaged. (The standard we use for consumer AC power plugs and sockets, NBR 14136, does not make a distinction between voltages; the same plugs and sockets are used for both 127V and 220V.)
- _3u10 3y ago
  Plus there’s 240V in Paraguay. I travel with cheap universal adapters and never have any problems.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  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 installed correctly) you can’t make mistakes without illegal and dangerous modifications. In the standard socket, you can have 10 amp, 15 amp or 20 amp, and they all have different sized pins. For the 15 amp plug and socket, the ground pin is larger, so a 15 amp plug cannot fit into a 10 amp socket. A 20 amp plug has all three pins larger, so it doesn’t fit in a 10 amp or 15 amp socket. 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. For bigger stuff, or anything three-phase, you then have big industrial circular ones, which I think have a similar system to not let you plug a higher current device into a socket that can’t supply enough current. I believe there are also three phase plugs and sockets both with neutral and without neutral, and if the plug has a neutral pin it doesn’t fit into a socket that doesn’t supply neutral.
kayfox 3y ago
> 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.
baq 3y ago
> 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. Overvoltage is now routine in places where there's lots of PV installed in homes and not enough load nearby. If you live in such a place, you have a deep appreciation of varistors and should have either good insurance or a little bit of soldering skills... preferably both.
- xenadu02 3y ago
  > Overvoltage is now routine in places where there's lots of PV installed in homes and not enough load nearby. Every solar inverter / microinverter manufactured in the past two decades (if not older) must monitor the grid voltage+frequency and disconnect if it falls outside of a certain tolerance. If things go out of tolerance there is a defined period of time where it must recover or the inverter is required to trip out. There are also hard safety limits that cannot be exceeded whatsoever. I am not aware of any conditions that would result in overvoltage. In CA as of (IIRC) 2021 these systems must be hooked up to some kind of online monitoring so the utility can temporarily command them to exceed tolerances. If the grid is going unstable due to load the last thing you want is everyone's PV system tripping off making the supply situation worse. So the utility can inform the system to exceed the normally tight tolerances by a larger deviation. They can also command PVs systems to shut off but there are strict limits on how often and how long they can do that and it must be driven by grid stability needs.
  - baq 3y ago
    Yes, absolutely, same here. The problem is varistors blow out before the safety measures work. Perhaps due to wear or low quality, but this still happens.
    - xenadu02 3y ago
      I'm not sure how a single inverter failure could drive voltage high. Or how a varistor failure could cause a problem... The inverter has to perform a DC-AC conversion and has many more ways to fail safe than unsafe but I'm not saying it is impossible. I've seen some oddball things. But it certainly isn't a widespread issue. Smart meters report voltage, the utilities would know if this was happening and given how much they hate rooftop solar they'd be yelling about it if they could.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wiredfool 3y ago

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.

currency 3y ago
There's a deceptively similar mark that stands for China Export and does not indicate EU certification[0]. [0]https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-china-export-markings/ https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-c...
- cjrp 3y ago
  Wow, that's incredibly close. I assumed there would be a public database of CE (European) approved devices or manufacturers, but I can't find one from a quick search.
  - blibble 3y ago
    CE mark (the real one) is self certified
  - dagw 3y ago
    The CE marking is a self certification program, and there isn't an approval process. All the can happen is that you can get fined after the fact for applying the mark to products which don't fulfil the necessary requirements.
    - anilakar 3y ago
      Technically it is a self-certification program, since it's the device manufacturer who signs the certificate, but that's not the whole truth. A manufacturer still needs to prove compliance (in the case of the EMC directive, either Annex II or III) or slapping on the mark is just fraud.
- 3y ago

thriftwy 3y ago

Why not have efficient law and just sue large sums out of misbehaving manufacturers? Then you no longer punish the innocent.

lxgr 3y ago
If you can get a hold of the manufacturer, sure. But don’t count on Amazon or other marketplaces helping you with that: They’re not a reseller, as they’ll be happy to tell you; no liability! (And no responsibility for collecting customs payments either.)
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Make Amazon sign up for compulsory customer protection insurance if they want to share the liability with somebody, otherwise it's all theirs.

ricardobeat 3y ago

That CE marking on the adapter is probably fake - how would it have passed certification while outputting a voltage 50% higher than spec?

jeroenhd 3y ago
All the CE marking indicates is that the product complies with European specifications. As far as I know, there are no EU/EEA specifications regarding the voltage of an USB port. This may violate the USB spec and burn out phones, but it's not necessarily undeserving of the CE mark.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  Turns out the new regulation for chargers and USB-C universal compatibility actually demands USB Power Delivery [1] support, but I guess it's too early to expect compliance with that. Even without that, one would hope that part of the compliance tests includes actual compliance with whatever port specification is being used - I don't think any part of the USB spec allows for 7.5V, but I might be wrong. You just wouldn't expect, say, a portable battery to have a standard Schuko plug but output 330V while bearing the CE mark. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32022L2380 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    I quote from the regulation you linked: > The requirements set out in points 2 and 3 of this Part shall apply to the following categories or classes of radio equipment: > 1.1. handheld mobile phones; > 1.2. tablets; > 1.3. digital cameras; > 1.4. headphones; > 1.5. headsets; > 1.6. handheld videogame consoles; > 1.7. portable speakers; > 1.8. e-readers; > 1.9. keyboards; > 1.10. mice; > 1.11. portable navigation systems; > 1.12. earbuds; > 1.13. laptops. Unless you can convince your local standards authority that the cat water fountain you bought is actually a weird looking portable speaker, I don't think this law applies her. Unfortunate, really, because USB port really shouldn't use non-standard voltages. I'm sure there's some consumer protection law you could use in court to make the manufacturer pay for damage if they damaged your devices (there are a bunch of "a product should work like you would expect" types of laws sprinkled across consumer protection laws) but I don't think this violates CE standards.

lucideer 3y ago

> mandatory certification (enforced by patents/other IP protections) > The hacker in me hates the idea If the hacker in you really hates this, then why insist on enforcing via means that restrict both vendor and user freedom (IP) instead of regulatory enforcement that exclusively targets vendors & leaves hackers free to hack?

thriftwy 3y ago
Hackers want not just hack for themselves but share the product of their craft with other parties without going through fences.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  Some do. Some don’t. The various uses of the term “hacking” do not universally require tech to be shared. Long before RMS and other ideology-oriented types, people were adapting commercial tech to local purposes which the vendor didn’t intend and wouldn’t endorse.
- lucideer 3y ago
  Are you implying that regulation need put up more such fences than IP restrictions?
denotational 3y ago
What would the regulatory enforcement look like? If I develop a new connector, how do I get the regulator to start enforcing that everyone who uses it is following my standard? What happens when I find a way to extend the specification in a safe, backwards compatible manner, but this conflicts with the standard as enforced by the regulator? I’m not saying that these are insurmountable problems, but I feel like the regulator should focus on issues such as safety, and interoperability should be enforced by the company/consortium that develops the standard in the first place.

ReptileMan 3y ago

I don't see how making sure that when something looks and quacks like a duck is actually a duck conflicts with the hacker ethos. The more standardized things are - the easier it is to build something. I love that I can take any combination of DIN parts and suppliers and know they will play nicely. Also there are a lot of standardized higher voltage connectors. this case is incompetence or negligence from manufacturer - and those are against everything hacking is about

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

I think the thing that would let me stomach it is 1. Only legally mandating it for consumer devices / sold on the open market / commercial entities manufacturing it, or whatever the sensible way to structure that sentiment is, and 2. USB supports negotiating higher power settings, so you're not artificially limiting what's possible, just enforcing a safe worst case. If you need some USB connector that carries a kW you can theoretically still do that, you just have to not default to putting 100+ volts across the power pins the moment the thing is plugged in.

verandaguy 3y ago
Re: 2: as you likely already know, this is a (major, pretty well thought out) part of newer usb standards. Unfortunately there’s no realistic way to backport this to older usb accessories. You can’t push an OTA update to the author’s wall wart.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  I thought it worked fine with devices that had never been updated because you start from the very oldest spec and the lowest power and then both devices have to negotiate up? I mean, sure you won't get better performance or power out of an old device but it's at least safe which is good enough for me, and for bonus points it's likely to work at some reduced level.
  - verandaguy 3y ago
    Yup, that's how it works, but you unfortunately can't retrofit out-of-spec devices like the author's to be within spec at scale.

gumby 3y ago

> The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this, but poor interoperability is such a pain that it would be nice to have stronger guarantees. For pure consumer products (whatever that means) safety standards are quite reasonable. There are already legal requirements in the USA that plugs have certain shapes controlling orientation, grounding, and expected voltage, as well as building code so that people don’t trip over long power cables. Food safety means you can pick up something at the shop and have some faith it won’t kill you. This reduces cognitive overhead and doesn’t require you to be an expert in every domain. It also doesn’t stop you from hacking your own stuff (mostly — please don’t mix ammonia and bleach!) and easily provides you a bunch of dependable items on which you can build your hacks. So you can (briefly!) supply 100 amps of 240V AC over USB A at home if you want, you just can’t sell it. You can make yoghurt at home and store it on the counter in the sun if you want, no problem.

avgcorrection 3y ago

It’s difficult enough to figure out which side goes up. I can’t worry about this as well.

maxerickson 3y ago

USB does control use of their marks, it would probably be new law to prevent use of the physical arrangement.

denotational 3y ago
> new law to prevent use of the physical arrangement Even if the connector itself were patented?

insanitybit 3y ago

> The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this As long as you are free to modify the hardware or purchase specific non-conforming hardware I see no reason why this would be painful for a hacker.

alexpotato 3y ago

> pushes me to support mandatory certification It wasn't mandatory but this is one of the main reasons Underwriter's Laboratory was started. The market needed a certification to say "yes, this things does what it's says it does and in a safe manner". My dad owned a retail store in the 1970s and he distinctly remember being told "Lots of retailers won't carry a brand/item unless it has the 'UL' sticker on it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)

latchkey 3y ago
These days, any thing can have any sticker.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  Decent chance there is a little ul logo on the cat water fountain.
- f1shy 3y ago
  Specially TÜV. Means near nothing.
zwirbl 3y ago
Would this be comparable to a CE marking in Europe or more like a TÜV certification?
- Robelius 3y ago
  Sort of. UL and CE are certifications that declare a a product confirms to the standards defined by those groups. The main difference is that UL only focuses on product safety (i.e. Shock and mechanical hazards), while CE covers product safety plus environmental and health requirements. UL is technically a global standard, but mostly used in USA/Canada. That's only two countries which already have laws governing what can and cannot be put in a consumer device. I'm not as familiar with the history of CE, so I don't know why CE decided to cover environmental standards. But my speculation is that it's because CE covers ~30 countries with a larger range of laws.

beej71 3y ago

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.]

dehrmann 3y ago
It's not just USB-A. You can assume your US-style wall outlet is ~115 V, 60 Hz. Cigarette lighters in cars are 12-ish V.
creaturemachine 3y ago
It's likely that they are trying to avoid support calls from users plugging into whatever USB port is on their dash that might not supply enough current, or is intended for media/AA/Carplay and forcing the camera into interfacing with the infotainment system.

jayd16 3y ago

Mandatory how? Won't they just ship an uncertified adapter anyway?

denotational 3y ago
Patent the connector and enforce it aggressively.

JohnFen 3y ago

> The hacker in me hates the idea of enforcing something like this Why? I'm not sure what being a hacker has to do with it, but this sort of thing would benefit everybody and harm nobody except for the negligent.

rollcat 3y ago

This. Nintendo comes to mind; charging the Switch (the earlier models IIRC) with a third-party adapter was a lottery, and the losing prize was a fried console. They've been guilty of this practice for as long as they've been making electronics - I think it was the NES or the SNES that used a standard barrel jack and voltage, but reversed the polarity, with no circuit to protect the console. Also - using Ethernet ports/cables for serial console access is not even evil, it's just stupid. Granted the switches/routers that do this are not exactly SOHO equipment, but you need to let students in a lab near that, and it's just asking for trouble.

duskwuff 3y ago
> Nintendo comes to mind; charging the Switch (the earlier models IIRC) with a third-party adapter was a lottery, and the losing prize was a fried console. The problem you're thinking of was caused by a Nyko third-party docking station with a faulty hardware implementation of USB-PD. While Nintendo's software implementation of USB-PD was flawed in some ways, it didn't cause this problem. > I think it was the NES or the SNES that used a standard barrel jack and voltage, but reversed the polarity, with no circuit to protect the console There is, sadly, no "standard" polarity for barrel power jacks. Center-positive and center-negative are both fairly common.
- rollcat 3y ago
  > While Nintendo's software implementation of USB-PD was flawed in some ways, it didn't cause this problem. I stand corrected. The dock however, still rejects non-Nintendo chargers. I have an MBP, a Thinkpad, an iPad, and a Switch - every device works with each other's (and third-party) chargers, except the Switch, when docked.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    I think these usb-c pd (and other) issues were corrected in the oled switches and the docks that come with them but the fixes might not have been total. This comment, specifically about some of the technical details of the video out stuff points to at least some changes were done in the new generation: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/171c3mj/comment/k3q0we2/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/171c3mj/comme... Someone can correct me on this as well. I've noticed that my switch will charge properly and quickly on their provided charger and a few other usb-c chargers I have but not certain other ones where it charges much slower. My theory has been that not all usb-c chargers are compatible with all voltages and that perhaps the switch's 'preferred fast-charge voltage' is somewhat uncommon (i think it's 17v?). Can anyone confirm this is how these things work? I just assume there is a negotiation where the charger says 'I can supply these voltages, and perhaps at these max amps, and the device choses one or none of them depending on it's needs.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Could that ever really help? The vast majority of devices do this correctly, even from the cheap, nameless manufacturers cranking stuff out for sale in marginal retail outlets. I suspect even if there was some sort of legislation or accountability that this particular culprit would have pulled the same stunt. They'd have relied on the fact that it's difficult to track down who manufactured the item, that there'd be little incentive to do so by anyone who became aware of it, and that they'd be safe from repercussions across some international border. I think your initial instinct is right.

eternityforest 3y ago

I'd rather see specific laws against bad voltages on USB. Isn't there already some law somewhere against things that are so obviously not what a consumer would expect?