inside a cheap and very shitty USB battery charger.
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- At first this looks like a neat little USB charger for NiMh and NiCd cells. Just a basic trickle charger with a current of a 100 to 200mA and a basic cell presence indicator LED. But it's go so many pointless short cuts that it actually left me speechless. I had to pause the video just to check that it was exactly as it looked.
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every time the giant calculator comes out without warning i always chuckle because of how absurd and inconvenient it is
kekejojo1212 It tops the liet for oversized props.
Any time you hear "Eh one moment please", that means something disproportionately terrible has just happened.
🤣
Lol
It's rare to see something shitty enough it makes Clive not believe it could be that shitty and it turns out to be.
8:59 The PCB silkscreen does correctly indicate this product is "BOLLOX"
Tom that it does.
Build Original Lower Logisticly Organic eXtra quality ?
This is why zooming should always be used.
Cry babies with 70" screens be damned.
lol
Well caught. I must admit to saving a screenshot and zooming in to see it. Gave me a chuckle.
I bought 3 of these to rebuild as per Clive’s design to keep my niiMH AA fleet on charge indefinitely. The price itself was well worth the fancy enclosure. All I needed were resistors as the leds came free. The sum of the parts was worth more than the whole. Thanks Clive! Thanks China. I was going to build Clive’s version, repurposing these turned out cheaper and faster. LOL.
I can't see the screen on the calculator. You should get a bigger one.
Or U should get larger glasses
John Howard
You're not allowed to ask for zoom. People get upset about their 60" 4K pixels being misused.
what calculator?
At 8:45 “one resistor for them all, FRIGGING CHIPSKATES!”, says Clive that bought it for 1.79 delivered to the isle of man! LOL! Keep up the great content Clive!
whenever you take that big ass calculator out I always think I'm watching a parody video
aspicboat
I always think his hands are tiny.... and he's playing with really tiny electronics.
tin2001 Donald Trump, electrician 😉
It came from Konami. Calc Calc Revolution
計算する革命を計算する
And imagine someone putting in a fully charged battery upside down.
boom hahaha
Haha diode go brrrrrr
One resistor to rule them all!
And with fire it shall bind them....
All your resistors are belong to us!
Akinaro my precious!
So, Gandalf was really an insulator rather than a resistor, no?
One resistor to rule them all and in the darkness burn your house down!
Aren't those LEDs with built in resistors? Such LEDs do exist.
I think they might have done it to make it so the LED turns on/off when they are charging?
OMG my two favorite electronics geniuses!! _Puts on Goonies sloth voice_ ..... *Heyyy you guyyyys!!*
For this price I expected an empty box.
Coming back to this one from Clive's updated video on the same basic product, it's funny how much has changed. The bench is so clean, the spudger looks so lively and new, the kink palculator has yet to be created, and yet the pen and notebook are still exactly the same.
And of course cheap ebay junk is still cheap ebay junk, just now it's less cheap. 😅
I really love watching your videos despite knowing nothing about engineering and electrics apart from the fact that Im never going to put a knife in a toaster every again
Calvin Cosmos You noticed that real quick eh?
Did you try the tweezers in the outlet yet?
Calvin Cosmos I did that for years as a little kid and never got hurt. It's a miracle I'm not dead
Ive also done it all my life if toast is stuck, then a couple of years ago it sparked and shut off all the electrics, I was perfectly okay if not shocked and scared, thought I broke all the houses electric but luckily it just flipped the safety switch. Never done it again, and now Im fascinated with just how dangerous electricity can be, it only takes a little careless mistake
Hey I actually once put a knife in the toaster but nothing happened, I only touched the knife on one of the coil things tho
I think you should put a flat battery in it and see if you can melt the led then measure the size of the skid mark it leaves in the housing
Considering that @ £1:59 it came all the way from China, with free postage and a string of people along the way presumably reckoning on getting some sort of profit out of it, then i'm amazed that it even manages to be as good as it is.
You can make products that only cost only 1.59 through low quality materials, mass production, and only having to pay your employees a few cents a day.
"Oh no that's the warranty void."
to be fair the old 80's era NiCd chargers weren't that more complex than this
True, but at least they used separate current limiting resistors. :)
quaxk alright matey...I got years outta my 80s rechargeable battery set. used my Sony Walkman on the bus on the backseat smoking ciggies and stomping my feet from 1985 onwards with the mega bass full up and auto reverse kicking on every time !!!. I still have it to this day...but no need for the bus these days !!!
So this with a set of lipo batteries and the shitty pink USB charger is a perfect under $5 gift for the ex?
Add a 4 pack of Trustfire 14500 and you're good to go.
Ultrafire does the job even better
Anything with fire in the name
Yeah, fire... that's the brand I am thinking.
Did you know the work "Brand" in English means "Fire" in Dutch? :)
Wire your own charging circuit in and you get their spring-loaded holders cheap.
When the gargantuan calculator entered the frame (for a split sec) I thought "hm such tiny hands" =D
"its not an good design"
what do you expect for 1,50 delivered from china?
It even surprised me that there was a pcb in it, they could even done this by twisting the legs of the component around some plastic studs. XD
Good point! I suspect either we'll see that in a future iteration, or perhaps these PCBs are rejects from another product the "manufacturer" picked up from the local PCB maker's scrap pile for next to nothing.
I think the PCB was cheaper, because salaries in Shenzhen are rising. The PCB is a single-sided phenolic, and as Shenzhen has been moving towards higher-end and higher complexity products with epoxy based dual sided boards, this got incredibly cheap. Besides, it can still be automatically populated and soldered, with exception of through-hole components and the input leads, which are manually added. There's the whole lot of a few dozen EUR of setup costs and then you can get thousands of these things for basically free. It might as well be a custom ordered board - it doesn't matter. What is a lot more expensive is the enclosure.
@@SianaGearz Through-hole components can be populated with a pick&place machine.
@@katbryce They can - it depends, some can, some can't - but it's a flaky process that is usually avoided if at all possible and sensible.
Did you steal Hagrid's calculator? Love your channel BigClive! So helpful and entertaining. Take it to bits!
Granted this is a crappy charger as BigClive™ demonstrates but at least it allows you to charge one battery at a time. Most of the AA/AAA "value" chargers I see here in the States will only charge in pairs.
Most of the BOM went into the sticky label.
Clive has the best named tools in biz...the vice of knowledge, explosion containment pie pan...I think you call the calculator: the giant calculator of glaucoma 😁
...the X-ray machine...
(AKA hammer) 😂🤣
Had a rechargeable 12V drill with a charger that had the same circuit (different values of course) as you drew first. 18V input from a transformer. The main resistor burned out 3rd time I used it, couldn't check the value, it was about 1W, and the surface was burned off!
There's a current limit built into the led. Test it out by shorting a battery in it and see what happens. Burned up means no limit, still working means limited
I once ordered a USB lithium 18650 charger from Ebay. It had no circuits in it whatsoever....
5V straight over the cell with no current limiter. Now that's a fire starter!
@Dr. M. H. Quite
LOL, the label was the best-engineered part!
that LED trick not putting a resistor seems common anymore, I have had several dollar store USB chargers where they just put a blue LED across the 5V output directly. so far they have all mysteriously stopped working, never considered maybe the LED shorted or something...
I quite like it's case and form factor and the fact that it can charge from USB, if only it had a few more resistors and perhaps an IC or 2 to make it smart.
BigClive, can you short out where one of the cells would plug in ?
Id be interested to see how bright the LED would get before buying out.
On a separate note, buying one of these and modding it with your circuit diagram would make a useful basic charger.
Somehow YT cuts off comments or my "View More" button is missing...
possibly your web browser. are you able to try a different web browser ?
Nevermind, now it works. I guess YT is just buggy as always. I have zoom on to have the videos a bit bigger, since I am on a 4K 32 inch screen.
Don't even bother modding it. Just get a smart charger so you don't kill your batteries.
It's funny that someone new will stumble across this video, watch it, and wonder what happened to Clive's desk for it to be so black.
IF ONLY THEY KNEW THE HORRORS OF WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT!
Hi Clive! You should definitely market the "Clive Spatula" - definitely branded! I have seen you use it to open anoying plastic cases and now to cleanly strip off a sticker. All of us need such a useful and verastile tool! Honestly, it is a simple tool but seemingly very effective. Oh and Scottland should not drop out of the Union (I mean the European one...).
The one thing i have noticed about horrible chargers, LED, USB, light sources, fans, etc is that they have that weird cone looking thing at the end or beginning of it
I enjoyed this video as much as I do most all of Clive's videos, however, I would like to say that I like it better when Clive does the video straight through with no pauses. I know that he does pause it to be prepared to give a thorough explanation, but it kind of takes away from the conversational, off the cuff feel of the videos. I dunno. Like I said, I like them either way, but I liked it better in the past when Clive would just do the video in one shot in exchange for a few seconds of minutes of confusion until he figured out what was going on. Just submitting my opinion. What do you guys think?
I thought the calculator was just close to the camera, then I saw the giant hands.
Meanwhile in China:
"Haa, Clive say it 'very shitty product' ".
"I good at English, Clive mean it a excellent product -- yes, 'shitty' mean good."
"Last week he say "this very dangerous" -- 'dangerous'?"
"He mean our product very good for all family to use."
"What he mean by "One moment, preeese"?
"It mean he have to do poo -- he come back later."
"I a' like the Big Crive -- I wonder he eat much porridge in the Isle of Mens?"
Nope ... He eat fake sushi :-P
Very well worded commentary of the anatomy of the street vendor charger. The vdo also gives the real working principle of such cheap chargers for which one should be aware of their consequences. Thanks.
I liked the circuit it looked quite elegant.
I have seen worse, I took one apart and the LED was in series with the battery so it had all the charging current passing through it, the led started out extremely bright and and got dimmer as the batteries charged, it took a long time to charge any battery. At the time I got it in the late 90's it was not particularly cheap ether, came from a market stall.
Do you remember how much current it passed? Or if the LED stopped current flow before it could be properly fully charged? Do you remember how many clouds were in the sky 3 million seconds ago? I hope so!
I cant believe you have not take a look inside of recharge usb-batteries. they got like usb ports onto batteries. id love seein you taking those apart
In LED lighting with complete strings of them 'in a row', there is going to go a whole lot of current through every separate, individual LED in each string as well, namely the current that is needed to power the total of all the other LEDs in that series. I have always wondered how that was possible, I believe I saw lights with over 30 LEDs (on a chip) per row?
I really love the large calculator.
If a red LED drops 2V and a flat cell drops 1V, then 2V is at the 2.2ohm resistor. The current would be 909mA and most of it is passing through the poor LED. ... WTF ??? :D That's the worst charger I have ever seen. Are you sure the 20ohm resistors are in parallel with the LEDs, not in series? But OK, everything is possible in china...
You here.
You also want to make sure that there is a ripple with this circuit.Dathat's, it's not full d.C.It's not filtered DC, it's pulsating.D c that goes in but you still only get Maybe 1.2 V to 2 V for a nightcat's cell battery charger.Or a nightcat sell one point two lolls one point three volt battery
Am I the only one curious to see what would actually happen when you stick a 0v battery in ._. ?
Guess the reason it came so cheap, they produced a large number with faulty pcb layout ... someone made a mistake with the LED + Resistor not to be in series in the layout, and now they try to get rid of the production lot for pretty much the plain material price.
Is there a possibility that the resistor is somehow built into LED? I'm thinking about those black sleeves or something like 5V led+resistor combo potted in led resin. I'd expect to see inventions like this by now.
These videos are the best thing on youtube .. fullstop.
Yessss! As soon as you started drawing the circuit I kept going "nope, there will be no LED-series resistor - it can work without that, so betcha they left it out". I was not wrong... :D
That was a Lord of the Rings moment - One resistor to rule them all :D
This might be a bit off your field but I am curious of what affect this design would have on the batteries? Perhaps the LED's would 'blow' after some time but that wouldn't really stop the charger from functioning. The problem I see if if a full battery especially NiCd is placed next to a near empty one (or shorted battery) a large current would flow and could cause the circuit to burn out. The other issue I see is a battery is doing extra discharging for the same reason, a depleted battery will pull from a nearby charged one,two or three, as well as a shorted battery would discharge all of them.
For 1.5 Money, it's amazing it even works, heck, most of the money was probably spent on shipping and packaging.
That calculator made me laugh for 5 solid minutes.
this was recommended on yt and im not mad
Shame Poundland don't still sell their USB battery chargers. Never opened one up but I couldn't imagine them being very complicated inside.
I'm pretty sure I did one and it actually had a current regulation circuit inside.
that twang sound is somewhat satisfying.
The legendary cheap pink usb charger from china would fit this perfectly.
i think the led is dual-purposed to take up excess current as batteries near peak
Autocaptions turned "oh yeah theres not a lot in this" into "oh yeah let's get all up in this" lol
They are cheap, and they are shitty, but for me they have had a great purpose... I got a few of them as battery "frames", removing all the electronic components from inside and changing the USB cable to an XT30 connector to use it for charging AA and AAA batteries, both NiMH and Li-Ion, via my Imax B6AC hobby charger (a real one, not a chinese clone). I even cut 2 of them up in a way to make an extra long one for charging my NH-14WM gumstick batteries. I find that the spring loading mechanism is pretty useful and that, and the plastic itself, weren't at all bad on the ones I got. As they are, they are pretty bad, but, they can have a purpose.
Since this is supposed to be a USB powered charger, doesn't the single current limiting resistor limit the total current draw meaning that one battery would charge faster than four, but the total current draw would remain within (sort of) the USB port specs irrespective of how many batteries are being charged, and what their charge level is ?
You should see how reliable the circuit boards on these DIY powerbank kits are on Ebay.
Not reliable. Trust me
Question time! When you checked for a diode on the +5v side of the circuit, you used the red lead on the meter on the USB +5v line, correct? Wouldn't a diode have allowed current to pass in that direction? Power should flow through +5v and out to the 0v side the way that you tested even with a diode, should it not? The black connection on the meter is the connection to ground, right? And the red side is the positive side? Just trying to clear up my confusion, enjoying the video so far!
He checked it with diode test mode, there you measure forward bias first, this should have shown 0.7 on the display as that is the forward bias voltage drop of a diode. It however showed 0.4 and beeped, as that is too low for a healthy diode! Had he be measuring continuity, the display would have read 0 for 0 Ohms - it would not beep in that mode if the display wasn't 0!
You might want to take a look at the Ikea vinninge 2 battery USB charger
ok ! im a programmer.. and it's 5 am here , i don't know why i'm here.. but i just love to watch those numbers and calculations... wow !
5:47 it's the debbil's resistance! Love the giant calculator!
Are 18650 chargers that cheap? with 4 holders? not that you could trust them but the holders may be useful.
It seems like they had a pile of components in a bin and the boss said make something from this junk and so they did.
if you placed 2 batteries in with 1 upside down. could that possibly light the LED's because of the absence of a diode?
Really like to see ZMI PB401 inside.
They used this circuit because when the cell is fully charged the current will not pass through the led and it will not light up Indicating that the battery is fully charged.
Interesting... I bought some 2400 mAh NiMh batteries to replace the old Ni-cd for my AOR Radio, which is quite power hungry. Unfortunately I could not get them to fit "side by side" without quite a lot of force, which reulted in damaging the outer insulation and shorting the batteries. Ooops. It apppears that these higher capacity NiMh are somewhat fatter in diameter than a standard battery, around 0.3mm which adds up when you have four side by side. So people beware, if you have a tight fit appliance. After buying various other good brands I found some " Fusion Max" cells which are NiMh 800mAh and do a reasonable job. So it seems the higher capacity are bigger.
Funny, there are dirt-cheap microcontrollers and ASICs for everything these days, they probably cost less then a discrete resistor, and charging batteries is not exactly rocket science.
I love the little dodgy LED, it's just like the power LED cheap Sony stereo downstairs, only lights up when poked... :P
And that label, does it not know that resistance is futile? :P
Are they constant current LEDs with an integrated IC driver? Perhaps try measuring one outside the charger.
Expensive = expected
Cheap = odd, weird, special.
So we choose...
i do believe i have a multimeter like that one
resister upgrade for faster unaversal battery chargers . is one thing I'm looking for
Plug it into a solar power bank during sunshine, charge for 2 h, repeat it 3x. This trick allpies to nearly everything, thin Nokia batteries may need 5 8 repeats to fix them completely.
If I had money to burn on frivolities, I'd gift Clive a Ducky Pocket. It's a calculator with mechanical keyboard keys (it also doubles as a keyboard numpad). The drawback would be that it needs to be powered by USB to work with all its bells and whistles, like the adjustable color key backlighting. And of course the whole $70 cost thing.
well at least we know it could charge a lithium cell....
I expected the single resistor, but not the weird-ass LED arrangement.
I can't see how you would run the individual charging LEDs (without the weird arrangement) with only a single resistor.
I can't believe he printed the product page
Clive's design would have cost a whole lot more to implement. His required a total of eight resistors, while the cheap shitty design only used five, and no diode to prevent back-feeding. Sure, it's a shitty design, worthy of any Poundland electronics aisle, but think of how many Yuan were saved across a run of maybe a hundred thousand units!
Oh no, not the warranty!
someone forgot they owned too many USB doctors haha
Wiggle that LED Clive, go on, wiggle it, just a little bit...
Clive, I have seen some of your doodles where there is a diode in line with a LED. The question begs, if you have a LED in a line, why is the diode needed? Perhaps due to a lower forward voltage?
+Jeff Lewis LEDs are not designed to block reverse voltage. They can only handle about 5v.
bigclivedotcom Taphat answers a lot! In this case, there was only 5V in, but that is too close for my taste.
You can build it for lithium ions, By using 4 tp4056. Now where to put them?
it's not very often that Big Clive is left speechless :)
As for the low cost, we are not the target market. These are manufactured by the Thousands.. for the Chinese domestic market. Plus the postal agreement between countries allows those of us living outside China to take advantage of these gems in the rough.
I have this exact device. seems fine.
Just don't put them in the wrong way, and take them out when charged.
I ended up buying one of those amecal meters last year and its been pretty good. I havent tried mains or any thing evil with it though.
Install color changing LED's in it to make it more fashionable.
Oh no, that's the warranty void. 😂🤣
sir i saw a video on you tube saying that if we connect a p mosfet to vcc nd battery out +terminal of tp4056 we can get a chargering current upto 10amps....
It seems to me, that a proper circuit (such as you described) would have been cheaper.