My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter

Lidl does this too – the rotary tool Parkside PFBS 12 B3 comes with a charger that&#x27;s obviously not USB-PD, but has an USB-C plug and it puts out a solid 13 volts at all times. (See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kompernass.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;accessories&#x2F;2316&#x2F;charger-8" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kompernass.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;accessories&#x2F;2316&#x2F;charger-8</a> for an image.)<p>I sent Lidl a courteous and long mail about this and they didn&#x27;t really care other than &quot;please open a service ticket with your local Lidl&quot;, which I didn&#x27;t care to do since what would they do?

9v or 12v over USB-A is reasonably common here in Asia... You always need to check the voltage rating before randomly plugging stuff in if it isn&#x27;t from a big manufacturer.<p>For example, the handwarmers I&#x27;m using right now are USB-A at 12 volts, but have a dial to adjust the voltage up and down between 0 volts and 12 volts to adjust the temperature (I think it&#x27;s actually PWM on the 12v power lines, but haven&#x27;t actually checked).<p>5.5V or 6V is also common because it lets you use thin cheap wires which remove about a volt and still can fast charge phones (which tend to be picky and will drop back to 500mA charging if the voltage droops).<p>Big manufacturers <i>also</i> use non-5V over USB sometimes, but you need to send a special message to enable higher voltages, so it&#x27;s safe to plug them into anything. Still troublesome if you&#x27;re using a USB Y-splitter or multi-headeded cable.

I have&#x2F;had this cat water fountain too (my cats are now happy with a normal bowl) and I believe I just threw the wall wart into a box with the rest of my unused USB A wall warts. A little bit like electrical Russian roulette now, I guess.

I was once working on an app for a Clover point of sale system. On the side there is a USB-C port. I plugged my new-ish MacBook Pro into it thinking I would be able to debug, but instead my mac instantly went black. I unplugged it, and eventually it rebooted, but the USB ports on that side never worked again.<p>Turns out that port is intended for connecting a receipt printer, and clearly not in any way a standard USB-C.<p>There is actually a micro usb port elsewhere on the device that can be used for debugging. Lesson learned the hard way.

I am concerned that there are no pictures of the adorable cats in the post.<p>It sound like the manufacturers just see USB-A as a convenient and cheap connector for delivering power.

This actually makes me quite happy that most stuff does not come with a wall adapter anymore these days, but only with a USB plug.<p>There are much worse things than 7V that a bad adapter can output.<p>One of the scariest failure modes I’ve recently learned about is a supply that still provides 5V between both pins – but 225V and 230V to ground, respectively…

I thought he was going to say there was current in the water.<p>I remember showering in Costa Rica at a “hotel” and the shower head was one of those that heats the water (with an electric heater) and it was shocking me the whole time I used it. Probably shouldn’t have used it<p>Apparently those are common in central and South America.

&gt; The idea of a water fountain for cats may sound odd<p>Cats instinctively love &amp; trust moving water as stagnant water can accumulate bacteria &amp; disease.<p>So a cat fountain sounds like a gimmick or novelty but it’s a great idea.

I have the same fountains and I have already roasted an iPad charger on it fountain (I used the charger because it had possibility to connect cable to it instead of plugin directly to the socket). One day it just went out and burnt a little.<p>From that time I tend to use the provided one, but I never noticed it provides a different voltage. Thanks for the warning

I saw a device (a drill or something) that had a standard USB-C plug on it&#x27;s charger. I thought - nice, I can charge a drill with my PD charger or use it&#x27;s charger to charge my phone while I&#x27;m in the garage!<p>But the charger was always giving 12 or even 20V (i don&#x27;t remember exactly, I don&#x27;t have access to this device now).<p>A real trap.

Really informative article thanks, however, I think that &quot;my two adorable cats&quot; should have a link to the two adorable cats.

Increased voltage in itself is okay if done through any of the negotiated power delivery standards such as USB PD<p>Latest USB PD supports up to 48V and up to 5A, resulting in 240W<p>That’s also a reason why not all fast chargers work well for all products – if the required voltage + amperage combination is not supported then the closest supported lower combination will be used instead.<p>That said, 7.5 volt is not a supported voltage in USB PD at least and there seems to be no handshake that guards it in this case

This is the sort of thing that <i>almost</i> (but not quite) pushes me to support mandatory certification (enforced by patents&#x2F;other IP protections) for <i>consumer</i> devices that use a familiar connector like USB.<p>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.<p>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.

This brought back a distant memory of when I bricked my very first MP3 player, a Rio 500. See when Rio 500 was being designed the mini-usb B spec was not finalized yet, so when it was released it came with what looked like a normal mini-usb cable for charging, but in fact the pin-out was different. At some point I tried plugging it in with post 2000 cable and it killed the device.

To be completely fair, those power banks <i>should</i> have a diode (or some protection circuitry) to prevent their damage. A loose cable could easily put higher voltage on the port than 5.25V.<p>That said, what an awful USB port to come across. A little reading wouldn&#x27;t have gone amiss though. My natural reaction would have been to assume it was an output, not an input.

ThermoWorks SmokeX and Signal both use a 12v usbc power adapter. My partner fried her phone on it once due to seeing the cable and assuming it was a normal charger.

I too have tried to use a USB power bank as a kind of DIY UPS to power a Raspberry Pi SBC. What I learned - which may be unrelated to your experience - is that all of the several power banks I tried can be either charging, or powering a device, but not both at the same time. So my Raspberry Pi would run until the power bank got low, then the power bank would cut power to the Pi and charge itself, then power the Raspberry Pi up again. I had to buy a power bank <i>specifically</i> advertised as a USB UPS; that worked fine. The normal power bank seems to be designed to charge a battery powered device like a mobile phone (whose own battery can be thought of as a kind of UPS for the device), but not a device that requires continuous power (like the Pi).

I wouldn&#x27;t trust the writing on it; either.

I recently found a Huawei-branded power bank that outputs 9V over USB-A. See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aliexpress.com&#x2F;item&#x2F;4000209696496.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aliexpress.com&#x2F;item&#x2F;4000209696496.html</a> and look at the label on the seventh picture.<p>EDIT: I may be wrong. Apparently this is now allowed by the Quick Charge spec. See comments below.

At 7.5V, any properly engineered consumer device you plug into that port <i>should</i> do one of two things:<p>1. just accept the 7.5V and charge happily.<p>2. trip overvoltage protection and refuse the charger.<p>That doesn&#x27;t make this okay, it just means it isn&#x27;t catastrophic.<p>Note that I said <i>consumer</i> device. If I plugged one of my microcontroller dev kits into this thing, the magic smoke would be released pretty quickly.

&gt; Yes, properly implemented USB type C ports can negotiate all sorts of voltages, but this is not one of them.<p>Not just USB-C... even early generation QuickCharge could (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quick_Charge" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quick_Charge</a>).

I noticed something similar to this on my Insta360 ONE X charger. Initially I thought I could just use any USB power adapter but after many tries it turned out that the vendor implemented their own voltage on their charger sold separately. Quite a disappointment as charger broke after two years.

Few years ago I bought a 12V led strip from aliexpress, it came with a usb charger. A &quot;12V&quot; USB charger. You can easily guess who put it near other chargers by mistake and then fried a PS4 controller trying to charge it with that :&#x2F;

Everything old is new again. I used to think that the Etherkiller was a joke... <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fiftythree.org&#x2F;etherkiller&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fiftythree.org&#x2F;etherkiller&#x2F;</a>

I just bought a cheap oscilloscope (Hanmatek DOS1102) and it has the <i>opposite</i> oddity. It comes with a standard 5v USB adapter, but the cable going to scope is a USB A on one end and on the other... 2.5mm X 2.1mm barrel! Why they did not use a standard USB Micro or Mini (or C) connector on the scope, I&#x27;ll never know.

I recently replaced my 120V receptacles with USB ones. Super convenient and it&#x27;s allowed me to get rid of the dozens of various transformer plugs around the home.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.leviton.com&#x2F;collections&#x2F;usb-outlets" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.leviton.com&#x2F;collections&#x2F;usb-outlets</a>

Wow, I appreciate the warning. I have a similar fountain that also uses a 7.5 V &quot;USB&quot; connector, and that adapter definitely would&#x27;ve ended up in my big box o&#x27; orphaned USB bricks when the fountain inevitably gives up the ghost or just becomes too gross to keep clean.

I also applaud who ever came up with 2 strand wire with USB-A at other end and USB-C at other...

That previous thread the other day made me wish there was a cheap usb pluggable to tell you about the quality (and quantity) of voltage from a usb device.<p>Simple small screen or just led lights.<p>Maybe even a &quot;kill-a-watt&quot; for usb power cube&#x2F;banks.

Would have been nice if he actually measured the output to verify. Takes 2 seconds with a multimeter. If the adapter is already out of spec, there&#x27;s no reason why you should trust what is written on the side of the box.

I have the same fountain, I saw that when unboxing and immediately labeled the adapter as &quot;FOUNTAIN ONLY&quot;. Really don&#x27;t want some device fried because it received 50% more voltage than anticipated.

Same discussion about USB-C, Thunderbolt, etc and how users would be confused.

Not victim blaming here, but I always check the output specs on any power adapter I have before using it, especially USB. I have quite the collection and in the very least the amperage varies wildly.

I can only hope the person who designed this USB power adapter will end up frying their phone, tablet or other electronic device with it for some karmic justice.

I dread to think what the insides of that adapter look like.

My recent work experience leads me to believe CE approval is a rubber stamp. I don&#x27;t have any clue what that certification is worth to anyone.

Super dangerous, if someone were to not know and plug this charger into a regular USB device.

Isn&#x27;t this just a lesson to always read the output values on adapters?

after reading the title I thought the manufacturer coated the adapter in chilly, so cats won&#x27;t chew on it and thought - &quot;That&#x27;s a brilliant idea&quot;.

&gt; At one point I wanted to see if I could create a sort of a DIY UPS for the water fountain. It would be quite bad if I was at work and a power outage results in cats not being able to drink water <i>(they don’t really care for normal water bowls after getting the fountain)</i>.<p>So another self-made problem then.