Today I learned an important lesson. When one is working all alone restoring servers at the office late at night whilst blasting classic rock though normally disabled speakers in an attempt to stay awake it would be wise to verify at least TWICE the following. A. You have switched audio output BACK to tiny headphones. B. Lower volume to less than a level that previously fed Journey to the back of office server rooms. and finally C. The entire floor of cubicles is not currently filled to capacity with office workers. These Three important and necessary steps should be completed BEFORE opening any video in which Big Clive bellows "Where is the Gay Dalek underwear party". Just a suggestion.
My inner movie screen works far too well. I am still laughing even 20 minutes after reading this comment. Which is starting to get rather painful at this point, but still... 🤣
isn't that basically all those screwdrivers with bulbs in them are? screwdriver on one end, probe on the other, neon bulb in the middle (at least I think it's a neon)
Well, if you poke the screwdriver into higher voltage than a regular mains voltage you could be in for a surprise since there's just a current-limiting resistor and the neon bulb.
They work really well. I've made a couple and spread them around. One on my bench, one in my tool bag, one in my glove box, etc. For when you need to know if there's power, not the magnitude. I've added a red and green LED's in series with mine, with the LED's back to back. With DC current one of the LED's will light, depending on polarity. AC lights them both. A 120v, 5w bulb will limit the maximum current to 42ma and a 220v, 5w bulb will limit the maximum current to 23ma. The 23ma is a bit on the high side but should be fine, but the 120v version (can't get them smaller than 5w here) will need around 66 ohms of resistance (resistance dissipates 60mw) in parallel with the LED's to suck away some of that LED current.
Best thing i ever took apart was a "Portable Battery lifetime enhancer" the problem was it did nothing for my battery but when taking it apart the spring mechanism if not held would swing inward puncture the (Rather large) internal battery. Well it did and within seconds i see fire bellowing out thank goodness my chair broke or i would have a rather different colored face and hands. Some of this stuff is just made terribly.
I absolutely love the way Dalek R _completely_ breaks character with that shocked "O-oh." Like yeah, killing humans via battery change is pretty fuckin nasty lmao
I have one of these guys. The first thing I did was throw the power cord in the trash. The second thing I did was to remind myself to never use the USB port. The solar panel works very well and the device makes an excellent camping light.
olbrzym11 I have seen almost as bad. I bought a bulk pack of USB leads on ebay, and it came with "free USB charge port device", which was similar to what you have said. Capacitive dropper, bridge rectifier, no smoothing. Mains pretty much straight through on the hot side.
LOL your sense of humor always makes me chuckle clive :-D Death daptor is the right name, it makes crap switchmodes look quite safe LOL. Remove the mains socket and fit the usb charge socket, 5v switchmodes are so common and a much better choice :-).
Death-o-meter: Love it :) It always amazes me how many people don't have a case on their phone. It's usually people with iPhones, and usually to show them off.
I don't have a case on my phone because I don't want the extra bulk in my pocket. Never owned an iPhone in my life. I did drop one phone on concrete but, luckily, it cracked the back of the phone and not the screen, and I've stopped doing the thing that made me drop it.
If I didn't keep a case on my phone, it would've been broken like a week after I bought it. I drop shit, a lot. Lol I can intentionally be careful with some stuff (my laptop, guns, etc) but with an object I have in my hands probably 30% of my day it's a little hard to be so diligent
Found your channel 2 days ago and been binging ever since, I have no aptitude for electrics/electronics [got sidetracked into motorbikes/wine/women and ?er well aircraft ] but have learned more watching your vids then I have in the last 48 years .
Clive: "The current is referenced to Earth, which means the RCD is going to get bridge rectified in parallel until the capacitor is discharged by the Nickel-Cadmium milliresistors." Me: *nods sagely* My brain: "What is going on"
The front and back silicon cases are my favourite kind. They don't require laboratory conditions and a very steady hand to apply like the plastic screen protectors, they don't chip and snap like the plastic covers, they don't shatter like the glass screen protectors, and they don't triple the weight and thickness (as well as block GPS signals and multitouch) like the metal/rubber case I once bought.
I have a ChaoDeli lamp where the SHIELD and NEGATIVE of the USB port is DIRECTLY connected to one of the mains lead. And that's not all. Battery compartment is referenced to the mains too! In fact, that's not even the best it's got! It is even connected in PARALLEL to a 2-cell (4.8V) LEAD ACID BATTERY. Yes you've heard it right! LEDs are wired in series to a pot, with no current limiting at all. The pot started smelling funny after a few minutes... The figure 8 lead it came with also looks suspiciously thin, and the Europlug disassembled itself when trying to put it in a plug socket. I have a video (unfortunately it's in Italian) on my channel about it. If enough people want it, I may translate it into English!
lol gay Daleks. Did you ever watch Victor Lewis-Smith's TV Offal? It had a whole regular sketch of Gay Daleks. They would say camp things, bitch at each other and always end with "EXSPERMINATE, EXSPERMINATE, WHITE WEE WEE IN THE DARK! EXSPERMINATE!"
Have you thought about doing a test on various 5 volt wall warts to see if any part of the USB output is at mains potential? As for the Apple charging blocks, if you use the extension cord adapter that directly interfaces into the block when one removes the outlet adapter plug( yes they come in 4 flavors, one for each major continent, USA, UK, EU, Australian) it will have an active ground lead that ties the block to ground. This seems to work at removing the tingle from the metal backs on the various iXX products. Also flipping the block in the outlet on the US and EU can eliminate the tingle.
I keep coming back to these gay dalek videos every now and then, I keep seeing these pop up on various chinese online stores and a lot of them have hundreds of great reviews and it kinda worries me how there's so many people getting these things and being completely unaware they might be a couple millimeters away from a fatal shock Makes me wonder how many people have been actually killed by these things. I'm definitely never going to get anything from china that plugs into the mains, things powered by USB are a different story though, much less that can go wrong on those although I've had a cheap chinese microusb cable short out and if I didn't notice it would've probably melted the AC adapter as it was quite hot after only a minute
I wouldn't recommend removing the internal NiMH cells, since connecting it to the mains without any cells installed in the expansion slots would result in full rectified mains voltage across the circuit, which would likely kill the electrolytic capacitor and/or anything plugged into the USB.
I remember several similar DIY circuits from my school years. Seems someone in China simply browsed through DIY reference circuits as well. Then cost-optimized found ones for repurposing into death traps. Brownish cushion like capacitor have strong resemblance with non-polar sub-1uF / 250V capacitors made in USSR at eighties. Most likely this one also came from recycled component bin.
Or just blank off the mains socket by filling it with epoxy resin and charge the batteries using the existing usb socket with a higher voltage power supply fitted with a series resistor to limit the current. Great Dalek voice at the beginning.
if you put some non-rechargeable batteries in to its battery holder and plug-in the 120v cable the batteries may end up exploding which may or may-not be fun
Good work, dude. There is a need to pay attention to audience, I do agree. BUT, for god sake, that usb is for use outdoor, it can charge phone from main battery of camping light. Who can even think to use it while it is plugged in the socket?
Goodness me...here I am loving another video of yours and realized I'm not subscribed. Might as well do it now after seeing that fabulous intro XD Great shit, sir. Keep it up!
must be a 240V thing because the decoupling capacitors running on 120V don't pass enough current to be felt at all, so metal cased phones are no big deal, plus everybody uses cases.
If you touch the live wire directly with your finger you won't feel anything? Are you kidding me? Besides, it's what happens here. The shield of the USB port is directly connected to the live wire.
It kind of highlights the importance of earth leakage measurements in electrical safety tests rather than just being content with insulation tests and earth bonding. Your video also shows the naivity of having un-polarised mains plugs: at least with polarised plugs, there would be a 50% chance that the USB chassis would connected to Neutral. With 2 pin mains plugs, who knows where the live connection is on the appliance (who else knows if various National electrical authorities actually care?) . Thanks for the video: I am off to test all my USB chargers and PSUs etc for earth leakage.
This talk about deadly shocks made me want to share my story. I was using my cellphone while charging it, and received a shock through the USB charger when lightning struck nearby. That shock caused me to involuntarily throw the phone with a plastic case. I'm in the US so 120v. My phone has a plastic case. After the shock, I smelled a slight wift of burnt plastic. And disconnected the charger. This also took out about $1000 of electronic equipment. Surprisingly, phone was fine. Im not sure if there is anything a manufacturer of cellphone or usb charger equipment can do protect you and me from a lighting strike. And who ever really turns off their home electronics during a lighting storm. Certainly not me. I didn't know anyone hurt by one either. Shouldn't the grounding and circuit breakers protect you? Evidently not! It happens just to quick and the voltage spike can come to your equipment or you on the hot with a voltage that can jump through plastic. Maybe a surge protector might have helped. Although nothing worse happened to me, no one else was around had it been. And, anyone reading this now can not say they don't know anyone struck by lighting inside their home. I don't expect everyone to run around their home disconnecting everything every time they hear thunder, but take a break and don't handle anything plugged in. Electronics can be replaced, but you and your loved ones can not.
I know i'm late, but i've got my router and TV blow up by EMP from nearby lightning twice in two years. Basically what happens is that power lines (in your case, in my case it was telephone and tv cable lines) act like antenna, so during nearby lightning strike voltage on the wire spikes drastically for a brief moment. Not to the same magnitude as in the case of direct lightning strike, but still very high, hundreds or even thousands volts. It's quite hard to reliably protect sensitive electronics from that, and it would increase size and cost of equipment by quite a lot. Normal breakers won't detect such short surge, and they are typically designed to protect from faults originating from inside your house, not outside of it. But there is special equipment to protect specifically against EMP surges from ligntnings, that you can install on every wire entering your house, if you expect that kind of faults to reoccure.
Everytime when I watch your video I am getting more and more amazed how is it possible that our (I mean European) devices can't pass legal tests (thus can't make it to the market) because of wrong type of washer used for ground connection or too high EM interference and Chinese can sell us death traps like this little cute abomination just like that.
That's actually not a U.S. plug. As lousy as our (I'm Canadian, but we use the same plugs) are, they are actually superior to the even worse Chinese plug. Note that the plug doesn't have the two little holes at the end of the prongs. Those are required on proper U.S. plugs to safely hold the plug in the socket.
The power wire is not double insulated and is made of super thin steel wire. Ive seen those wires quite a bit. The plug terminals are made of zinc. Its quite laughable yet dangerous.
Using some ideas I gained from your video I made and extremely bright led task light with a magnetic base that doubles as a power switch. I have a steel beam jib boom in my garage and it covers most of the garage by pivoting, when I stick the light to the jib it turns on. Now that I've described it, it occurs to me a push button sticking through the bottom where the magnets are would be more reliable on painted surfaces, rather than using the magnets to conduct current. Thank you for inspiring me
I've been watching a lot of your videos lately. Today, my little brother came to me with a burnt charging cable and melted charge port on the phone. measured 50v from the charging socket built into his alarm clock that he uses to charge his phone. never would have thought to check for that if it hadn't been for your videos. Thank you very much for your time and dedication!
Holy shit batman! That is awful. People will buy these for kids, kids lose battery compartment doors, kids get electrocuted and die. Wow China. Wow.... However, massive lolz on the gay darleks :)
I somehow get worried about all those death gay Dalek camping lights. Could this be part of a bigger plan? What is china planning? Are we all in danger? What is the best way to fend of a Dalek. Its been decades since i've watched Dr.Who, were there any easy ways to defeat them? As far as i know, they can hover up stairs too. And i don't like metal phone cases. Its as you said, people believe its something better because it feels like its more worth. I prefer plastic, it has many advantages over metal. For example no issues with bending. Because the plastic will just spring back into the original shape after you bended it slightly. There is not a single advantage in using metal in my opinion.
Loved the intro as a gay man/totally fabulous. It helps when I have to deal with the odd homophobe (they are odd) who does exist in their minority. Hopefully they will die out. We have a neighbour who spends his time worrying about us gay guys what we wear and what we cook as he truly believes we are not untitled to a life. I truly feel better after you have used the kink palculator and just carry on. You perform a service not to electronics but to us. God bless and carry on please!
