One of the nurses handed this “Ipad charger” it in at work as she suspected it may not be safe – it had been found lying around but none of our residents have Ipads (they are used by seniors (especially those who are hard of hearing or have eyesight and dexterity problems) for communicating) – if they did the devices would be booked in on the property register.
I took one look at the flimsy plastic case and it immediately went in the confiscated box. This weekend I decided to crack the case open (it barely took two taps from a hammer and a screwdriver blade). this is what is inside.
OK its just about a passable switch mode power supply inasmuch that you put 230V into it and should get 5V out when its working(+ a shit ton of radio interference); but the build quality leaves a lot to be desired (FFS even my soldering is better than that). Worst of all; there appear to be no protective devices on the mains side and only 5mm of PCB track separates the strong voltage from the DC output.
This means if any part of the mains wires come adrift and go short circuit; there is a good chance of a small fire as there is no equivalent of the plug top fuse (so the full 32 amps from the ring final would go through the thin mains wire; that gets hot). if the same thing is sold with a europlug on it its equally dangerous, 16 amps will set it ablaze just as well.. I have started to gut it for parts; got a miniature hi brightness LED and an optoisolator which is handy as I need one for a telephone call alert flasher I am working on.
What is more worrying is that many of the main / safety critical components are completely blanco (though recognisable in the context of how they are wired up); its as if no company wants to dare admit to designing this charger…
