#chinesium — Public Fediverse posts

Well, this is annoying.

I have some little power #modules (bought on #AliExpress, natch) that were advertised as automatic boost/buck converters. Input from <4V to >30V, output from 1.25V to 35V.

They're based on the XL6009 switching converter, which supports auto-buck-boost as one mode.

But they appear to use it in boost-only mode. The output voltage can not go below the input as far as I can tell. From the datasheet, it looks like that's because the auto-buck-boost config requires a few more components, plus a transformer instead of a simple inductor, which is probably the main reason (BOM).

The listing just seems to be ... wrong.

Annoying.

#seller #SellerDescription #YumCha #Chinesium #BuckConverter #BoostConverter #AutoBuckBoost #BuckBoost #electronics #hobby

If you buy things on #AliExpress, you are going to get scammed every so often. Their buyer protection program is pretty decent, although it can be a bit of a pain to go through the process.

You can increase your chances of getting scammed by buying things where the #deals are too good to be true. When the deals are ludicrously, impossibly good, your chances increase to 100%.

This can be fun. I have bought a few things over the years that were obviously #scams. Once, I spent a few hundred dollars for two tablets that, if they had been real, were selling for about one tenth of what they should have. Seeing how they faked them being new products, when they were actually recycled ancient low-end tablets, was fascinating.

But I generally won't do that. Instead, I buy cheap stuff, trading a few dollars for the fun of seeing what the seller/manufacturer have done. I don't even try to get my money back on these.

So I recently bought a #USB #charger that I've been seeing for months. It's described as a 240W total output, gallium-nitride, USB-PD and QC-3.0 compatible, five-port charger. The genuine article from a reputable manufacturer, if it exists, must cost over CDN $100. This one was ... five bucks.

So I knew it was going to be interesting. It arrived today. It weighed more than expected, but all at one end. The case appears to be ultrasonically welded, so getting it open is destructive.

1/x

#scam #USBPD #QC3 #Chinesium #fake #TooGoodToBeTrue #deal #deals #GaN