Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
Hi, Ken
I have been using what looks like your Orange UK counterfeit charger to drive home-made pictorial illuminations constructed with christmas light chains. Our project is discussed at http://www.thevisitor.co.uk/news/lanterns-light-the-way-for-morecambe-festival-1-8275546 and orange is the color of the @ShrimpingIt project so we were keen to buy Orange 'Apple' adaptors, and pleased we could source them so reasonably.
Both the computing devices which control light-switching (NodeMCU boards running from a 5V-powered 3.3V regulator) and the light chains (stepped down to 3.3V or 2.6V with 8A diodes, and switched with a TPIC6B595) seemed to be comfortably-powered, but I had assumed the labelled 1A rating was legitimate. I recently measured a charger which was drawing (multimeter-tested) 0.56A at 5V when the controller was powered up and all the light-chains in the illumination were lighted. I was therefore happy to send one away to be fitted at a friend's house.
Although both the LEDs and the regulated NodeMCU are probably isolated from issues with high-frequency oscillations, it is a concern if there are any issues from the charger actually not providing 1A or from its build quality.
Did you get a chance to tear down the Orange UK charger and check if there were any concrete safety issues, especially in the case that too much power is drawn for some reason? I am concerned if my chargers are also counterfeit, if you find they are actually dangerous in the configuration I'm using (up to 1A of LED lighting) and that I might be guiding people to use these at home.
Learning from your teardown comments and also checking if they are the same by taking one of mine apart would be reassuring. Perhaps you don't mind destroying it now you have proven its limits?
If you are interested in doing a teardown, but want some extras I am happy to post you one or more free samples/replacements from the collection (of 50 or so) that I'm building up.
Dec 15, 2016, 9:01:37 PM
Posted to A dozen USB chargers in the lab: Apple is very good, but not quite the best