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Be careful with the Vaporshark wireless charger pad!

Giraut

Gold Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Just a word of advice if you intend to use a Vaporshark-supplied Qi wireless charger for your rDNA: Vaporshark says it needs at least a 1.5A USB wall wart, and that's not a joke! If you use one with a lower current rating, you'll damage it - or worse.

Normally, USB devices are supposed to figure out the maximum power they can draw from the power source. There's a protocol for this: if the power source is a "dumb" USB port, the device is supposed to drop down to 100 mA (although most dumb USB ports are okay with 500 mA). Anything above that requires the USB device to negotiate the maximum current it can pull from the power source.

Well, the Qi pad supplied by Vaporshark doesn't negotiate anything at all: if it's connected to a USB port, it tried to pull as much current as it can. If your power supply isn't up to the job, it'll overheat and shut down if it's well designed, or smoke and die if it's not. That's also valid if you connect it to a computer's USB port: if it can't supply 1.5A, the pad will kill it.

How do I know this? Because my 1A wall wart just died, filling up my living room with acrid burnt capacitor smoke. Good thing I was around to disconnect it before it caught on fire or something.
 

st_andrew

Bronze Contributor
Member For 4 Years
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Ahhh the magic blue smoke..
 

MD_Boater

Silver Contributor
Member For 4 Years
Yeah @Giraut. What the heck were you thinking letting the smoke out of that capacitor? It won't work now...

hehe... Enough fun. I'm glad that you discovered it in time to prevent a catastrophe.
 

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