Kmart lied to me, so I hacked their lamp [video]

It's 2025. For fucks sake, getting _basic_ USB-C compliance for power is a matter of two fucking SMD resistors. And yet, people are _still_ messing that up.

It seems "vibe electronics" have arrived way earlier than "vibe coding" did.

Yeah. I mean, back in 2019 when Raspberry Pi ran into that very same issue [1], it was excusable, but it's six years later and people still have zero idea what the fuck they are doing?

[1] https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/exploring-the-raspberry-pi-4...

I wonder if a lawsuit could force them to recall all their lamps and fix the USB port. Then this won't happen again.

At least here in Europe this would actually need to be a USB port which can be charged with any charger and cable.

Compared to plain wires with your intended voltage and your choice of any 2-pin connector, USB-C is not so basic. SMD resistors imply you have a PCB or something to put them on. Which means that your power connector is no longer just a couple pieces of stamped metal and some plastic. It's also a tiny connector with close together pins. For everything else since the introduction of electric lighting, you can just solder two wires on the back and call it a day.

Not that I'm making excuses here - there's some weird stuff going on inside that lamp. There's a PCB for the battery charger, but the USB-C socket isn't on it, it's on a wire pigtail that connects to the board with another connector. And I don't usually see so many removable connectors inside something made so cheaply. They clearly could have done it correctly in this case, but didn't.

> SMD resistors imply you have a PCB or something to put them on. Which means that your power connector is no longer just a couple pieces of stamped metal and some plastic. It's also a tiny connector with close together pins.

So what, there's ready made breakout boards for a few cents that will give you plain old 5V@500mA, and trigger boards for about 1€ at <10 quantity that you can even configure what they should negotiate for.

These things are actually a godsend if you are a QRP ham radio operator and have a USB-C PPS capable power bank. No more heavy AGM batteries - just connect your radio to the trigger board, wire it up for 12V (if the power bank "only" supports PD) or 13.8V if it supports PPS, and off you go.