![]() The plugs in question are some “cheap” Daniu P3002 10A-rated banana plugs from Banggood at about AU$1 each. This particular lead was made by cutting the ends off the original cigarette lighter cord and attaching banana plugs on each end. The Culprit is FoundĪfter costing me quite a bit of time, I found the culprit which was the pair of wires I used to power my fridge from the lab power supply. I had a bad contact in the system! Swapping the pair of banana leads for another set, I reset the experiment and now it has run for eight days straight with no faults at all. It was only when I bumped the table that I saw – my fridge reset because of a short power interruption caused by the vibration. Why might that be? I reset the setup and tried again … I looked closer into the log and found the exception indicated a reset was received on the socket. I restarted the experiment and then things seemed fine … but after 19 hours, again, a clunk! I decided to swap out the Ethernet cable because I suspected a bad cable or contact. Reviewing the log, it seems that a communication fault occurred with my fridge, which was previously bulletproof in its reliability. That was the unmistakable clunk of my mains control switch shutting down my instrument rack because my automation script failed to maintain control of the test equipment and to avoid risk of damage to the cell or fire, it cut power to the whole rack. The tests take about two continuous days to complete for each type of cell and initially seemed to run just fine until I was awoken by a loud clunk after about 15 hours of testing. I won’t spoil the surprise – the blog will be coming in a week or two – but the testing required the use of my “modified” car fridge “pro” for some temperature control. A Mysterious FaultĪt the beginning of the week, I decided to start a new series of experiments to answer a question I personally had about lithium-ion batteries. I didn’t think buying banana plugs from China was an issue … until I was confronted with a head-scratcher this week. Not much sophistication at all – in fact, it dates back to 1924 making it almost100 years old! However, something as simple and humble as a banana plug seems to be a product that is hard to screw up – after all, it’s a roughly 4mm cylindrical plug which consists of a post and a contact spring element. To purchase such things from China already requires an understanding or an acceptance that the product may lie on its specifications (at least a little), or just an outright avoidance of more sophisticated products. I mean, I’ve now been bitten by fake powerbanks, bad cables, counterfeit microSD cards, copycat batteries in disguise, poorly designed soymilk makers, fake MOSFETs and shonky linear regulators already. Another week and it seems like deja-vu … welcome to another story where I fail to learn the ultimate lesson – not to cheap out on parts from China.
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