HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

For anyone wondering how come chinese product with Li-ion battery explodes here is a good entry level walkthrough/explanation based on ~$20 LED "20W" floodlight example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag5XknXGkZ8

Sins:

- absolutely atrocious manual build quality.

- no real load current control, replaced with wishful thinking and best case scenario back of a napkin calculated circuit.

- nasty power supply pretending to be a charger with ZERO protection and NO CUT-OFF. It will charge until something melts or blows.

- all electronic components underrated.

- 100% fake parameters.

Now you might say not everything from china is like that, there are good and bad engineers everywhere. That is true, except better engineers work at Xiaomi, Rigol, Lenovo‎, etc. You simply cant expect any quality from no name fly by night Shenzhen outfits. Just read Chinese reactions to excellent Amazon move from the link Animats gave earlier:

http://qz.com/582542/chinas-makeshift-hoverboard-industry-is...

They are shutting down and moving on to counterfeiting something else instead of working on security of this product!?!?!! Actually hiring an engineer is too much hassle. :/

⬐ buserror

I've seen the process many times, for many 'cheap' chinese produts.

They first design (or more often copy) a product, then they start removing the bits that 'aren't needed' -- like filtering caps and so on; sometime even fuses in power supplies, and pretty much ANYTHING they can save $.0002 on.

So when the first 'wave' of the product appears, you actually have a pretty good chance of having something of good quality/value -- however very quickly it degenerates into a pile of fire-hazard or device-destructing poo.

The rule #1 of buying cheap gadget is ALWAYS TAKING IT APART before even plugging it in or trying it. There are no alternatives. Often you can tweak it to make it safe/good, but sometime, it's instant return.