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Teardown of an IKEA Koppla USB power supply.

bigclivedotcom · 730.4K views · 2016-04-08 · 28:32

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Overview

Big Clive takes apart an IKEA Koppla USB power supply to assess its safety, looking at isolation and transformer construction.

On Hacker News

Cited as a teardown of a well-made, safe USB charger, and as evidence for why quality chargers matter.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2017–2021

Topics

Repair, teardowns & right to repairElectronics & circuit design
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teardownikeapower supplyisolationelectronics

What people said

fnord123 · 2017-04 · Recommendation

Also of interest is this teardown of the Koppla USB power supply: [VIDEO] It's also a pretty darn good piece of kit.

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BrailleHunting · 2017-03 · Recommendation

TL;DR: spend the $19 to buy a real, big brand USB charger because they have more to lose than grey market no brand. Tragic. Probably cheap USB without mains isolation or maybe enough water dripped down length of cable and socket to create a circuit, because USB is supposed to be 5V DC. Watch these USB charger teardown horror-shows to further understand why it's rational to pay for proper, authentic CE+UL, high-low isolation and quality components (ie insulated tape in transformers): [LINK] [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

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Daneel_ · 2021-08 · Reference

Big Clive also did a fairly comprehensive teardown of the IKEA charger and was pleasantly surprised with the design: [VIDEO] He also confirms that the control chip is a 1699-02.

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Sources

Video by bigclivedotcom, played through YouTube.

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