> The watch is simply missing the two 5.1k resistors connecting the CC1 and CC2 pins of the USB-C connector to ground that are required to indicate to whatever is plugged in that it wants 5v power.
This is so annoying. Back when USB-C was less prevalent, I bought a pair of wireless earbuds over another for the same reason as the title - because it used USB-C. But then I cannot charge it with my macbook, unless I add a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
This problem seems prevalent on cheaper devices. When I buy a device and discover it has this problem I always return it. I've seen it on the Hypervolt Go 2 (which I returned and replaced with a Theragun Mini) and on the Hitachi Magic Wand Micro (which I replaced with a Dame Dip).
Like the post mentions, I think this happens because the devices are missing two resistors that are needed to indicate, when connected via a USB-C to USB-C cable to a charging brick, that the device wants 5V power. Resistors are cheap and I think the only reason they get dropped is carelessness.
The whole point of USB-C is that you can charge any device with any power supply.
> This problem seems prevalent on cheaper devices.
I’ve seen it on plenty of higher-end devices as well; and even worse.
The worst offender I’ve encountered is the TermoWorks Billows. ThermoWorks is a well established brand that makes high end thermometers and is considered one of the best on the market. So I was quite surprised to discover how their ‘Billows’ product is powered.
The device itself needs 12v and has a USB-C port for power. You’d think it would do USB-PD to negotiate it’s power needs so you can just use any old USB-C adapter. Not the case. It comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable and requires a special adapter with a USB-A port on it that puts 12v on the pins that normally supply 5v.
I have no idea how they came up with this abomination. Why even use USB-A connectors if it’s not going to work with a standard USB-A adapter, and why supply an adapter that’s basically going to kill most USB-A devices you plug into it? If you have a custom adapter anyway, why not just use a simple barrel connector? Why put a USB=C port on the device if it can’t use USB-PD?
I can imagine some Chinese ali-express product using such an abomination to save a few cents on components, but why would a well-respected brand like ThermoWorks ship such a thing? It boggles the mind.
This happens because these devices had USB microB before and the manufacturer just replaced the port without reading the spec.
Even some mainstream products have this issue. I have an automatic door opener from a large company and the battery pack has the same issue. It is shipped with a special cable you have to use as no other USB-C cable works.
I have about 6 devices with this problem, and I consider it unforgivable.
Not only did you not include USBC charging, you went out of your way to trick me and lie and pretend you did. I would have preferred just using micro usb at that point.
Powkiddy committed fraud and said the RGB30 can charge from USB-C, but they lied, it can only charge from USB A to C cables. Using it is a massive pain because I have to get adapters I shouldn't need. I'll never buy anything from them ever again.
I feel like the USB committee might be somewhat to blame. When most people think USB-C they're just thinking the cable. Why can't it just do regular slow charging with C to C cable?
And if you completely discharge the powkiddy you can't charge it anymore, unless you open it up and physically disconnect the battery, plug the charger in, and then the battery back in.
This was exactly my complaint when the USB C standards were coming in - having a universal connector means nothing I you need a specific cable and/or power supply to charge it. You might say it’s not spec compliant and that’s fine - but it’s still a USB C port. We’d all be better off if they had just kept it as micro usb because at least then I’d _know_ I need a different cable for it
Would it be possible to build some kind of adapter or C-to-C cable that just contains the missing resistors? (And also probably would have to block any USB PD communication, in case you plug in any device that actually does try to use PD. So the goal would be that the charger always sees a 5V requesting device without PD support while the device always sees a "dumb" 5V charger - regardless of what capabilities the device and charger really have)
It would still suck to have to use a special cable for charging, but at least it's better than not being able to use any modern charger.
I have an Amazfit smartwatch that gets charged by a simple USB cable with two pins that magnetically attaches to the back of the watch. When I was on vacation and forgot that cable I was able to make my own by cutting a USB cable and attaching the wires to the contacts of the watch with tape. That simplicity is hard to beat. And this watch is water resistant.
The battery is the single reason why I got the Amazfit. I use as a dumb health tracker and occasional GPS running. It easily lasts 4 weeks on a single charge. That's one less proprietary charging cable to bring on a trip.
I've been dying to ask about this somewhere where I might get a really informed response:
What's the deal with Amazfit? I have an Amazfit GTR and it's been rock solid for a couple of years. Before that, I had an Amazfit Bip for a few years which was incredible. It did notification, GPS, heart rate tracking, always on display and battery life of 2 - 4 weeks. It did this years and years ago, when the best Android could do was 24 - 48 hours, and it did it for like £60 instead of £200. It still works too!
The Bip in particular seemed so ahead of what the average person expected from a smartwatch due to state of Android and Apple offerings at the time.
I used to have a bip and loved it. The big thing was battery life and always on screen. It used a reflective LCD screen to do it. No newer amazefits use them.
I’ve since moved to using COROS watches. Not as cheap but really good. Always screen, weeks of battery. Even GPS functions are efficient . Recently did 11 hr hike with GPS and only used about 23% battery.
I really want a smartwatch with proper always on screen (so memory LCD, like those COROS ones), but I also need LTE so I don't have to bring my phone on short errands. Unfortunately no such product currently exists for some reason.
The Apples, Galaxies and Pixels offer always-on, but they dim down a lot in order to not drain the power, which kind of defeats the purpose. A memory LCD screen on one of these watches would be perfect for me.
I had an Amazfit too a while back. Decent watch for the price, but battery life absolutely tanked after a year of use. Went from lasting days to lasting hours after one year.
That's strange. I have mine for several years now (I think three) and it still goes at least a week without charging. I can't imagine having to charge my watch ever day.
You mean with GadgetBridge and Android right? The official app does not have nice conditions when I last read through it. Note that I couldn’t find the 1 month battery mode anymore. Just the pro which sadly has a normal lcd screen and max 1 week battery.
USB (abc, micro etc) are everywhere. Any house, hotel, office, glove box, has some lying around.
But when I forgot my Fitbit charger, I couldn't get one anywhere. The only option was a large electronics store where I could buy an entire new Fitbit. I didn't shove out €200 just to get hold of a charging cable.
The EU should quickly impose rules on waterproof chargers like they did with USB chargers. It will settle worldwide just as fast as the USB enforced standard.
It's not £16 but I got mine (GTS 2 mini) when there was some kind of sale in a huge online warehouse for around 50 Euros. Since then I tried in vain to find it again for that price, until recently someone sold a bunch of new ones on eBay for around 45 Euros. So now I got my spare one in a drawer :) The £16 got no GPS, too.
TBH, such a low price for so many working (!) features is an amazing achievement if not subsidized! What bothers me here, however, is...a provenance. Let me guess, it asks from your smartphone access to your location, contacts, calendar, SMS archive, email, medical records and political views and attitude towards CCP and then does some shady syncs with .cn servers "just to keep you data safe in case a meteor hits you"... Sad.
ADDED: Oh, seems like some people like to pretend that the results of "some other" companies getting this information are totally, totally the same.
Why is it so hard for americans to accept that china makes great tech without coping about "le CCP spyware!" - it seems so absurd, like why would the CCP want to know the heart rate of the type of guy who buys a 16 pound smartwatch? Why dont americans create 16 pound smartwatches?
Because sinophobia, or put in a more crass way, racism, imperialism, and patriotism.
Why should I care if the Communinst Party of China is spying on me? They can't get at me. I have no connection to China. I have no property there and don't know anyone there. What are they going to do to me?
Bottom line is that everyone on the planet should be concerned with their own government's intelligence angencies more than any others. It's the people who can get at you in meatspace that you need to worry about.
China hopes that if they sell enough some will end up on the wrists of military or intelligence personnel, or more likely the family members of such people.
The difference between Apple and the CCP is that CCP is the one running the slave labor to make widgets, and Apple is the one paying for it and puts the sticker "Designed in California" to wash it off.
Implying all US electronics don't ask from your smartphone access to your location, contacts, calendar, SMS archive, email, medical records and political views and attitude towards the US and Israel and then does some shady syncs with .com servers "just to keep you data safe in case a meteor hits you"... x)
> Let me guess, it asks from your smartphone access to your location, contacts, calendar, SMS archive, email, medical records and political views
Like every app made by a US corporation does?
And before someone cries "whataboutism", I'm genuinely curious why as someone who isn't Chinese, and has no intention of visiting China, I should be more worried about the CPC than the CIA.
> Anything you buy from AliExpress for the cost of a couple of pints is bound to be a bit crap.
This line kinda got me down, because, well, last night I went out for a few pints and paid €16 for two drinks; Here we have a miracle of modern technology available shipped to your door for about the same price of what it now costs to just go out and do the thing people have done when socializing for the last 1500 years.
We're subsidizing the costs of all this modern tech by heavily taxing ourselves on the things once taken as nearly the bare minimum lifestyle.
I think the mistake is seeing the beer to watch ratio and assuming that beers are hard to afford now. One primary reason beer in a pub is expensive is because of cost of labor scaling badly in the pub but extremely well for the watch. It's Baumol Cost Disease. The beer only costs more because the other work the pub staff is doing could be more productive now elsewhere. So in the end of the day, unless you are an alcoholic, you can likely afford more beers just because everything else has gotten so much cheaper.
One caveat I want to call out though is of course the skyrocketing housing cost which also impact rent (or opportunity cost of they own) for the pub and thus the beer price as well. This is where I really don't understand how NIMBYs continue to get their way.
Living was always expensive, in developing countries, goods are still expensive but so is living. Save for subsistence farmers, but those are a minority in all but the poorest countries.
I have a Garmin with a monochrome LCD face. Ok, it can't compete on price but battery life is a couple of weeks (and can top up with solar) so the proprietary cable is not a big problem.
I was also a happy Garmin Instinct Solar user. It is until after two years it started to turn off whenever it vibrates. I disabled vibrations, but it's reduced to an expensive step counter now.
Were the vibrations actually useful? I have an old Garmin something or other on my wrist right now, and I disabled vibrations because unless I'm sitting around doing nothing and I can hear them, I'd never notice them.
> "I plugged it until fully charged, then wore it conti> nuously. After 24 hours of use, even with all my fiddling, that battery was at 80%.
After four days, it still had 40% left"*
So if a £16 generic competitor can last 4 days, what's Apple doing wrong? Why can't a £450 Apple Watch (non-Ultra) last a full 24 hours on a charge?
Apple just put in a more capable processor, wifi and cellular, a brighter display and more sensors. They are just consuming the entire battery over a day because it is not such a big deal for customers.
Is it not a big deal? Or do customers lack the choice?
If Apple had two lines of smartwatches, one for city/work crowd with the WiFi, Bright screen, NFC, powerful processor etc. but with tiny battery life. And another for hike/off-grid/travel/festival crowd without wifi, a slower, blander screen, slower hardware, less features but over a week)weeks on one charge.
I think you jest but I think you can actually dictate text and finger-write notes on it.
Comparing the flagship model to the much cheaper SE, what they're buying is:
* a larger, brighter, always-on display
* additional health sensors, monitoring
* can go deeper underwater
* longer battery life (if you choose low power mode)
* faster battery charging
* more powerful processor
* twice the local storage
* Ultra wideband radio (enables directional device finding)
* microphone with voice isolation (better sounding calls, voice recordings)
* made from more recycled materials (which may make it more expensive)
I'm happy with my non-cellular SE, I do which charging was faster but I don't know the Series 10 charges that much faster and I wouldn't pay an extra ~$150 for that anyway.
People get surprised how cheap things really can be when they see aliexpress, and the assumption is crap. I bought a ton of stuff from aliexpress, and very rarely-if any- was crappy.
You probably meant anything that plugs & stays plugged for extended periods of time.
I probably would hesitate to buy large-battery-powered things from them, for now. Like e-bike etc. Also would hesitate to replace my circuit breakers with zigbee circuit breakers that can also measure power real time, for example.
But there are a lot of good quality stuff that doesn't fit into the dangerous category.
I bought a lot of sensors/smart home stuff, small home stuff like drip irrigation tubes/drip heads, apple find-my compatible trackers, poe cameras, 80x80 fans, label maker tape, poe extender etc.
I dunno mate, I've bought a very popular 60W soldering iron for like 2.5 USD. It has a ceramic heater and a knob to adjust the temperature, the default tip it came with is great, and it's also easily disassemblable. It's far better in quality than anything I could've bought locally for the same price.
I am surprised they can break even with such a product. Considering 25% of the cost go to selling/fulfillment/etc., maybe 8 Pounds for the BOM (?) they might earn 3-4 Pounds per item sold. To offset the cost of development (maybe 20-30 man years at 20k USD for Chinese engineers), would imply the want to sell at least 100.000 units just to break even. Is there enough market for this?
The Colmi P8, which is older, long replaced by myriads of newer china watches and now hard to even find, was one of the last cheap smartwatches to be based on the nRF52832 microcontroller/SOC which had the advantage (for that purpose) of being both well documented and yet not locked down. The successor SOC, the nRF52840, already had a flash securing feature that (except for devices that wouldn't use it or that would have exploitable vulns) made it easy for the manufacturer to lock the device down and to prevent the install of alternative firmwares. Also about that time, cheaper chinese SOCs came out and cheapo china smartwatches switched to using those instead of nRF. Trouble being: most of those chinese SOCs for smartwatches, aside from probably also having the lockdown problem, don't have much in terms of openly accessible documentation or developer tools.
Consequently, pretty much all open source projects for cheapo china smartwatches apparently only support devices that are so old that you don't even find them anymore on aliexpress or other such shops.
I'd be interested to know for what currently easily available cheap (i.e. not in a much higher price category) china smart watches there is an open source alternative firmware that does not miss half of the features.
I’ve started playing with esp32/rp2350 based boards that have everything in the same form factor. The only thing missing is a fully waterproof enclosure (they expose the back pcb). And vibration motor.
Readit News
This is so annoying. Back when USB-C was less prevalent, I bought a pair of wireless earbuds over another for the same reason as the title - because it used USB-C. But then I cannot charge it with my macbook, unless I add a USB-C to USB-A adapter.
Like the post mentions, I think this happens because the devices are missing two resistors that are needed to indicate, when connected via a USB-C to USB-C cable to a charging brick, that the device wants 5V power. Resistors are cheap and I think the only reason they get dropped is carelessness.
The whole point of USB-C is that you can charge any device with any power supply.
I’ve seen it on plenty of higher-end devices as well; and even worse.
The worst offender I’ve encountered is the TermoWorks Billows. ThermoWorks is a well established brand that makes high end thermometers and is considered one of the best on the market. So I was quite surprised to discover how their ‘Billows’ product is powered.
The device itself needs 12v and has a USB-C port for power. You’d think it would do USB-PD to negotiate it’s power needs so you can just use any old USB-C adapter. Not the case. It comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable and requires a special adapter with a USB-A port on it that puts 12v on the pins that normally supply 5v.
I have no idea how they came up with this abomination. Why even use USB-A connectors if it’s not going to work with a standard USB-A adapter, and why supply an adapter that’s basically going to kill most USB-A devices you plug into it? If you have a custom adapter anyway, why not just use a simple barrel connector? Why put a USB=C port on the device if it can’t use USB-PD?
I can imagine some Chinese ali-express product using such an abomination to save a few cents on components, but why would a well-respected brand like ThermoWorks ship such a thing? It boggles the mind.
Even some mainstream products have this issue. I have an automatic door opener from a large company and the battery pack has the same issue. It is shipped with a special cable you have to use as no other USB-C cable works.
I have about 6 devices with this problem, and I consider it unforgivable.
Not only did you not include USBC charging, you went out of your way to trick me and lie and pretend you did. I would have preferred just using micro usb at that point.
Powkiddy committed fraud and said the RGB30 can charge from USB-C, but they lied, it can only charge from USB A to C cables. Using it is a massive pain because I have to get adapters I shouldn't need. I'll never buy anything from them ever again.
If you still have them, you've forgiven it.
Return them and complain about it, or the manufacturers have no way to tell it bothers you.
(it just connects CC1 + CC2 with the appropriate 5.1k resistors)
It would still suck to have to use a special cable for charging, but at least it's better than not being able to use any modern charger.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
What's the deal with Amazfit? I have an Amazfit GTR and it's been rock solid for a couple of years. Before that, I had an Amazfit Bip for a few years which was incredible. It did notification, GPS, heart rate tracking, always on display and battery life of 2 - 4 weeks. It did this years and years ago, when the best Android could do was 24 - 48 hours, and it did it for like £60 instead of £200. It still works too!
The Bip in particular seemed so ahead of what the average person expected from a smartwatch due to state of Android and Apple offerings at the time.
I’ve since moved to using COROS watches. Not as cheap but really good. Always screen, weeks of battery. Even GPS functions are efficient . Recently did 11 hr hike with GPS and only used about 23% battery.
The Apples, Galaxies and Pixels offer always-on, but they dim down a lot in order to not drain the power, which kind of defeats the purpose. A memory LCD screen on one of these watches would be perfect for me.
USB (abc, micro etc) are everywhere. Any house, hotel, office, glove box, has some lying around.
But when I forgot my Fitbit charger, I couldn't get one anywhere. The only option was a large electronics store where I could buy an entire new Fitbit. I didn't shove out €200 just to get hold of a charging cable.
The EU should quickly impose rules on waterproof chargers like they did with USB chargers. It will settle worldwide just as fast as the USB enforced standard.
ADDED: Oh, seems like some people like to pretend that the results of "some other" companies getting this information are totally, totally the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSaix1C-UMI
Because labor is much more expensive in America. This is not a mystery
Why should I care if the Communinst Party of China is spying on me? They can't get at me. I have no connection to China. I have no property there and don't know anyone there. What are they going to do to me?
Bottom line is that everyone on the planet should be concerned with their own government's intelligence angencies more than any others. It's the people who can get at you in meatspace that you need to worry about.
You're also welcome to disassemble the APK to show where it is sending data to.
But, as I say, it works just find with an Open Source alternative if you prefer that.
Let me try to translate: I do not know fuck all about what it really asks but will let sinophobia and hypocrisy out in full colors regardless
Like every app made by a US corporation does?
And before someone cries "whataboutism", I'm genuinely curious why as someone who isn't Chinese, and has no intention of visiting China, I should be more worried about the CPC than the CIA.
I'd trust the CCP a million times more than Google or Apple.
This line kinda got me down, because, well, last night I went out for a few pints and paid €16 for two drinks; Here we have a miracle of modern technology available shipped to your door for about the same price of what it now costs to just go out and do the thing people have done when socializing for the last 1500 years.
We're subsidizing the costs of all this modern tech by heavily taxing ourselves on the things once taken as nearly the bare minimum lifestyle.
One caveat I want to call out though is of course the skyrocketing housing cost which also impact rent (or opportunity cost of they own) for the pub and thus the beer price as well. This is where I really don't understand how NIMBYs continue to get their way.
In the past goods were expensive; living was cheap. Now goods are cheap; living is expensive.
So if a £16 generic competitor can last 4 days, what's Apple doing wrong? Why can't a £450 Apple Watch (non-Ultra) last a full 24 hours on a charge?
If Apple had two lines of smartwatches, one for city/work crowd with the WiFi, Bright screen, NFC, powerful processor etc. but with tiny battery life. And another for hike/off-grid/travel/festival crowd without wifi, a slower, blander screen, slower hardware, less features but over a week)weeks on one charge.
Would people not buy the second option?
Deleted Comment
Comparing the flagship model to the much cheaper SE, what they're buying is:
* a larger, brighter, always-on display * additional health sensors, monitoring * can go deeper underwater * longer battery life (if you choose low power mode) * faster battery charging * more powerful processor * twice the local storage * Ultra wideband radio (enables directional device finding) * microphone with voice isolation (better sounding calls, voice recordings) * made from more recycled materials (which may make it more expensive)
I'm happy with my non-cellular SE, I do which charging was faster but I don't know the Series 10 charges that much faster and I wouldn't pay an extra ~$150 for that anyway.
https://www.apple.com/watch/compare/
For example: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tot-mini/id1644609331
Whether it's a good idea to use a tiny watch screen as your text editor, on the other hand...
If it's low voltage then you should be fine. I'd still be wary of large lithium ion batteries, though.
I probably would hesitate to buy large-battery-powered things from them, for now. Like e-bike etc. Also would hesitate to replace my circuit breakers with zigbee circuit breakers that can also measure power real time, for example.
But there are a lot of good quality stuff that doesn't fit into the dangerous category.
I bought a lot of sensors/smart home stuff, small home stuff like drip irrigation tubes/drip heads, apple find-my compatible trackers, poe cameras, 80x80 fans, label maker tape, poe extender etc.
All numbers spit-balled.
I bought a lot of 5-10$ things that costs more than 3 times on amazon.
Aliexpress is much cheaper even if you include shipping if there's separate shipping fee.
Amazon is convenient for speed + returns.
Took a week or so to arrive, and prices fluctuate all the time. So slower than Amazon shipping - which is usually same or next day.
https://github.com/wasp-os/wasp-os
Consequently, pretty much all open source projects for cheapo china smartwatches apparently only support devices that are so old that you don't even find them anymore on aliexpress or other such shops.
I'd be interested to know for what currently easily available cheap (i.e. not in a much higher price category) china smart watches there is an open source alternative firmware that does not miss half of the features.
Dead Comment