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Comment by TOGoS | Hacker News Reader

NEMA power inlets are weirdly expensive and therefore hard to come by. So if you want to have a wall-powered device with a detachable cord, using an outlet as an inlet and a male-to-male cord is a simple solution.

(And yes, I'm aware of other solutions, like using IEC inlets, but it just feels a little wrong to use one of those on e.g. a power strip with NEMA outlets.)

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Expensive?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DCXKNXQ/

That's 60ct a piece. Rated for 250V 10A.

You can just buy any cheap cord like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003MGB0IK/ to connect to it.

There's no excuse for suicide cables.

That's an IEC inlet... I think OP is referring to something specifically intended as a generator inlet, like this: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Reliance-Controls-30-Amp-Power-I...

Not impossible to get, but certainly a bit more expensive.

It's a simple solution alright, just like using a lighter to look inside of a gas tank because you don't have a flashlight handy is.

Except that flashlights are easy to find in any gas station, and NEMA inlets are not.

Yeah, it's dangerous because some kid might take that double-male cord and plug it in somewhere problematic, but given the lack of obvious alternatives, I can understand why someone would do this. If we want to discourage it, we should make the correct solution more obvious and widely available.

How are they not widely available? Home Depot and Lowe's both sell them.

Looking at my local Home Depot's website, they do have a few different options for NEMA inlets in stock, but the options are pretty limited, and they're all larger connectors, not your standard 3-prong connector onto which you could shove the female end of an extension cord (which is what I really wanted for my power-strip-with-detachable-cord projects; I can't really speak to why others might want a male-to-male cable).

They are?

https://www.amazon.com/Leviton-Available-515CR-Outlet-Ground...

Sure, but that's more of an inline-style connector. I want something panel-mounted. With enough epoxy something like what you linked to could be adapted, but my time has value also. What I want is something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265239624399 but note the 15$ price tag, and compare to that of IEC inlets, which are an order of magnitude less expensive.

That's what IEC inlets are for

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