The Mu - Folding UK 3-pin → USB plug | Hacker News Reader

The Mu - Folding UK 3-pin → USB plug

themu.co.uk

36 pointsmoreati50 comments

To quote:

"Yes – the Mu® USB Adapter has been tested by recognised certification organisations and has the full pre-requisite approvals for CE certification."

What approvals and organisations? Sounds like bullshit. That's the most evasive paragraph ever in the history of time.

Proper UK mains plugs are incredibly over-engineered for a good reason. Excellent mechanical stability, no arcing likely, touch-safety, earth pin, built in fuse and TBH you could beat an elephant to death with one. Add to that, the sockets don't like giving the plugs back which is a good thing!

That thing is flimsy, requires manual twiddling, has zero earth pin - it's plastic (what is the USB port grounded to?), will break in two minutes flat and fry someone.

I very much doubt it's been tested or approved or will be on the market for more than a few weeks.

Also, a small added rant: I can see design awards galore splurged all over it. The designers are positively orgasmic over the thing, yet us engineers are crying. Take the hint.

I've just checked 2 phone chargers and a tablet charger. All of them have plastic earth pins.

Earth != Ground...

you dont need to earth it when the power consumption is so low. The plastic pin is essentially to open the covers for the lower 2 pins.

Correct. I was pointing out to the parent comment that the earth pin isn't used to form the usual circuit.

Class II appliances do not require a metal earth pin, it's there so that you can't electrocute yourself by touching the case.

You should also have an RCD or something on your circuits at home anyway which will cut the power very fast if anything bad happens.

Agreed - excuse my ignorance on the matter. I have upvoted you accordingly.

Class II (double insulated) appliances don't require an conducting earth pin. It's only needed at all to open the shutters that cover the live/neutral holes in the socket.

>>> That thing is flimsy, requires manual twiddling

Have you tried the product yet?

>>> I very much doubt it's been tested or approved

They've stated that it's been independently tested, which is sufficient for self-certification for the CE mark. What makes you think they're lying?

>>> us engineers are crying

<strike>I doubt you are an electrical engineer.</strike> Edit: apologies.

I've never worked with appliances so please excuse my ignorance on the subject. I retract that part of the rant. You are correct and I've upvoted you accordingly.

My comment regarding the flimsy nature of it will be proven. A rotating mechanical joint which needs to be pulled HARD (UK plus need to be pulled very hard) will fail rapidly and expose live wires. Not only that, the profile of the unit is very narrow and a small knock on the side of the device will most likely weaken the rotating joint resulting in complete failure.

With respect to the testing, similar devices have appeared in the past and have not been approved. I don't have a reference at hand but there was one around 2003 which was removed from the market rapidly after they lied over testing.

I was an electronics engineer until 2002 (specialist VLSI/FPGA/Avionics equipment).

I've got a Mu plug. I'm quite impressed by it; while it probably is less robust than a regular plug, my gut feeling is you'd have to hit it side-on with a hammer to stand a chance of breaking it while it was in a socket. The fold-out shield around the pins is reinforced and angled to deflect side-impacts. A USB cable seated in it pulls out long before it can exert enough leverage or force to pull the Mu's pins out of a socket. The rotating pin arrangement feels solidly built.

While I think it's a bit gimmicky at this point (and: £25 for a USB charger?!?) it's better designed than a lot of the crappy kit you see out there, and shows promise for something better to come.

Thanks for the objective review.

This is a 2009 concept, finally becoming a product http://www.reghardware.com/2009/06/24/folding_uk_plug/

Output: DC 5V 1Amp

Isn't that going to mean that a lot of devices (iPad?) charge slow?

I mean, I think it's more expensive to get rated for higher amp-age but they could have gone for 3 amps, right?

I couldn't find any information about whether or not this contains a fuse ... Isn't that mandatory for UK plugs?

Seems quite "daring" to launch something like this for only the UK. Sure, it's a big market, but I hope they're looking at modularizing the plug part internally so they can instantiate the Mu for other markets, too.

It seems rather unlikely they'd be selling this if they didn't comply with UK regulations!

I'm also not sure why you think it's daring to launch a product for, in your words, "a big market".

I just meant that while big, it's still more or less one country. But, as other commenters have pointed out, the purpose of the product is to make the clumsy UK plug more managable, so perhaps there is no market in other regions for this product. :)

Umm, it only makes sense in the UK, where we have a very large plug standard.

and ireland. and with all the companies from the usa here i suspect it'll be a popular purchase to save space in a bag.

i know i want one or three.

The original idea was fused, I presume this is too.

The common UK plug is large and chunky, put them on the ground and someone'll stand on them barefoot. That hurts. This is the sort of thing that people know instantly what the advantages are. Tis great.

It is a (design-wise) shame that the UK plug design forces adapters to be so big.

Europlug USB adapters are much more slicker http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/339903558/_Euro_Plug_USB_T... .

I think that depends on the angle you approach the issue from. Having spent the last three years in Japan after growing up in the UK, I find the general lack of respect towards electricity as a deadly force that is encapsulated in the flimsy plug design quite startling.

While the UK plug design is unwieldy in comparison, it also features a huge number of cleverly designed elements intended to provide the utmost protection to the everyday user.

Put another way, no. of shocks in Japan: 3 in 3 years. No. of shocks in the UK: 0 in 27 years (16 of which were as a child).

Japan may be on the other side of the scale, I also find their plugs look flimsy (as an European).

But the UK plug is just an artefact of the dangerous series circuits in many houses built during copper shortages. Such circuits are dangerous anyway, the remaining such houses should be fixed instead.

There's nothing about ring mains that makes them any more dangerous.

The UK pugs probably are needlessly safe - but so are aircraft and cars these days. I can't see a big campaign to remove earth pins, shuttered sockets, fuses and switches to increase the number of accidents getting much public traction!

But one could see a campaign to have the same plugs as the rest of Europe, perhaps.

They aren't any less safe (especially Schuko ones) to use. The problems are inertia and national pride.

Indeed - the same problems have stalled our attempts to make the rest of europe drive on the correct side of the road.

Exactly, because it's Europe (the majority) that has obviously made the wrong choice on both matters :)

How the heck did you get shocked 3 times in 3 years? I grew up in Turkey which has a no extra protections and quite shoddy electrical work all around, and neither me nor anyone I know has ever been shocked.

I really don't see how you could accidentally get shocked that many times unless you are repeatedly violating something that is common sense to everyone else.

I wonder if the Mu and your plug have the same complicated insides as an Apple iPhone charger. This article was recently posted here: http://www.arcfn.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-q...

A submission of the tiny, cheap and dangerous fake iPhone charger killed my account 1 month ago, even though it got 140 points (duplicate or linkbait, anyone care to explain?)

  http://www.arcfn.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3903705

In the UK one of the first things most people with any sort of interest in DIY or technology learn is how to 'wire a plug'.

Is this a UK specific thing, or is it common in other countries as well?

In the US it's almost impossible to get a re-wireable plug except for industrial extension leads.

Most Americans have no idea which pin is 'live'

There's no need for Americans to know which pin is live. (The correct answer is "both", by the way.)

Americans who do DIY electronics / electrical systems all know that black is hot and white is neutral, bare or green is ground. Plugs come with cables, so there is no need to know which pin is which, and I'm not sure what the benefit of rewiring a plug is except in the very rare case that the plug is damaged.

For the record, the bigger prong is neutral, which is exactly what you'd expect.

True, and all new products in the UK have to have pre-wired sealed plugs now. Although you can still buy replacements plugs - I don't know hoe much longer for.

It's just part of the lost art of being able to fix things, now you throw away the Walmart appliance rather than replace a plug. Soon you wont be able to fix your car and will have to scrap it when the dealer decides that support has expired.

For a smartphone product, their website is remarkably mobile-hostile. Can anyone figure out a way to get their "click and drag" photo navigation to work on an iPhone?

I wonder if this device supports the USB charging port standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Power). Are D- and D+ shorted? Their FAQ doesn't seem to say.

Regardless of the pros and cons with this and UK plugs in general, £25 for one 1A USB socket is £20 too much. And that's allowing £4 for the gimmick-factor.

It's not even that much smaller than the newer micro-USB chargers that Nokia and Samsung have.

I have one. I really like it. It works and feels reasonably sturdy. The only thing I don't like is that the earth pin sticks out when the flaps are closed :-(

The only good thing about the UK plug is that it's possible to push a standard 2-pin EU plug into the socket.

I've had a plug disintegrate inside the socket. (the metal prongs somehow detached from the plug). So, don't do this!

I'd argue that the really good thing about the UK plug is 1) the switches in the sockets and 2) that the devices are all well-grounded. The EU one is usually just 2 contacts, with an optional 3rd one for ground. That's bad, anyway I look at it.

I'd argue that the really good thing about the UK plug is 1) the switches in the sockets and 2) that the devices are all well-grounded

There are quite a lot of safety features built in to UK plugs. Other ones I'm aware of are the holes being shuttered until a plug is inserted, and the internal design meaning that if you pull hard enough on the external wire, pulling it out, the internal wires will disconnect in a safe order.

If only the safety features went as far as making them less horrendous to stand on.

At an old workplace, we had a piece of equipment with a European plug that we regularly had to shoehorn into a UK socket. It was a case of shoving a screwdriver or a pencil into the earth hole on the socket to simulate that pin being inserted and unlock the others, then fumble the EU plug into the live and neutral holes. (All while the socket was powered down, of course.)

Not particularly safe, and the result of someone who found you could buy equipment cheaper from Germany!

Would a travel plug not be easier?

Why didn't you just buy a converter? One side is the UK plug, other side allows you to plug in a variety of different plugs (including the continental one) and they are very cheap.

You could have used an adaptor?

Also the base of the pins is often insulated so that you can't even wrap a finger around the plug and touch a pin while shoving it clumsily into a socket.

Isn't it easier to just stick the bare wires into the socket with matches?

There used to be a 1970s government training film showing you how.

I think something like a flat blade 3 pins in a row italian style plug would be the ideal. Flat and square plugs tend to stay in place compared to round plugs and the 3 pins in a row would be space compact, while still providing grounding.

The reason for the UK triangle is that the orientation is set, so you know which of the supply wires is live and which is neutral - and if the plug is half removed the top exposed pin is ground so if anything fell down onto the socket it wouldn't touch a hot pin

Extreme I know - whoever designed the UK plug was obviously paranoid.

That would be solved by the 'polarlized' flat pins that the USA has, making the pins covered for part of the rod and making the grounding pin longer.

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