Folding Plug System

This was posted on Reddit about a year ago (Or more?). IMHO it would be far too flimsy to be safe/usable, and wouldn't pass safety regulations.

Something inbetween US and UK plugs would be nice. UK is rock solid, can't bend pins, has no chance of sparks, will never fall out of the socket, has fuse + other safety features (Covered pins), socket only opens Live+Neutral once earth is inserted etc, but is a bit clunky.

OTOH, US plugs spark, get bent pins, fall out of the wall, don't require an earth+fuse, are pretty dangerous IMHO, but on the plus side they're pretty flat :/

Nice!

I wonder how well the moving contacts to bring the power from the live and neutral to the power cable will survive, though - they may become worn and intermittent with time.

Do we really need the fold-out wings? Could we not just rotate the live and neutral pins into place, then plug it in? Or do the standards require a certain outline to keep fingers from the plugging-in bits?

One of the best workarounds I've seen. Sometimes full solutions are just not possible (i.e. changing the whole standard plug system in a country).

I thought I'd seen this before. A quick search found this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670856

If you're interested in this, you might like to read the discussion there as well. Many points are being re-made.

A brilliant design. And a brilliant design presentation.

Cool! Would like to know how he made the first prototype

It's great because Apple pretty much has to license it, given how much pride they take in their power cord design.

That looks very good. I really hope they become commercially available and commonplace.

I love this. Having used UK plugs for most of my life I know how cumbersome they can be.

My only concern is that many devices which change voltages such as computer power supplies often have some hefty capacitors in them. Even with the regular plugs I've occasionally got shocked (enough to hurt my fingers) by touching both pins while the device is plugged in.

If people have to rotate the pins in order to use the plug it's possible some devices with capacitors would be less safe to use as there is a risk that the capacitors would empty whenever you tried to rotate the pins.

That's really cool.

I find that I can get by with a Euro plug pretty much anywhere except the USA. Southeast Asia, Oz, and other places that standardize on US (or AUS) plugs often also accept the round-pinned EU plug.

Here in the UK, I just keep a teaspoon in my laptop bag for cramming into the ground slot. Thus, opening the other two holes wide enough to jam the EU plug in.

AC adapters on laptops already know how to handle any voltage/frequency combo in the world. It's just a matter of of physically cramming the metal bits into the socket.

I love seeing the sequence from design -> prototype.

I agree with some of the other posters though, any time you have a lot of current going through a connection that rotates / moves, you have the potential of reliability problems.

However, I don't think those are insurmountable problems, and good engineering could make this a reality.

One advantage is, if I recall correctly, UK is 220V as opposed to US 110V, so less current will be flowing through those contacts.

A bit off-topic, but does anybody know how that site is displaying its video? I don't have flash or moonlight installed, so it was a bit of a shock to hear my computer actually playing a video feed. I browsed their HTML source, but I didn't see any object tags, video tags, nor anything else that would obviously play video.

I wonder what material they've confirmed they'll be using to ensure that it doesn't just snap and break under the regular wear of plug usage.

I often wonder why plug design is drastically different between North America, Europe, and Asia.

Idea is good, but it is still workaround for bigger problem.

World needs better designed power plugs