I ordered a USB hard drive case from Dealextreme some time ago, and forgot to check if it has a wall wart compatible with the finnish wall sockets. So of course I got some chinese wall wart with no way of plugging it in anywhere.
Luckily, it accepts the 230V 50Hz AC, it just doesn't physically fit in the socket...
One option would be to buy an adapter, but I couldn't find anything less than 35 euro. Also, even if I found some cheap adapter, it would probably cause power problems to the hard drive case, making the hard drive unstable. So I soldered an europlug cord on the wall wart.
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| The adapter and the cord, soon to be one. |
If you do something like this, please don't have it connected to the wall when you're working on it. At least please don't sue me if some fucking idiot dies like this.
You need some heat shrink tube and a heat gun for this one, to hide the mains voltage connectors totally. You want to make this thing safe you know. If you don't have a heat gun, a hair dryer or a lighter might do.
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| Soldered together, with heat shrink tubing. |
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| Heat shrink tubes in place. |
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| After applying the heat gun. |
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| A HUGE piece of heat shrink tubing... |
At this point I learned that indeed, heat shrink tube shrinks. Especially with bigger tubes, you need to leave some extra length, because it will shrink also in length...
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| Didn't go as planned... |
Fortunately, the heat shrink I had at hand fit over the europlug, so I didn't have to start all over. I put a bigger piece of heat shrink on top of the old one and used the heat gun again...
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| Even bigger piece of heat shrink. This should do it. |
...and there we go. Works nicely and safe too!
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| Finally, ready for use! |
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