Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Hacking USB power socket

Hacking a USB power socket.
For less than 7 euro's i bought this power socket with 220V and USB (inbouw stopcontact met USB aansluiting) at the Action in Almere (The Netherlands).


On Aliexpress you can find similar wall power sockets with USB

 If opening this socket at the front (to pace it on the wall) you will see this:
It is always nice to have USB power ( e.g. for home automation projects) and i also wanted to know if it is easy to modify the circuit to control the 220V socket with a relay.
I decided to open it on the backside, here are some photos's

As i already expected these is not much space to interrupt the 220 Volt power circuit safe. This to add a relay for controlling the main power. Finally i decided only to add two wires, and make a hole to tap the (low voltage) USB power and bringing it to back of the wall socket for powering a (hidden) IOT device.

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