My PC carked it last night.
Fortunately, it wasn't terminal and it reset itself after a few minutes switched off but it could have been much worse.
It all started when my missus bought one of those "fitness bands" a few months ago.
It's quite a clever little gadget with all sorts of nifty tricks but that's beside the point.
The important thing is that a lot of them make use of a charging cable like this.
There are copper pads on the back of the watch, the cable has sprung-pins on it which touch the copper pads and, importantly, the cable has magnets on it to attach it to the watch.
So, my missus has been charging it up using a wall-wart charger but yesterday she was using the charger to charge up a tablet.
She plugged the charging cable into the USB hub of my PC, connected her watch and left it to charge.
Later on, after the watch was fully charged, she unhooked the watch and put it on... leaving the cable attached to my PC.
A few hours later, I've got my USB headset on and I'm playing ED with my joystick.
All of a sudden, I've got no control of my ship and the sound's gone dead.
Odd.
I go to alt-tab out of ED but my keyboard isn't responding either.
A few seconds of deliberation reveals that there are no lights on any of my USB devices.
I decide there's no alternative but to re-boot my PC.
I get a message saying something like "Over current on USB. Unable to start PC"
Awhatnow?
I start unplugging USB devices and quickly discover the likely cause of the problem.
There's a push-pin from a notice-board stuck to the magnets of the smartwatch charging cable, shorting out all the connecting pins!
Fortunately, the USB circuitry on my mobo is obviously clever enough to shut down when something bad happens and after a few minutes it reset itself.
If that cable had been plugged into, say, a powered USB hub which didn't have short-circuit protection or, perhaps, a wall-wart charger that didn't have short-circuit protection, I suspect things could have got pretty messy.
So, yeah.
Don't let it put you off buying one of these things, cos they seem pretty handy, but I'd STRONGLY suggest that you find something plastic or rubber to use as a "cap" to cover the end of the charging cable when it's not in use... or just unplug the cable from the charging source completely.
Fortunately, it wasn't terminal and it reset itself after a few minutes switched off but it could have been much worse.
It all started when my missus bought one of those "fitness bands" a few months ago.
It's quite a clever little gadget with all sorts of nifty tricks but that's beside the point.
The important thing is that a lot of them make use of a charging cable like this.
There are copper pads on the back of the watch, the cable has sprung-pins on it which touch the copper pads and, importantly, the cable has magnets on it to attach it to the watch.
So, my missus has been charging it up using a wall-wart charger but yesterday she was using the charger to charge up a tablet.
She plugged the charging cable into the USB hub of my PC, connected her watch and left it to charge.
Later on, after the watch was fully charged, she unhooked the watch and put it on... leaving the cable attached to my PC.
A few hours later, I've got my USB headset on and I'm playing ED with my joystick.
All of a sudden, I've got no control of my ship and the sound's gone dead.
Odd.
I go to alt-tab out of ED but my keyboard isn't responding either.
A few seconds of deliberation reveals that there are no lights on any of my USB devices.
I decide there's no alternative but to re-boot my PC.
I get a message saying something like "Over current on USB. Unable to start PC"
Awhatnow?
I start unplugging USB devices and quickly discover the likely cause of the problem.
There's a push-pin from a notice-board stuck to the magnets of the smartwatch charging cable, shorting out all the connecting pins!
Fortunately, the USB circuitry on my mobo is obviously clever enough to shut down when something bad happens and after a few minutes it reset itself.
If that cable had been plugged into, say, a powered USB hub which didn't have short-circuit protection or, perhaps, a wall-wart charger that didn't have short-circuit protection, I suspect things could have got pretty messy.
So, yeah.
Don't let it put you off buying one of these things, cos they seem pretty handy, but I'd STRONGLY suggest that you find something plastic or rubber to use as a "cap" to cover the end of the charging cable when it's not in use... or just unplug the cable from the charging source completely.
