It's 2025. For fucks sake, getting _basic_ USB-C compliance for power is a matter of two fucking SMD resistors. And yet, people are _still_ messing that up.
Yeah. I mean, back in 2019 when Raspberry Pi ran into that very same issue [1], it was excusable, but it's six years later and people still have zero idea what the fuck they are doing?
Compared to plain wires with your intended voltage and your choice of any 2-pin connector, USB-C is not so basic. SMD resistors imply you have a PCB or something to put them on. Which means that your power connector is no longer just a couple pieces of stamped metal and some plastic. It's also a tiny connector with close together pins. For everything else since the introduction of electric lighting, you can just solder two wires on the back and call it a day.
Not that I'm making excuses here - there's some weird stuff going on inside that lamp. There's a PCB for the battery charger, but the USB-C socket isn't on it, it's on a wire pigtail that connects to the board with another connector. And I don't usually see so many removable connectors inside something made so cheaply. They clearly could have done it correctly in this case, but didn't.
> SMD resistors imply you have a PCB or something to put them on. Which means that your power connector is no longer just a couple pieces of stamped metal and some plastic. It's also a tiny connector with close together pins.
So what, there's ready made breakout boards for a few cents that will give you plain old 5V@500mA, and trigger boards for about 1€ at <10 quantity that you can even configure what they should negotiate for.
These things are actually a godsend if you are a QRP ham radio operator and have a USB-C PPS capable power bank. No more heavy AGM batteries - just connect your radio to the trigger board, wire it up for 12V (if the power bank "only" supports PD) or 13.8V if it supports PPS, and off you go.
