19 hours Ago By Maya Posch
The “USB C” cable that comes with the Inaya Portable Rechargeable Lamp. (Credit: The Stock Pot, YouTube)" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.
jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.jpg?w=627" class="size-medium wp-image-771389" src="https://hackaday.
com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.jpg?w=400" alt="The "USB C" cable that comes with the Inaya Portable Rechargeable Lamp. (Credit: The Stock Pot, YouTube)" width="400" height="400" srcset="https://hackaday.
com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.jpg 804w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.
jpg?resize=250,250 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.jpg?resize=400,400 400w, https://hackaday.
com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/kmart_inaya_portable_rechargeable_lamp_cable_label_the_stock_pot_youtube.jpg?resize=627,625 627w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" />The “USB C” cable that comes with the Inaya Portable Rechargeable Lamp. (Credit: The Stock Pot, YouTube)Recently [Dillan Stock] over at The Stock Pot YouTube channel bought a $17 ‘mushroom’ lamp from his local Kmart that listed ‘USB-C rechargeable’ as one of its features, the only problem being that although this is technically true, there’s a major asterisk.
This Inaya-branded lamp namely comes with a USB-C cable with a rather prominent label attached to it that tells you that this lamp requires that specific cable. After trying with a regular USB-C cable, [Dillan] indeed confirmed that the lamp does not charge from a standard USB-C cable. So he did what any reasonable person would do: he bought a second unit and set about to hacking it.
[Dillan] also dug more into what’s so unusual about this cable and the connector inside the lamp. As it turns out, while GND & Vcc are connected as normal, the two data lines (D+, D-) are also connected to Vcc. Presumably on the lamp side this is the expected configuration, while using a regular USB-C cable causes issues.
Vice versa, this cable’s configuration may actually be harmful to compliant USB-C devices, though [Dillan] did not try this.With the second unit in hand, he then started hacking it, with the full plans and schematic available on his website.The changes include a regular USB-C port for charging, an ESP32 board with integrated battery charger for the 18650 Li-ion cell of the lamp, and an N-channel MOSFET to switch the power to the lamp’s LED.
With all of the raw power from the ESP32 available, the two lamps got integrated into the Home Assistant network which enables features such as turning the lamps on when the alarm goes off in the morning. All of this took about $7 in parts and a few hours of work.Although we can commend [Dillan] on this creative hack rather than returning the item, it’s worrying that apparently there’s now a flood of ‘USB C-powered’ devices out there that come with non-compliant cables that are somehow worse than ‘power-only’ USB cables.
It brings back fond memories of hunting down proprietary charging cables, which was the issue that USB power was supposed to fix..
