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 ..
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