Hi everyone, stupid question time:
Will plugging a r-pi Pico into a wall outlet using my samsung wall charger fry it? I figured it wouldnt draw any more power than it needed but alas it does not work anymore. Probably should have asked this before trying it 
In my opinion DONâT use phone chargers as a power source for microcontrollers, they are specifically designed to charge phones.
With USB-C the charger and the phone communicate and the phone tells the charger what voltage it needs. If there is no communication the charger should provide 5VDC, but I donât trust them to do that. USB-C phone chargers can provide up to 20VDC which would kill your Pico.
In your case with the r-pi Pico there would be no communication so the volts should have been 5VDC but may not have been.
Regards
Jim
Hi James
Just emphasising James46717Reply. These things are designed to charge phones, nothing else. As James46717 says if it does not detect a phone plugged it then nothing, zilch. I have had a few like that. One of the old phones had a simple system. The phone placed a short on what would be the data connections. If the charger did not see this short it refused to output anything.
The 5V out of a charger could be a bit âdirtyâ also as there is no need for a particularly âcleanâ supply to charge a battery.
In a nutshell if you stick with using devices as they are designed to be used you will save yourself a lot of hair pulling in the future.
Cheer Bob
Too easy, thanks for your help. Ill just get a battery pack for use in the future.
Im guilty lf this in a pinch. What do you recommend?
Hi Pix.
A power SUPPLY.
There has been enough said in this Forum in recent times so I am not going to elaborate and repeat here.
If you are not going to research. Just believe.
Cheers Bob
I believe you Robert I promise! I did a search for Pico Power Supply on the forum but I didnt see any thing. I would rather plug my pico into a wall outlet rather than use a battery power supply. Would the power supply from a Pi 3 work. Its micro USB and it says 5V. Im just not sure if theres a power surge or something.
Hi James
I donât fiddle with RPi but I donât recollect seeing a power supply especially for Pico. There are however things like âofficialâ (a bit of a marketing ploy I think) RPi supplies which would be OK but check the connector type, could be micro or C. And I think some have PD (Power Delivery) function which for a Pico you donât need.
Should be fine. I think the current requirement of a Pi3 would not be less than a Pico. I donât think there would be any power surge to worry about. Has the advantage of being the right connector too I think.
The thing here is that these are designed to be power SUPPLIES as different from battery chargers. I guess what I am saying this does not have to be a designated RPi supply. Any supply with the right sort of connector and enough current capability should be OK. I have a couple of bits of test equipment which run from such a SUPPLY, one doubles up as a charger for a built in battery but that is taken care of internally, all works with no problems.
Cheers Bob
By the way. referring to your opening post.
NO question is really âstupidâ. Just that some of them are manipulated that way.
The issue is that a âUSB Power supplyâ is either less than 1A, because USB devices are typically a maximum of ~500mA, or is PD which can deliver the current but might mis-detect the device and provide more than 5V or might cut out randomly, either because it doesnât detect enough load or because it is checking the state of the battery charge. In either case itâs not suitable.
The best solution is to look for something simply described as 5V at the current you require, and, if necessary, replace the end connector with USB.
This is an example:
Hi Jeff, James
Or this
Or I think most RPi / Arduino type devices have a supply input pin which accepts 5V.
Cheers Bob
@Pixmusix Batteries are good but need to be charged and managed.
For development using a Pico I use a USB port on my PC.
For Raspberry Pi I used the official plug pack power supply.
For Arduino a 9VDC plug pack to power the UNO.
Recently I purchased a USB hub because two spinning hard drives are too much of a drain on my PC USB power supply. The hub came with 5 high speed USB ports plus another 2 used for charging a device. I will be using that to power my projects in the future. The plug pack for the hub provides up to 2.5A.
I also have a number of USB 5VDC 1A plug packs which work well.
Cheers
Jim
Hi James
The ones I referred to above happen to be 2A but if 1A is adequate all OK. But I stress they are NOT phone chargers are they.
Cheers Bob
I think this is the spirit of my question. It allows me to easily use proper power supplies for my projects without having to pull out my soldering iron. Good find, Iâll pick up a few on my next order 
Hi @James292715
Welcome to the forum!
Put simply it should be fine, the only real thing that could go wrong is that the charger is faulty.
Really it there isnât much difference between a USB adapter like this one USB Mains Mini Power Adaptor | Buy in Australia | CE04427 | Core Electronics and a Raspberry Pi 4 Power Supply (Official) - USB-C 5.1V 15.3W (White) | Buy in Australia | CE06427 | Core Electronics other than the Pi one having a male USB-C connector and the generic one having a female USB-A with a slightly lower max current output of 2.1A vs. 3A.
No stupid questions..more like some less informed answers.
So tell us more.
You plugged a mico-USB cable into the power and data socket of the Pico, and the other end into a USB wall charger.
Does the Samsung Charger have a USB C connection or the older USB A?
You can look at the Spec Sheet ( e.g. table 2 under Power Consumption) to see that it will not draw more than a few mA (14260uA/14.260mA is the max I can see), so overloading the Wall wart is unlikely.
What else was connected to the Pico? some jumper wires, was it in a breadboard?
Does the USB cable still work for other devices?
Does your Computer recognise the USB connection?
Did you see or smell any smoke?
Sorry for so many questions, but others seem to have jumped to conclusions about USB PD chargers that you havenât actually said you used.
Dave.
It was just a photo resistor and a resistor on a small bread board. I left ir plugged in overnight and recorded voltage levels to a datafile. I wanted to know what the voltage was reading right before my garden lights kicked on so I could make a light display that would also come on at similar light levels. I tested it a few times connected to my computer and then plugged it in outside. When i came out in the morning the pico was fried.
Its a USB A plug on the samsung charger
Hi James
Could we have a circuit of EXACTLY how this was wired and to what sort of voltage. It may be possible the Pico got too many volts on the input when it got dark or light (depending on how the photo resistor was wired)
Cheers Bob
Hi James
Thatâs fine. I just wanted to make sure you could not get 5V onto a 3.3V pin. The only way that could happen here is if something went drastically wrong with the 3.3V point.
Having established that I have no idea why your Pico should have âfriedâ. Sorry
Cheers Bob
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