DIY : Lost your Philips Trimmer Charger? Here's how you do a cool #Jugaad

Ummm, chargers are a messy business (including those wireless ones, sigh!). Specially those which are specially made for special devices. 

Yes, I am looking at you, Philips trimmers (and shavers and all things similar). You know, I totally understand your business idea. Sell the whole set for some 1500 bucks and sell spare chargers for some 1000 ones. Fools like me would go for a new set, and fools unlike me would hand you over 1000 bucks anyway.

Case in point.

And you make sure different model ones don't fit each other. 

Well, guess what, up yours this time! 

After having used two different Philips trimmers, I have realized that in most of the models, the actual charging pins (in the handsets) are the same, but the overall port is modified by changing the size/ location of the plastic separator in between. 

Kind of reminds me of those RAMs (DDR 1, DDR 2 and DDRwhatTheFuckisWrongWithTheseManufacturers ones we used to have in the assembled PCs).

RAM Ek Roop Anek.

(Bonus caption: Tu hi RAM hai, tu Rahim hai, Tu Karim Krishna Khuda hua - by changing the slot location that is! )

Ok, so coming back to the DIY bit. If you happen to have a Philips trimmer whose ass has two pointy, shiny, metallic teeth laughing their chromium shine off on you for having lost your charger, and hence having become another prey to the inherently designed ransomware, here's what you do.

1. Get hold of a generic pen refill (I tried a random BiC pen refill, it worked like it had been designed by Steve Jobs for this only!)

2. Cut 1cm long pieces of the refill from the top (make sure you're at a safe distance from the ink, otherwise you'll end up the day trying to solve a different problem altogether.)

3. Now comes the cool part. Get hold of one of those mobile phone chargers which you get a dime a dozen at every mobile phone repair shop worth its salt. I had an old Nokia USB charger which I did not think twice before beheading.

Come one, come all!

4. Chop off the head of the charger (the end which was meant to be inserted in the original device), and separate the wires inside. It will look something like this:

5. Seal off the white and green wires. If you don't have white and green ones (in case the cheapass charger was not meant to transfer data), smile & don't bother anyway!

6. Now peel off the insulation of the red wire and the black wire, insert them in the two refill stubs separately, and fix it up using a duct tape or super glue. It should look like this:

Ignore the potato-clicked photographs with focus gone hay-wire (sorry for the pun too!)

7. There you go! Stick it up the ass of your philips charger and whirr up your devilwork, which was busy plotting to rob you up off your hard earned money! 

Bonus 8. In case your Philips trimmer refuses to charge, swap the refill stub on the charging pins - Check the correct polarity by hit-and trial method - it's either left red, right black or right red, left black configuration (depending on which side of the trimmer you keep towards your face. That's a different philosophical question altogether.) 

It's ugly, but it works!

Bonus 9. Cry, because the 1000 bucks you saved would get wasted in paying 'Swacch Bharat Cess' someday anyway. 

Nihilist 1 Miser 0.

Thank you.

Alok

30. 07. 17