Edit: This was terrifying. Glad I avoided a watch list.
Originally posted May 3, 2016 on AIXchange
If you travel for your job as I do, you probably lug lots of gear. Chargers, cords and adapters are just some of the necessities that keep your gadgets in working order while you’re on the go.
If you spend any time on the raised floor, hopefully you have a cord that you can plug into a PDU, like these. From that cord I plug in a portable power strip, like these. This allows me to plug in all the gear I need during long stints in the computer room. I find power strips also come in handy when I’m sitting in airports and outlets are at a premium. You can be instantly popular by allowing others to plug into yours during a layover. That said, if you don’t carry a power strip, keeping your battery-powered items charged will usually suffice.
Speaking of batteries, I always bring extras for my laptop to keep it powered up for long flights or any extended time away from outlets. I also carry extra batteries for my noise-canceling headphones (which are great on planes or raised floors) and extra external battery packs for charging my cellphone.
All of this is a prelude to a story about the importance of keeping batteries separate from the rest of your gear.
I have Tom Binh’s snake charmer, and am quite happy with it. Typically I’d just cram my cables and batteries and everything else into it and not give it a second thought. Then late last year I’m at the airport, waiting to head home, and I detect the smell of burning wires or plastic. I wrote it off to the holiday lights and decorations that were plugged in all over. Or maybe it was dust on a bulb or something. Once I got on the plane, the smell disappeared, so I didn’t give it a thought — that is, until I pulled my laptop out of my bag. The same burning smell returned. It was coming from my gear.
It was coming from the snake charmer. I had three external batteries inside of it that I use to recharge my cell phone. Somehow one of the prongs from a power adapter had jammed into the USB port on the battery pack:
“Battery pack manufacturers incorporate safety devices into the pack designs to protect the battery from out of tolerance operating conditions and where possible from abuse. While they try to make the battery foolproof, it has often been explained how difficult this is because fools can be so ingenious.
Subjecting a battery to abuse or conditions for which it was never designed can result in uncontrolled and dangerous failure of the battery. This may include explosion, fire and the emission of toxic fumes.”
Here’s more to keep in mind about carrying extra batteries:
“Any kinds of conductive material being bridged with the external terminals of a battery will result in short circuit. Based on the battery system, a short circuit may have serious consequences, e.g. rising electrolyte temperature or building up internal gas pressure. If the internal gas pressure value exceeds the limitation of cell cap endurance, the electrolyte will leak, which will damage battery greatly. If safe vent fails to respond, even explosion will occur. Therefore don’t short circuit.”
So here I am with a battery that has a melting USB slot with a piece of metal jammed and fused into it. It’s hot, it stinks of burning plastic and metal, and it’s on a plane. Is this contraption going to explode or catch fire? And what will become of me? Will the plane be diverted? Will I be kicked off the flight?
These thoughts raced through my mind. But then, fortunately for me, I had a MacGyver moment. I realized I could unscrew the back piece of the charger, which exposed two wires and a small circuit board connected to the battery itself. I just detached the wires from the battery, it immediately stopped smelling, and the battery started to cool down. Crisis averted.
The amazing part was no one said a thing. A guy seated nearby was watching me, and two flight attendants came by, but none of them questioned me. Everyone acted like it was perfectly normal for a guy to have a smoking stinking electronic device with a circuit board and wires coming off of it on an airplane. Thankfully, the rest of the flight was uneventful.
I learned my lesson though. Now I make sure to segregate my portable batteries from the rest of my plugs and chargers. I still have no idea how that power adapter managed to find that battery’s USB slot, but now I realize that such an occurrence is a possibility.
The point is, check your bags. You may not haul as many batteries as I do, but if you attended the same conference I did last year, you may have same type of charger. Learn from my mistake.