The little D1 Mini controllers I use, and other gadgets like Raspberry Pis, run on USB-style adapters. You can get various sizes and shapes of these “wall worts” dirt-cheap, and probably have a bunch in a junk drawer somewhere.

So- what do you do when you want to use them in, say, a waterproof junction box? In my case- I use D1 Minis with a relay hat to to power displays and other things on and off. I need these in some kind of a waterproof enclosure so they can live outside, and I don’t want to have to feed separate 5v power to them, which isn’t efficient.

I’ve seen some people tear these little wall adapters apart and solder in their own leads. I think this just makes them more unsafe than what I do, which is this:

A plain-ordinary spade terminals will connect to two-prong plugs on cheap power adapters. They don’t work for “polarized” plugs, but most of these adapters don’t use them. It helps to use a flat-blade screwdriver to open the terminal up a little bit, but not too much- you still want a solid connection.

This is actually electrically better than the tiny clips you will find in some manufactured plugs, but obviously isn’t very safe as-is. We need to employ the electrical hackers secret weapon- heat shrink tubing…

All better now! Now we have USB power that can be incorporated into an enclosure. In this case, I’m using a 4″x4″x2″ sealed junction box, which you can find at almost any home center or online. This is one of those relay controllers I mentioned earlier…

I’ll post more information about these builds later, with more pictures, of course.