The Igo Juice sucks as a general purpose power supply

Many users of the Igo Juice have noticed that its voltage and current limit are settable via resistors, and the natural conclusion from this is that maybe it can be used as a general purpose lab/bench power supply.

After experimenting with it, my finding is "no", for the following reasons:

  1. 15 to 24 V is not a very useful range
  2. It is not robust; mine was destroyed when I tried to set the voltage too high
  3. It is not serviceable
For those who want to try anyway, I'll share the measurements I took before I destroyed it.

Number the pins 1 through 4, with 1 being on the side with the key and slot. Pin 1 is ground and pin 2 is Vcc. Resistors from pin 3 to ground set the voltage, and resistors from pin 4 to ground set the current limit. 

Voltage values

open        14.87 V
100k        15.11
10k         17.38
5k	    19.7
100         device permanently destroyed

Current values (measured with voltage open)

value       current
open        unlimited
100k        3.08 A
10k         0.71 A
100         too low to measure
I apparently blew some component in the voltage regulation path by connecting a 100 ohm resistor (it started running again after being power cycled, but the voltage would never go above 14.8), I tried to open it to see if it was easily fixed. It is obviously not intended to ever be opened or serviced. I had to break the case open destructively, and then peel off many layers of glued-down shielding. By the time I was able to access the components, it was obvious that the brick was never going back together, and I didn't bother even looking for the fault.

Don't feel bad - I got it for free from the trash.