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Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

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Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#111

Post by avidiax »

ricardobeat wrote: post #19

I remember seeing a recent analysis where the vast majority of cables from Amazon misreported their capabilities. Is this tool going to be able to catch those, or blindly report what the chip advertises?

The tool can only tell you what the cable says. Detecting the gauge and composition of the wires in the cable is either destructive or requires temperature probes.

Detecting whether the signal characteristics are close enough to in-spec or not requires a speed test, perhaps, but that also doesn't necessarily mean the cable is the problem if such a test failed.

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#112

Post by thomas_viaelo »

jareds wrote: post #65

Thanks for creating this. I'm blind so the $16 USB tester off amazon to sort through my drawer of cables is not an option. This will stop me from needing to buy a sbc just so I have something running Linux to test cables.

Curious whether you've tested the popover with VoiceOver yet. Menu bar SwiftUI apps usually nail the status item by default, but the popover content tends to be hit-or-miss depending on row layout. A stack of Text views walks cleanly, but custom-drawn rows often read as one blob. Worth confirming for jareds' use case.

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#113

Post by bloggie »

aquir wrote: post #5

Good stuff, but it's telling me that my USB-C Thunderbolt cable has been plugged in upside down but the connector handled this. I was not aware that you can plug in something into USB-C upside down!

This is actually one of the cost adders of USB3 USB-C devices. They need lane swapping ICs which are basically high speed analogue switches.

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#114

Post by reaperducer »

hdndjsbbs wrote: post #107
lostlogin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 1st of May here Is that date significant somewhere? It was an nice sunny Friday for me.

It's May Day, which is a labour holiday everywhere except North America commemorating the Haymarket Affair when American police brutally repressed striking workers . In North America we have Labor Day in September to distance it from the historical associations with actual organizing and police brutality.

Still widely noted in Chicago, where the Haymarket riot took place. There's even a very well-attended reenactment every year.

North America is a big place. Generalizations always fail.

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#115

Post by DavideNL »

lostlogin wrote: post #96
pimeys wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 1st of May here, so probably not doing it today. Looking into it a bit more when I get back from the parties. but it's basically just three files: QML for the UI, some python code to parse /proc data and a metadata file.

> It's 1st of May here Is that date significant somewhere? It was an nice sunny Friday for me.

International Workers Day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#116

Post by darnir »

techwizrd wrote: post #106
rustyhancock wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this is worth packaging for KDE. Although I imagine if you don't have the motivation to make it in the first place, you likely don't have the motivation to package it.

I am happy to package it and port it for Gtk/GNOME today.

If you end up doing that, please post it here. I'd be a very happy user of that extension

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#117

Post by lxgr »

poisonborz wrote: post #72
lxgr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dock is usually full My menu bar is also full and, unlike the Dock, I can’t resize it to fit more.

You can put it in a secondary onclick taskbar with Ice (similarly to Windows)

There's also Bartender, Hidden Bar etc., but they all come with some downsides.

I just don't get why Apple doesn't recognize this as a problem. Do the engineers working on macOS all have two of these 5:1 aspect ratio ultra wide monitors!?

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#118

Post by Zetaphor »

rustyhancock wrote: post #48
geordieboozer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To save me 10 mins and $2, is this posted to GitHub somewhere?

Absolutely this is worth packaging for KDE. Although I imagine if you don't have the motivation to make it in the first place, you likely don't have the motivation to package it.

I've got Opus crunching on it now, will update when I have it finished and published

Edit:

https://github.com/Zetaphor/whatcable-linux

Running on my Fedora KDE machine right now. Also includes a CLI so you could wrap your own widget

I still need to figure out publishing, doing this in between work meetings.

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#119

Post by fuzzylightbulb »

AndroTux wrote: post #35
ulfw wrote: post #11

The 'plugged upside down' is weird for a USB-cable. Especially as that doesn't work. I tried plugging it 'the other way around' and it showed the same 'upside down' warning

Everyone knows you have to flip the USB cable twice before it’s no longer upside down.

usb superposition. my favorite of the classic phenomena

Re: Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables

#120

Post by tonymet »

awesome utility . I purchased a $50 usb cable inspector on Ali express because usb-c compatibility is atrocious. there are dozens of protocols, (data, multiple PD, EPR, various wire gauges, various pinouts connected etc).

USB c is really just a connector standard, but vendors sell the cables as if it’s a cable standard. It’s a failure of the USB standards group to establish conduductor, pinout, shielding and protocol standards for consumers to understand.

There should be color and markings on USB C cables similar to resistors so you can immediately tell WTF the cable is capable of before and during use.

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