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USB Type-C is still a mess

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Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#61

Post by tadfisher »

vertexFarm wrote: post #43
exmadscientist wrote: post #22

Speaking as someone in the industry who's worked on Type C-enabled gadgets, half the bloody problem is that the Type C products offered by the major semiconductor companies are _terrible_. For sake of a simple example, consider designing a rechargeable flashlight. For whatever reason, you'd like it to be rechargeable over a USB-C port. You also want the flashlight to charge as fast as possible from whatever power sou…

Forgive me for sounding extremely ignorant. I know this is not my area of specialty and I admit I'm about to sound stupid. I want to admit this right off the bat. Can't you just hook up the VCC and ground from any USB charging IC to a type-c socket? It's all +5v right? I don't understand why the type of connector dictates how fast a cable should be useful for charging. That seems like it should be up to the simple ga…

That's a tiny part of the USB 3.1 Power Delivery spec. The bulk of the issue lies in the negotiation between sink and source, which is fraught with complications.

PDF link: http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva842/slva842.pdf

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#62

Post by mikeash »

vertexFarm wrote: post #43
exmadscientist wrote: post #22

Speaking as someone in the industry who's worked on Type C-enabled gadgets, half the bloody problem is that the Type C products offered by the major semiconductor companies are _terrible_. For sake of a simple example, consider designing a rechargeable flashlight. For whatever reason, you'd like it to be rechargeable over a USB-C port. You also want the flashlight to charge as fast as possible from whatever power sou…

Forgive me for sounding extremely ignorant. I know this is not my area of specialty and I admit I'm about to sound stupid. I want to admit this right off the bat. Can't you just hook up the VCC and ground from any USB charging IC to a type-c socket? It's all +5v right? I don't understand why the type of connector dictates how fast a cable should be useful for charging. That seems like it should be up to the simple ga…

You can’t make that assumption at the end. These cables are as thin as they can possibly be to carry the maximum current they’re rated for. That maximum current could be 0.5A or it could be 5A. Try to pull 5A through a cable rated for 0.5A and you’re likely to burn the customer’s house down. You can’t really measure the resistance of the cable from one end. You can try to guess by watching for a voltage drop as you pull more current, but that’s extremely error prone. Because of this, all of the components are supposed to signal what they can handle, and if they don’t, they fall back to the minimum current known to work.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#63

Post by kup0 »

sparrish wrote: post #10

I disagree. It's not a mess. It works well. So much better than USB 2.0. I don't have to try to 'key' it correctly when plugging it in and the connections are fast and 'just work'.

"USB-C adoption is a mess" may have been a more accurate headline

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#64

Post by camgunz »

reaperducer wrote: post #29
matthewmacleod wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple with their stupid single port is just idiotic This is on a single specific device. The best port selection with usb-c is on the 2015 chrome pixel laptop. 2 usb-c, 2 usb-b You mean USB-A. Just having a single usb-c has caused endless pain, all so apple could sell stupid dongles. Nobody I know using MacBooks has a particular problem with this. A dongle would be required in most cases to connect to an external dis…

Nobody I know using MacBooks has a particular problem with this. A dongle would be required in most cases to connect to an external display in any case; it's not like Apple are selling more dongles. Agreed. My wife has a MacBook with a single USB-C port. Having only one port has exactly zero impact on her. The only thing she uses it for is for charging, and very occasionally plugging in a tiny hard drive to look at h…

Apple's USB-C dongle is the least functional, most overpriced dongle there is. It has to have a huge margin.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#65

Post by chx »

My highest score answer on superuser.com is about USB C https://superuser.com/a/1200112/41259 and I had this to say after a long list of capabilities:

> They really, really should have provided some way to clarify this mess but they didn't. If colors and icons with the big variety and the space constrains are not viable then provide a standard way for software to give a capability list to the user. Or a diagnostics tool that you can plug into USB-C and it gives you a list of "this port can provide signals A, B, C and accepts inputs D, E, F".

Given the lack of that when plugging together two USB C sockets and the results are not satisfactory any of the following might occur:

1. The signal you want is not provided by the source 2. The cable is not capable of carrying the signal you want 3. The sink can't process the signal 4. It just doesn't work because of firmware bugs or driver bugs 5. There might be interference, there was a Dell problem where lowering wifi signal strength made Thunderbolt better.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#66

Post by monocasa »

mfgmfg wrote: post #12
phito wrote: post #6

The Nintendo Switch probably has the worst implementation of USB-C I've ever seen.

Did Nintendo even advertise it as being USB-C compliant? See https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yV...

They do, at least on their japanese site.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/hardware/switch/specs/#1

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#67

Post by MBCook »

oconnor663 wrote: post #31
MBCook wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they ever say it’s USB-C, we all just know it is. So they can claim things are damaging your device when they’re not Nintendo certified. I like Nintendo, but that’s a joke and a jerk move. They have a Tegra platform, why couldn’t they do it right?

To be fair, when companies try to avoid these problems by putting a physical bump in their not-entirely-compatible USB connectors, lots of other people scream bloody murder about how it's a conspiracy to force us all to buy more cables.

I think going with USB-C is a great idea, it just seems like they messed it up a bit so it’s not fully compatible.

This is certainly better than another proprietary thing.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#68

Post by kylec »

epistasis wrote: post #2

I would like a USB-C hub that's like the USB-A hubs of yore: more than 2 USB-C ports, ideally 4 or more downstream facing ports. I saw one once that had 2 downstream ports and one upstream port, as well as several USB-A downstream ports, but I just want to transition fully to USB-C. Why are there no products for that, I wonder?

This is the biggest problem in my opinion. It's not possible for people to transition fully to USB-C even if you want to because of the limited number of USB-C ports on computers and the inability to add any more with hubs.

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#69

Post by kjeetgill »

exmadscientist wrote: post #22

Speaking as someone in the industry who's worked on Type C-enabled gadgets, half the bloody problem is that the Type C products offered by the major semiconductor companies are _terrible_. For sake of a simple example, consider designing a rechargeable flashlight. For whatever reason, you'd like it to be rechargeable over a USB-C port. You also want the flashlight to charge as fast as possible from whatever power sou…

If an equivalent exists for USB 2.0, I'm surprised a company hasn't come it to sweep up the low hanging fruit.

Why do you think that is? Is there something in the spec that's holding anyone back? or is it a chicken and egg problem where no one invests in Type C because no one has yet?

Re: USB Type-C is still a mess

#70

Post by colejohnson66 »

kbutler wrote: post #5

I have 3 dongles and one power plugged into my macbook pro right now (ethernet could be optional, external monitor, USB, power). Maybe there will be a nice docking station sometime, but for now, it's dongle city, and picking up the laptop a bit to connect/disconnect each one every time I transition between mobile and desktop-replacement. Maybe something like https://nerdtechy.com/best-usb-c-docking-stations , though…

> picking up the laptop a bit to connect/disconnect each one every time I transition between mobile and desktop-replacement.

Am I missing something? You’d have to do that even if there weren’t dongles.

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