Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

kau.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 197 posts

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#81

Post by lxgr »

consp wrote: post #35
tennysont wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that I have a specific cable-device-orientation that is broken. Meaning, I think a particular USB C cable won't charge my phone if it's plugged in 'backwards'. I always assumed that USB C cables use different pins depending on orientation, and that some pins on the cable wore down. Maybe that's what happened here?

My guess would be they used a one-sided pcb to connect the cable to and used half the wires. Some sockets internally link the power and ground pins, so it works both ways, but you get no resistor network and thus only standard 5v which gives you 500ma max (at best). With the resistors connected by the cable it's about 900ma to 3a which is probably what happens plugged in "correctly". Or some other magic happens on on…

Shouldn't a compliant USB-C DFP not supply Vbus without the resistor network, though, so there should be no charging at all? (Not that all DFPs necessarily do the correct thing, of course.)

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#82

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...).

There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist?

Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#83

Post by [deleted] »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #82

I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...). There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist? Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for

[deleted]

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#84

Post by Nition »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #82

I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...). There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist? Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for

https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-...

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#85

Post by sersi »

madethemcry wrote: post #51

Content wise a nice idea, but I also like the conclusion about how AI made this possible in the first place. The author itself mentions this motivation. AI is undoubtedly perfect for utilities, small (even company internal) tools for personal use where maintainability is secondary as you can ditch the tool or rebuild it quickly. > Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script…

I've found that to be very true. For bigger projects, I've had rather mixed results from ai but for small utility scripts, it's perfect.

But like the author, I've found that it's usually better to have the llm output python, go or rust than use bash. So I've often had to ask it to rewrite at the beginning. Now I just directly skip bash

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#86

Post by bariumbitmap »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #82

I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...). There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist? Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for

I have the Treedix cable tester, it works well.

https://treedix.com/collections/best-seller/products/treedix...

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#87

Post by moray »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #82

I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...). There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist? Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for

On aliexpress for very cheap search for "DT3 Data Cable Detection Board Type-C". I got the one below and seems to work fine for what I needed.

https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005007509475055.html

Edit: This will test whether the cable is functioning properly. It will show the connections and indicate whether the cable supports only power or also data transfer. However, it won’t provide information about the USB-C cable type or its speed capabilities.

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#89

Post by Perz1val »

atoav wrote: post #20
Izkata wrote: post #5

It's more complicated than "this cable is good/bad". I had a suspicion about one of my cables for months, but just last week I confirmed it with a device that shows the volts/amps/watts/total kwh passing through it: I have a USB-C cable with orientation. Plugged in one way it transfers about 5x more power than the other way, and in the lower orientation it's low enough for the earbud case I use it with to not charge.

It is not unheard of to have single damaged lines/connector-joints within a cable. The question is whether your cable was designed that way or whether it was damaged in a way that made it do this.

It won't be a damaged wire, there's only one set of those, it's the plug lacking connectors or having them not connected

Re: A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

#90

Post by dist-epoch »

Izkata wrote: post #5

It's more complicated than "this cable is good/bad". I had a suspicion about one of my cables for months, but just last week I confirmed it with a device that shows the volts/amps/watts/total kwh passing through it: I have a USB-C cable with orientation. Plugged in one way it transfers about 5x more power than the other way, and in the lower orientation it's low enough for the earbud case I use it with to not charge.

I can confirm, I have a USB-C cable with the same problem, charging speed depends on the orientation of the USB-C connector, which is hilarious.

It was not a cheap cable, it was a medium-priced one with good reviews from a known brand.

Post reply on HN