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

WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

whatcable.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#11

Post by robot_jesus »

I'm curious if this also works for USB-A to USB-C. The use case: My Suburu has USB-A inputs and only allows wired Carplay. When I upgraded my iPhone and ditched Lightning, I had to try 6 different cables from my cable drawer to find one that supported data transfer.

I have so many cables I've accumulated over the years, I should either purge or at least categorize the functionality of each.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#12

Post by nedrichards »

pogue wrote: post #2

Is there something like this for Windows/Linux?

ChromeOS firmware has a bunch of this built in - it's super cool. https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/chromebooks-iden... and https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1pyojjd/comme... and https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEA... is where I found out about it. A lot of the clever capabilities rely on the firmware that you have. Source - having spent a while a few weeks back getting Codex to poke at this topic on my machine https://github.com/nedrichards/whatcable-linux/blob/main/doc... since framework do reuse parts of the ChromeOS Embedded Controller in their firmware.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#14

Post by callumprentice »

bestouff wrote: post #3

I'm using the hardware tester from Treedix in which you have to plug both ends of the cable and which tests a lot of things, I'm quite fond of it. I have a basket with a lot of USB-c cables and without the tester I can't remember (nor guess) which one does what.

Would this tell me if a cable is close to the end of it's life? I like to travel light and I've had cables (mostly phone/pad power) go out on trips after working as expected when I packed.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#16

Post by lxgr »

pdpi wrote: post #15

I literally spent more than an hour yesterday debugging issues with USB-C cables that I wasn't aware were charging only, and this shows up today... Better late than never, I suppose, and definitely worth my ten quid.

If you can afford it, I'd honestly throw these out. "Charging only" is not a spec-compliant thing in USB-C, and personally I wouldn't want to re-discover which devices do and don't support them every time I just want to quickly grab a cable.

What's less easy to replace are all these damn USB-C devices lacking the UFP-identifying circuitry that only work on USB-A chargers using A-to-C cables...

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#17

Post by cinntaile »

callumprentice wrote: post #14
bestouff wrote: post #3

I'm using the hardware tester from Treedix in which you have to plug both ends of the cable and which tests a lot of things, I'm quite fond of it. I have a basket with a lot of USB-c cables and without the tester I can't remember (nor guess) which one does what.

Would this tell me if a cable is close to the end of it's life? I like to travel light and I've had cables (mostly phone/pad power) go out on trips after working as expected when I packed.

I think you would need something that tracks relevant per cable metrics over time to see if it is degrading. That one just says yes/no, but maybe yes/no starts to flicker around its end of life?

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#18

Post by pdpi »

lxgr wrote: post #16
pdpi wrote: post #15

I literally spent more than an hour yesterday debugging issues with USB-C cables that I wasn't aware were charging only, and this shows up today... Better late than never, I suppose, and definitely worth my ten quid.

If you can afford it, I'd honestly throw these out. "Charging only" is not a spec-compliant thing in USB-C, and personally I wouldn't want to re-discover which devices do and don't support them every time I just want to quickly grab a cable. What's less easy to replace are all these damn USB-C devices lacking the UFP-identifying circuitry that only work on USB-A chargers using A-to-C cables...

To be clear, they're not literally "charging only", AIUI they're spec-compliant cables with USB2.0 480Mbps and power delivery, and they're allowed to not have the four SuperSpeed wire pairs. They're still useful for low bandwidth devices (like charging my keyboard/mouse).

Incidentally — I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for USB3.2 cables on Amazon, and the vast majority of cables were actually just USB2.0 cables with PD support, and not actual Full-Featured cables.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#19

Post by cortesoft »

bestouff wrote: post #3

I'm using the hardware tester from Treedix in which you have to plug both ends of the cable and which tests a lot of things, I'm quite fond of it. I have a basket with a lot of USB-c cables and without the tester I can't remember (nor guess) which one does what.

Yep, I probably have the same one. Insanely useful, and it is also crazy how much variance there is in cables. You can’t believe what the sellers claim, so many times they end up being less capable than claimed.

Re: WhatCable: Know what your USB-C cable can do

#20

Post by callumprentice »

cinntaile wrote: post #17
callumprentice wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this tell me if a cable is close to the end of it's life? I like to travel light and I've had cables (mostly phone/pad power) go out on trips after working as expected when I packed.

I think you would need something that tracks relevant per cable metrics over time to see if it is degrading. That one just says yes/no, but maybe yes/no starts to flicker around its end of life?

Nod - that's what I was thinking. I expect it's often the connectors that deteriorate so perhaps moving them around while plugged in would tell me. Seems like a useful tool to have around.
Post reply on HN