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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.
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.
But it is the second product I tried; the first one didn't work (it's a 2020 Stellantis car). So, YMMV.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
These tools read a chip called an "eMarker". These eMarkers are programmed to say whatever the manufacturer wants them to say - there's no requirement that the information be based in reality. Plenty of cables have eMarkers that claim "40Gbps" or whatever speeds, or support 240W PD...but absolutely cannot deliver either of those. And none of these consumer level software or hardware testers can actually test either of those claims. They can only take the cable's own claims at face value.
Resistance measurements can cursorily test claims of 240W but resistance changes with temperature which changes with current...so unless your tester puts 5 amps down the wire for 5 minutes and then tests resistance it's not a very good test. AFAIK none of the testers flow 5 amps through the cable.
Actual maximum data throughput is very hard to know. The only way to really "know" how much data can flow through a cable is with an expensive oscilloscope or cable tester. Because 80Gbps cables run at ~13GHz, at minimum you need a 26GHz scope (Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem) or more practically a 52GHz scope. And it turns out it's really expensive to measure electrical signals 52 billion times per second. The necessary devices start at $15,000 (cable signal integrity tester) [0] on the very low end and only work for max 10Gbps USB 3.2 cables, or past $270,000 for 80Gbps USB4 cables (proper 60GHz oscilloscope) [1].
On the high end, each signal integrity test device can actually cost $1-2 million [2] where the base unit starts at $670,000 plus then spending additional money for hardware-accelerated analysis, specialized active probes, and the specific PAM-3 / USB4 compliance software packages.
0: https://www.totalphase.com/products/advanced-cable-tester-v2...
1: https://www.edn.com/12-bit-oscilloscope-operates-up-to-65-gh...
2: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/uxr1104a-infiniium-ux...
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.
Does require a bit of setup, can scan reviews to see if people have optimized a config for your specific vehicle
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.
It turns out some ethernet cables are missing wires - and capped at 100Mbps! Wait what? I didn't even know that was a thing. I don't know where I got the wire, but into the trash it goes.
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.
Oh god not again... before everyone starts naming their favourite brand, here's a 265 comment HN thread[1] (from last week !) on why these cheap USB-cable "testers" are not worth anything.
TL;DR You need a six-figure wallet to seriously call anything a "hardware tester" for USB cables. User ChrisMarshallNY has a one-liner summary buried in that thread:
Think about it. You need to generate a precise, calibrated, 40GHz signal, transmit it, then precisely measure the returned signal for phase, amplitude, and waveform integrity -at that speed. Oscilloscopes and logic analyzers that run at that speed, are damn expensive.
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.
> I'm using the hardware tester from $INSERT_NAME_HERE Oh god not again... before everyone starts naming their favourite brand, here's a 265 comment HN thread[1] (from last week !) on why these cheap USB-cable "testers" are not worth anything. TL;DR You need a six-figure wallet to seriously call anything a "hardware tester" for USB cables. User ChrisMarshallNY has a one-liner summary buried in that thread: Think abou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm using the hardware tester from $INSERT_NAME_HERE Oh god not again... before everyone starts naming their favourite brand, here's a 265 comment HN thread[1] (from last week !) on why these cheap USB-cable "testers" are not worth anything. TL;DR You need a six-figure wallet to seriously call anything a "hardware tester" for USB cables. User ChrisMarshallNY has a one-liner summary buried in that thread: Think abou…
Huh? Decent quality cable testers can be had for like $20,000. There's a difference between a general-purpose oscilloscope or logic analyzer and a purpose-built domain-specific appliance. I probably could've saved up for one in just a few months back when I had a job earlier this year.
See the discusison linked to.
Trust me, my interest was piqued by that thread and I went down the rabbit warren with Mr Google and spent far too much time on the subject. I looked at the various manufacturers and the setups required.
TL;DR: To start with, you need fancy harness assemblies. Then you need to plug those harnesses into very, very expensive equipment.
You're not going to find anything for $20k. High-throughput USB-cable testing simply can't be done the same way copper CAT6 certification can with a 20k Fluke.
For those who want to play with Mr Google, some manufacturers from my notes: Wilder Technologies, Allion, Keysight, Tektronix, Teledyne LeCroy
Here's one blog post I uncovered during my researches: https://www.keysight.com/blogs/en/tech/bench/2023/02/17/powe...