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Since it's somewhat related to the topic, does anyone have a recommendation for where to buy USB 3.0 or 3.1 is cords is that are relatively inexpensive? I've gotten burned by Amazon too many times to trust.
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If I really really really need it to work I buy an Apple one. Otherwise go to a real manufacturer like monoprice or a smaller company that specializes in cable. They will usually work well. You can’t get good cables for aliamazon bargain prices unless you go used/open box or similar.
> a real manufacturer like monoprice Monoprice does not manufacture anything. Also, a lot of the apple USB-C cables are power only.
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The required resistors are literally a tenth of a penny each ($0.0011/ea) on DigiKey[0], probably cheaper elsewhere. You need two of them. Two tenths of a single penny. Exway is charging between $350 and $1650 for their skateboards, from what I can see on their website. I highly doubt this was done for cost reasons, even including the additional assembly costs, which for surface mount resistors would be very low. Thi…
materials costs are not the only consideration. they have to arrange for a secure supply, retooling, QC checking etc. to do it properly. I imagine they got the cheapest engineer to make a functioning product. Changing their whole production line for a $0.001 component is hardly worth their time in this product segment, however debatable the ethics or PR of it is.
I agree that doing even a small redesign of something existing isn't free, but every company comes out with new designs for new products or to make an existing product more cheaply. At the very least they could acknowledge the issue and put the fix on the queue for the next rev of the board.
My guess is that the support person didn't actually forward anything on to any engineering team. At most they sent it to their supervisor, who told them to just make OP go away.
Since it's somewhat related to the topic, does anyone have a recommendation for where to buy USB 3.0 or 3.1 is cords is that are relatively inexpensive? I've gotten burned by Amazon too many times to trust.
These are my go to cables https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093YVRHMB - USB C/USB A on one end - USB C/Lightning/micro USB on the other end - 10 GB/s data - supports video over USB C (I have a portable external display that gets power and video over USB C) - 100W charging - USB 3.1
Also, a lot of the reviews are really bad, everything from poor construction to not being flexible enough to the connectors not fitting.
Is there a royalty on the chipset to do it better than resistor pullups? The article implies its a relatively high BoM cost to have the negotiation. I can see its pinouts, board design, test but the actual chip.. surely is still down in the 0.0001c range? or is this one "pay the cartel" expensive?
The chip lets you draw more than the minimum USB-A standard power. And that’s what, 500mA?
I just wondered if some hypothesized USB-C consortium decided to "patent" how the signals work, and charge $ for compliance/conformance to the chipset for a logo badging and green tick.
It's more usual higher up the complexity food chain like MP4 decoding. Frauenhoffer wants its IPR respected. Philips made coin on conformance to the audio cassette form factor. Somebody made book with CD-ROM size, encoding. It's normal.
I have this problem constantly. I have to work with a number of hardware devices for my job (non-consumer hardware) that proudly claim USB-C. But they also are exactly like the old USB-micro devices with a different port and don’t charge on real USB-C. So to charge them I use a USB-C to USB-A port adapter so I can plug in a USB-A to USB-C cable. It’s horrible.
I was kind of resigned for everything to be awful forever. It felt like 60% of the devices I bought had this problem. Makes things like charging these Tribit Surf speakers I otherwise love quite a pain. But I've purchased around a dozen pretty cheap devices with USB-C in the past year & much to my surprise each one has properly resistor terminated CC pins & just works. I was kind of begging for a specific C-C cable t…
Both work perfectly on proper USB-C and charge. They were both $15 or less. The kind of device where every cent on the BoM may matter.
The devices in my original comment? Hundreds of dollars each. They have to go through certifications to prove they do what they say. The price of two resistors (they don’t need more power) is nothing compared to the MSRP which I already suspect has a lot of profit baked in.
There is no way to guess if a device charges right or not without finding the logo (which I guess could be a lie from an unscrupulous vendor) or finding reviews.
I have this problem constantly. I have to work with a number of hardware devices for my job (non-consumer hardware) that proudly claim USB-C. But they also are exactly like the old USB-micro devices with a different port and don’t charge on real USB-C. So to charge them I use a USB-C to USB-A port adapter so I can plug in a USB-A to USB-C cable. It’s horrible.
> non-consumer hardware Presumably not cheap too and they do… that.
But two resistors? Nah.
I have a feeling this will go over poorly with their customers as USB-A stops being so common and suddenly the devices “won’t charge” when plugged into computers or common power bricks.
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Doesn’t USB-C deliver more volts and amps?
Not if you’re using the resistors to demand power. It will only provide 5v, the same as USB-A. It’s sort of a “backwards-compatibility” mode.
Chinese products don't have to conform... they just have to be cheap.
More expensive things are usually right, but it is by no means a rule.
I don't care either. They'll probably fix it at some point if they themselves get annoyed by this behavior. But TBH, very few people will be inconvenienced by this at the current time. I have exactly one C to C cable in my house, and a lot of A to B or C cables. So what if it violates the USB C spec? The Nintendo Switch violates the C spec too. Perhaps they should have made the spec a little more straightforward?