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USB-C Power Meter Helps You Spot Counterfeit Accessories Before They Fry Your Gadgets (gizmodo.com)
USB Type-C cables are not all created equally. In fact, some USB Type-C cables fail so badly that they will permanently damage your hardware. Benson Leung, an engineer on Google's Pixel team, discovered early last year that there's even more risk to your electronics when you've got a cheap USB-C cable with an older USB connector on the other end that doesn't properly regulate power draw. In an effort to weed out the bad cables from the good, a company called Satechi has released a "Type-C Power Meter" that makes it easy to tell if your USB-C gadgets are at risk of getting fried, or under-powered, by a sketchy accessory. Gizmodo reports: The simple pass-through adapter connects between a USB-C cable and a USB-C device, providing real-time data about the power draw, in either direction, including details about voltage, amps, and the amount of energy that's been transferred since it was first plugged in. The monitor can let you know if an external battery pack is providing the proper amount of power to a smartphone that it claims to, or if your MacBook or Chromebook is receiving sufficient power from a charging cable connected to its USB-C port to actually charge the battery. What the monitor can't do, however, is protect a device if there's a detected problem in the power flow. It's not a surge protector, nor does it have any built-in alarms or warnings because it has no idea what the power requirements are for whatever device you're using it with. You'll have to make sure you're aware of how much power a device is supposed to be drawing, and confirm that it matches what the Type-C Power Meter is reporting, as soon as you plug it in.
I use only the spun-gold Monster Type-C cables. I know, they cost quite a bit at a little over $600 a foot, but the power is so smooth, and a certified genuine Yogi meditated over them. If you really care about the performance of your equipment, you buys these and do without food.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How do I detect a counterfeit Type-C Power Meter?
Now your telling me to add another $$$ to get a cable and thingie to measure current.
:(
My current phone sucks beans, but I can hold off another 6 months
Or you can buy a cheapo multimeter, which is far more versatile, for less than $10....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digita...
Granted, not as cool, compact and easy to use.
Stop being cheap and buy known certified products from official channels in the first place, instead of cheaping out with items from Alibaba.
WELCOME OUR NEW ad OVERLOADs
I lag
What bugs me about USB power is that the negotation for more than a tenth-amp (half-watt) takes place partly on the data lines. That means they need to be connected between the peripheral and the source.
So any charger device for a power-hungry gadget (such as a smartphone) will have a full four-wire connection and have the opportunity to attempt to exploit any USB port vulnerabilities of the device. Making a "condom" adapter to only connect the +5 and ground wires will normally provide reduce performance (if it works at all). Vetting one that does connect to the data lines on both sides is difficult - both to insure that it does what's intended and doesn't have a backdoor, and that it, itself, isn't such an attacking device.
Given that Russian intelligence was already caught handing out phone-cracking "USB chargers" to many countries' high officials at an international conference, the threat not just a hypothetical.
(Note that some powered hubs just tie +5 and ground to the supply, rather than try to negotiate and enforce per-port power limits, too.)
IMHO: A USB device that depends on its power source to limit its input current, and can be damaged by a host that is willing to deliver more current that it requested, is defective by design. The negotiation and enforcement is for the benefit of the power source (for instance, a laptop trying to protect its battery life).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sometimes I wonder... Why did Apple make lightning connectors and thunderbird or bolt or whatever connectors..
Other days I know exactly why. I switched from Android from day 1 to an iPhone 7. I personally don't use the headphone so haven't noticed it. The battery is awesome. The UI reminds me of Windows 3.1. Far from perfect, hoping to switch back soon (battery life is killer for me, plus phone durability). Then I see more issues with Pixel or USB-C and it makes me want to be a luddite.
IMHO: A USB device that depends on its power source to limit its input current, and can be damaged by a host that is willing to deliver more current that it requested, is defective by design.
Ditto any supply (such as a laptop's USB port) that can be damaged by an excessive load - all the way down to a short to ground. Current limiters are not that costly, and one smart enough to negotiate higher limits involves enough custom silicon that it can also be designed to enforce the higher limits in a self-protecting manner, as well.
Protecting itself from being driven by an out-of-range voltage is another issue. But any USB host port at any level of the spec SHOULD be able to handle any voltage between zero and +5 on any of the non-ground pins, and any resistance - down to zero - to the ground pin. Perhaps not according to the standard, but certainly according to reasonable engineering practice.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's not so much about the port itself as it is about how common it is. It is in use in enough devices that it's cost effective to make cheap knock off chargers.
I agree. A short cheap cable with an inline fuse could solve this problem. No reason to turn the function of a fuse into a fancy overpriced gadget.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I would think that any specification for consumer grade hardware that could end up damaging the devices they are built into is the root cause of the problem.
Products like this (which are repurposed development tools normally used to check USB Operation - I have several in my office) strengthen my resolve to not purchase USB-C equipped systems.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The simple pass-through adapter connects between a USB-C cable and a USB-C device, providing real-time data about the power draw, in either direction, ...What the monitor can't do, however, is protect a device if there's a detected problem in the power flow. It's not a surge protector, nor does it have any built-in alarms or warnings because it has no idea what the power requirements are for whatever device you're using it with.
It can't measure the power flow unless it's put in-line with the device you're charging and the charger.
It has no automatic warnings or alarms. You have to sit there and watch it while your device is charging.
Didn't Benson lose some equipment as soon as he plugged it in? If this device can't really test anything on it's own, how is it going to "help me prevent my gadgets from being fried"? Once I've hooked it to my device if something goes wrong it's too late.
yes its so common I buy USB devices multiple times a month and have never encountered it
hell USB 3.0 devices you have to seek out
This device seems totally unsuited to detecting 'fry your gadgets' failure modes. If you hit one of the corner cases where USB power delivery goes for overkill; it'll be over in moments; so having a few numbers displayed during the frying won't help you much.
These sorts of widgets can come in quite handy(nothing you couldn't do with a decent multimeter and some socket bodging; but socket bodging is annoying and tedious): I used to use them a lot when dealing with 'Smartboards' that used a (vendor supplied) overlength USB cable; but depended on bus power, and could be increasingly glitchy if they weren't getting enough of it. Having an easy way to know which computers used the 'meh, connect USB power to the 5v rail, maybe with some kind of fuse' method, and were good for plenty more than 500ma; which ones took a '500ma is by the book; if you don't like it, go cry to the USB SIG' stance; and which ones(mostly laptops) were spotty about being able to provide as much bus power as standards demanded.
Also handy for getting a look at whether your cheapo portable battery pack droops atrociously under load; testing the various devices that use a min-USB connector for power to see how much the really draw, etc. but not a piece of safety equipment.
It is really off-putting to see this sort of mislabeling. The functions this thing is actually capable of(assuming the vendor didn't screw it up) are quite handy to have in your tech-widget drawer; but it's blatantly dishonest to imply that it has much chance of saving your expensive gadget in the event of a nasty power delivery failure.
I agree. A short cheap cable with an inline fuse could solve this problem. No reason to turn the function of a fuse into a fancy overpriced gadget.
No it couldn't.
USB-C is the standard that charges tiny little Bluetooth headsets and your MacBook. Same cable. It's also the standard that's supposed to be able to tell the difference between the big power supply for the MacBook and the little one that came with the Bluetooth headset, so that the MacBook knows that it's not going to get what it needs unless the big power supply is at the other end. Conversely, it also keeps the big power supply from totally detonating the Bluetooth headset.
The key to this technology is the ability for the cable and the devices at either end to essentially have a conversation about what's charging what. The problem here is when that conversation gets a bit garbled...and the capacity at one end and need at the other end are allowed to misalign, catastrophically. Sure, you could put a fuse inline to keep your Bluetooth headset from melting...but then you'd only be able to charge your Bluetooth headset with that cable. And the whole point of USB-C is about getting away from that paradigm.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
This Gizmodo article has for a title "USB-C Power Meter Helps You Spot Counterfeit Accessories Before They Fry Your Gadgets"
but..... FTA
"What the monitor canâ(TM)t do, however, is protect a device if thereâ(TM)s a detected problem in the power flow. Itâ(TM)s not a surge protector, nor does it have any built-in alarms or warnings because it has no idea what the power requirements are for whatever device youâ(TM)re using it with."
So, really, it does nothing, and by the time you see 40V hitting your phone when it's expecting 12, I think it's going to be too little too late before the magic smoke escapes, and really, who knows what the charging spec on their devices is, really?
The amount of cables that Nathan-K and Bensen Leung test that don't match the spec, don't work to spec, do work to spec with exceptions, melt or any of the above combination is nuts.
Nathan-K has a page up on G+ with more details:
https://plus.google.com/collec...
They've a spreadsheet of tested cables:
https://docs.google.com/spread...
Personally, my favourite comment regarding USB-C comes from the register:
https://forums.theregister.co....
"it's a design error
An electrical specification which allows multiple, software-controlled supply voltages, but does not require connected devices to tolerate the highest available voltage.
What could possibly go wrong?"
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
The problem might be though, that as the cable is "smart" if the BT headset is requesting 5V and it's being sent 40V (Due to a bad cable), according to the spec the BT headset isn't required to tolerate that, so it's charging circuit is blown away.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
So, how does this device prevent your device from being destroyed?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Just got to say, what the hell is going on with consumer electronics? Too many different connectors, no standards, expensive chargers. Who can blame the consumer for spending £5 on a charger from the market, rather than £25 for the official one? A wire is a wire right? They probably have a garage full of old chargers that don't fit anything anymore as well!
There are people who will buy the cheapest accessory because they don't know better.
There are people who buy the premium/OEM accessory because they do know better.
The former group are not going to shell out coin for a power meter they likely won't even understand the meaning of. Feel free to argue that it's about education, but look how prevalent email and phone scams are some 10 years after they arrived. Don't know about you folks, but I'm kind of over getting told I'm a paranoid freak because people don't like to hear they're wrong.
The latter group will never need it because they know to avoid cheap Chinese crap to begin with. Nevermind I can find USB2 equivalents with a quick google search. This is not some ground breaking product.
Who is this device for, why are we discussing it, and why did we not discuss the USB 2 versions when they came out 18 months ago? This all reeks of product shilling IMO.
[Sorry, this signature is unavailable in your country/region]
It's happened before. The FireWire ports of Macs can actually supply max FireWire voltage (48V). Guess what? A certain Firewire hub couldn't take that, so it was well know if you bought one of those, it wouldn't work in your Mac. In fact, your Mac would let the magic smoke out.
The reason for this was a Firewire card in a PC, due to PC limitations, would only ever supply up to 12V (PC power supply rails only max out at 12V). So the hub assumed it only needed to tolerate 12V, even though the spec said you ahve to handle 48V. Naturally, the QA was done on PCs instead of the platform most likely to use them
It's a stupid standard, then. What they should have said that it every power receiving device should be able to handle the maximum voltage, and that every power sending device should be able to deal with any load, including shorts.
Just too bad that they don't have it regulate and limit the current.
It would not be that difficult or that much more expensive to make a device that, in addition to displaying voltage/current when plugged into a USB-C cable/device, simply auto-steps the system through the voltage ranges to check for proper operation without requiring $SHINY that you want to protect to be connected.
This device sounds like somebody had acquired a crap-load of very basic bargain-bin voltage/current sensor/digital-readout ICs and looked for the easiest and cheapest way to design something to sell using them requiring the least amount of additional parts/labor.
"Junk-box engineering"..."what can I make out of this pile of parts with the least amount of additional cost that I could get people to buy?"
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I've heard thar we're not actually supposed to read the fine summary, but I did so anyway, and couldn't help thinking that a better title would be, "USB C Power Meter Helps You Spot Counterfeit Accessories While They Fry Your Device". But maybe that's just me.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Voltage regulation and current-limit are solely the task of the USB port. The cable does not come into it at all. The only thing the cable does is tell the device about itself, and of course that information can be wrong. However if that fries the device, the device is at fault for incompetent protection circuitry design and not the cable.
I do not see how this gadget helps at all. IT seems to be a simple USB power meter, vastly over-priced.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And yet we have official Samsung devices exploding anyway.
The lesson I'm taking home from this is to avoid USB-C until they get the kinks worked out.
The reason for this was a Firewire card in a PC, due to PC limitations, would only ever supply up to 12V (PC power supply rails only max out at 12V).
The reason for this is not the 12V power supply. It's not hard or very expensive to put the required circuitry on the card to boost that to higher voltages. The real reason is the card manufacturer being cheap.
THIS!!
Holy shit - how incompetent can you be as an engineer to design an electrical connector interface which is specifically intended to negotiate a power delivery rate and not put in a way to prevent the remote device from exceeding your power supply capabilities? AFAIK, there has never been a sink device* that has failed, only the supply devices (Apple and Google/Chrome), which is exactly the side that should be controlling the maximum capacity of the connection.
*if someone has a link to a confirmed case of a charged device failing due to this, I would love to see it as I have been unable to find one.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They put optocouplers in most CNC controllers, and perhaps they should put them in computers as well. Perhaps something can be done about the power leads as well.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Bend over and take it, with original prices from Apple and Samsung.
Fuck that. A big part of the problem is the obscene markups at the original vendors. People assume anything cheaper is just the same, because the 70% markup IS 65% profit.
Conversely, it also keeps the big power supply from totally detonating the Bluetooth headset.
I'm curious how it would achieve that, as amps tend to be "pulled" rather than "pushed."
The power supply adjusts the voltage based on what it thinks the receiver needs.
The summary of this article makes no sense. A USB cable is just a cable with connectors, there's nothing in it to 'regulate' anything, and the connectors have nothing to do with that. A poorly made cable, that shorts out internally? That's a different matter entirely, that's a quality issue, but the connectors and the cable itself have nothing to do with regulating current draw. You plug a USB cable into your computer and leave the other end unconnected, it draws ZERO power -- assuming the cable isn't shorted internally.
Yeah. Looks like it doesn't actually do anything to prevent damage but you can watch it to see how much voltage and current it actually takes to fry your device. How many people actually know what voltages are safe for each of their devices?
Also, why do they use the word "counterfeit"? I understand that some counterfeit devices could be defective and not follow the spec but others could meet the spec and be just fine. Also, some "genuine" devices might fry your device.
Better to just call devices that don't meet the spec "defective" and leave it at that.
Anyway... useless slashvertisement.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
This is a retraction for the above comment.
Wasn't actually aware that USB-C cables differed from other USB cables in that there is in fact active electronics embedded in the cable assembly. Apologies for any confusion or consternation this may have caused.
The cable needs to be able to pass the current without overheating itself, so it does come into it.
These devices have been readily available in China for ages, slapping on a c connector didn't make it novel
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
If you are going to have power adapters that can provide 100 watts, in the form of 20v 5a that are on the same setup as devices that might draw 5v 100ma you have to have some kind of communication.
It isn't the current draw that is the only issue, it is the voltage. New USB specs allow for higher voltages. That's a problem if the receiving device can't tell it what to set it at. The charger I have for my phone can do 5v, 9v or 12v. My phone wants 9v. Somehow, the phone has to tell it what to send.
In terms of current, that has to be communicated but not with the device, with the wire. USB-C cables that can do high current have to have chips in them to communicate that they have that capability. The reason is easy to see: Look at a standard USB2 cable. Do those wires look like they can handle 5a? Ya.
So the only way to make a standard that remains compatible with the ports and devices we already have and can provide high voltage and current is to use communication.
Otherwise, you need a clean break to a new standard that requires higher gauge cables and uses a higher voltage.
I mean one option is just to stick with old chargers. Your phone will work fine, it'll just charge slow. If you want a fast charger, just get a good one that is certified to work with it. Anker is a great choice, their chargers are well built and Qualcom certified for quick charging. Likewise get a good cable that is rated to handle the voltage/current. Being a phone it isn't going to be a ton so it really won't be an issue.
In any case this is just slashvertising, USB power meters have been available for years, you can get them for as little as a few dollars from your favourite crapvendor, not $30 like Satechi is asking for. In any case what you need isn't a power meter but something to test the USB cable itself to see whether it's properly configured for the power it can pass (typically a 56k pullup).
Voltage regulation and current-limit are solely the task of the USB port. The cable does not come into it at all.
You would think that, wouldn't you? Unfortunately the braniacs who came up with this ridiculous-in-so-many-ways standard decided that a cable isn't just a cable anymore.