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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.
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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
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.
Stop being cheap and buy known certified products from official channels in the first place, instead of cheaping out with items from Alibaba.
Exactly. I buy all my USB devices from Amazon, so I know I am safe.
"Stop being cheap and buy known certified products from official channels"
Please, there's plenty of UL/CE-listed crap out there where the second you take the power transformer apart you can find violations.
Certification means jack shit in this day and age.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Sure if you cut open a cable and placed your multimeter inline with the power wire. Decent cables aren't cheap either. So it seems a lot easier and more fool-proof to buy a purpose-made monitor, and you'd come out nearly the same.
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.
"Stop being cheap and buy known certified products from official channels"
Please, there's plenty of UL/CE-listed crap out there where the second you take the power transformer apart you can find violations.
Certification means jack shit in this day and age.
No, there's plenty of devices that have a fraudulent UL/CE stamp on them out there...there's a difference. The difference is in where you get your devices from...and recognizing that just because it's a major retailer doesn't mean that you're necessarily getting good product.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
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.
Why do so many people risk their device on the absolute cheapest $2 charger from a no-name shop?
Because that's what's in the $2.00 bin next to the checkout at most stores, and most people see them and think "oh, I need a new and/or spare charger".
--- Keep the choice with the user..
And are those people going to also go buy the $30 usb C power meter?
Perhaps, if they knew there was a difference in cables/chargers. The main problem, and the reason the market for cheep crap exist, is ignorance, and education seems to be a dirty word these days.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
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
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... Now get off my lawn
That's not a 5.1V zener, but a crowbar. It also relies on the power supply to be able to handle shorts, and, depending on the supplying device, may have to dissipate so much power it can overheat and cause a fire. A fuse isn't really an answer in a small USB gadget that typically can't be opened to replace it. A much better solution would be to add a suitable power regulator so that it can just handle the 20V gracefully instead of shorting it. Now get off my lawn.
No, the main reason is bad standards and poor regulation. Even for the well educated, there's no good way to tell apart a bad device from a good one.
You are a bit slower on the uptake than normal today, try some coffee. It's about what people get from their local vendors who buy in bulk and not mail order. It's about the sort of checking that is already going on for thousands of other products, just not USB cables, so the extra costs end up being minimal.
Make that many thousands when you've got a vendor ordering them by the shipping container.
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.
I just tried your suggestion, using a 5.6V zener (BZV55-C5V6), and a 500 mA polyfuse (1210 size, but don't know part#) in series. It worked fine connecting to a 20V bench power supply, but when I tried connecting to a charged 1000 uF electrolytic, the zener diode died before the polyfuse could protect it.
Benson is know for his Amazon reviews. Find a cheap on with his stamp of approval and you're ok.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
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.
And are those people going to also go buy the $30 usb C power meter?
But how would they know that the $30 usb C power meter they buy is not itself a counterfeit anyway?