Interesting, for our household is almost the exact opposite.
I can offhand only think of two USB devices in the entire house that aren’t USB-C (a 3D-printer and the charger cable for a small wireless keyboard)
Makes it a pain trying to find a cable for a mini/micro-usb device when i do happen to need it…
It is not a constitution and the EU parliament for all its faults is capable of updating its standards, it often does.
Ive seen a lot of reviewers use this sort of tool.
Is it terribly useful for the average person? I have a mac mini, so I guess I don’t really have a need to measure USB Power Delivery. I do have many, many devices and hubs.
These can be handy if you are concerned if everything (cables, ports, devices) are performing properly. I have similar devices for just type A ports and I have found them to be useful in diagnosing ‘dumb’ USB cable issues.
There are A-B cables which are sometimes called ‘charging’ cables instead of ‘data’ cables. They basically only have the two power lines and omit the two data lines. Other than to make them cheaper, I don’t know why they do this. They’re problematic in that even the oldest USB charging specs require the data lines to be present because the load has to signal that it wants all the current. This can be done with dumb devices by tying the two data lines together–no microprocessor needed.
To understand why this is a concern, a ‘proper’ USB host port (like you would find on a computer) is only supposed to provide 100mA of current (at 5V) to a device until the device ‘enumerates’ which is a process where the host will query the device for what it needs. As part of that, the plugged in device (called the target) can say how much current it needs. That’s up to 500mA for the original USB spec (up through USB2.0). A proper host also has a programmable current limit device in the power line of each port. This allows it to set current limits for downstream devices which the hardware will enforce, so if a target attempts to use >100mA before enumeration, the current switch and turn it off and signal a fault to the host. The host can detect that as an error and try to power cycle the device. Not all hosts are this pedantic, but they can be and would be completely inside the spec.
But, there was a ‘battery charging’ spec added at some point. To enable it the target can tie the data lines together and the host is supposed to detect this and proivde up to 2.4A, IIRC. ‘Charging’ cables don’t have the data lines and could therefore limit charging to 100mA or 500mA depending on how strict the host is. Or a lazy host design just may have some higher current limit that its designer felt like using.
So, you can run into a lot of situations where you will have no idea what kind of charge currents you’ll get and a device like this is good to see what’s really going on. Hope that helps.
how would one have a “truly free market” around the charging port of a connector? there is an intrinsic property of the good being sold which is inseparable from the market incentives that drive companies away from the “network effect”, which is why regulatory oversight is necessary.
apple, is in no way shape and or form a “monopoly” on the product it sells. one has literally thousands of options to choose from in the product segment. either in the form of alternate phones or 3rd party connectors.
regulatory oversight is the only solution here.
I have something similar for my portable solar panels. It is useful in that context, and also useful if you have multiple devices running from an unpowered hub.
If that doesn’t apply to you and you can’t think of another use for it then you might not need one.
I got one, figuring that I’d test my collection of chargers and cables. But I’ve only used it a couple of times and instead just use my best chargers and cables all the time (best being charging times, not my checking this meter thing.) One thing I lack is a USB C male to USB female extender, so this doesn’t actually fit my phone in it’s case because of how wide the casing is, which contributed to my not using it.
So, YMMV.
Unless I’m reading it wrong, the device @jerwin mentioned has a female USB-C output, so you’d just need a standard M-M USB-C cable to plug into your type C device. Or am I misunderstanding your situation?
Never post half asleep. I’m miss-remembering my issues with this device. I still don’t use it much. And one reason that I’m sure of, not just half asleep remembering, is that I don’t have a dummy load.
I fully understand half-asleep. One of my kids was up with an upset stomach last night. My fitbit thinks I have two different sleep periods (and is very confused what to do about it). I share similar thoughts. 
Ahh, yeah, for load testing those are handy. If you’re electronically enclined, they’re pretty easy to make with an N-channel MOSFET and a few resistors. You may need to sacrifice a USB cable to make it, but they’re pretty easy devices.
I’ve been looking for a device that would let me monitor a USB-C connection and this device might do the trick. If it has a way to (or can be modified to) let me tap into the CC lines, it would do all I want.
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