this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
348 points (92.2% liked)
Technology
60281 readers
3695 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you want a more detailed explanation, USB-C is a small connector that was designed primarily for data transfer, extended power range delivery (240w) was essentially hacked on to the standard. Electricity arcing between the contacts on the connector is the biggest challenge with this hack, since the contacts are small and very close together, which could burn out the circuit board and start fires. For EPR to work safely, there needs to be a lot of extra components on the circuit board/female connector side, which there simply isn't enough space for on an f2m extension cable.
As for why USB-C cables are so short, it's simply a matter of physics, carrying high speed data over larger distances would result in higher losses and requires thicker conductors and more shielding, which is why you don't see USB4 Gen3 cables over 1 meter unless they are optical, and longer "charging cables" are only rated at USB 2.0 speeds, because more often than not they don't even have the USB 3.x data pins on their connector.
It's amazing for a "standard" that there can be so many non-standard ways to do it. Your explanation is great and just reminded me that cable tester tools are a really good idea to have at home. There was one in Kickstarter earlier this year, I think, that was a really smart idea. I don't recall what it was nqmed though. Maybe you have heard of it? I'll see if I can find it.
Regardless, there are some devices that really need a specific type of usb-c cable to function properly and/or not burn the circuitry. (i.e. Nintendo Switch, the original release model (though, they may have fixed it in later hardware revisions))
Edit: Found it! That cable tester that I was referring to was called the BLE CaberQU. I think it is a really neat idea.
Nice! I’ve wanted a tool exactly like that many times. I’ll back it and see.
The closest I could find before were essentially pin to pin continuity checkers, which are useful for telling if a cable is PD only, 2.0 vs 3.x, or has a line break, but most of those can be eyeballed, otherwise metered. So these just checkers just add precision and speed to something you already know how to do.
The runner ups were the (now ubiquitous) inline inductive energy trackers, because they can tell you a bit more about the gauge of the wires in the cable which can be important, especially high amperage 5v like pi 4.B
But to test quality of shielding for high rate data transfer, DP and PCI-E tunneling, etc., the only option was manually user testing with adequately powerful devices.