Some USB Cables don't work
JellyTitan opened this issue · 4 comments
Some USB cables don't work. I'm not sure why. Anybody got any ideas?
Which sort of cables specifically? USB-C to USB-A? USB-C to USB-C?
Don't work as in "no power" or "no device recognition"?
Cheap cables shipped for charging toys/lights/gadgets sometimes leave out the data-wires or don't actually implement the reversible pinout on the USB-C connectors.
I've been slumming it with cheap off-brand Pico's. (Which is how I found out that not all of the generic clones have a diode between vbus & vsys!)
I have a 'trash cable' usb-c to usb-c, that works with this tenstar Pico, but not with this even cheaper clone.
I'm not getting any power with that specific trash cable, but switching cables makes everything work.
I would swear this happened at least once with an earlier prototype, but i didn't make note of it.
I think your comment about the cheap cables not implementing the reversable pin-out is the probable cause. It had never occured to me to 'flip-over' a USB-C cable. I'll try that next time!
Yeah, for both the sake of power delivery and general lack of confusion its worth using a halfway decent cable. Any spares from USB-C cellphones will likely be fine as they'll be guaranteed to have all the connections and thicker wire suitable for USB3.0 Power Delivery
Thanks! I appreciate the advice. I've added notes about this in the troubleshooting section.