AssholeDesign

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This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.

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There is a special place in hell for modern manufacturers of devices that have a USB-C port, but won’t charge from a modern USB-C charger. (fedia.io)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just went to charge my kitchen scale and it wouldn’t work until I dug out a USB-A -> C cable and plugged it into my desktop…

It just reminded me of how many devices like that I have. This scale, my wife’s sound torc, some car jumperstarters, and I think a one or two more…

I assume it’s because they just slap a usbc port on a dumb 5v circuit that doesn’t have a power negotiation controller. So the cable and the charger cant figure out the power needs of the device are and just never send any.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

But wait. Doesn't this make them both dumb? I'd expect a modern USB-C charger to still support basic 5v low current lazy devices too. If there's a USB-A to C cable that works, it must also still be possible to send the basic 5v down a C-C cable.

I also think there's always going to be a balance between how much a device needs to make and/or how much it needs fast charging to make sense to add the charging circuit for PD/PPS. Even $1-2 on top of the cost can ruin margins in the current electronic market.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

PD includes a 5v option, so you’d think that chargers would default to a dumb 5v/4.5w with no other input, but apparently not… It’s probably something to do with the overcharge protection, or to not (further) harm a device with a damaged charge controller.

Or it could be that my PD chargers are pre pandemic and PD 3.1 fixed this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Well, I'd expect that if they allowed 5v through but with a low current limit (I think the default 5v standard states quite a low current allowance). They could catch anything drawing too much and shut the port off until it detects disconnection/other reset.

I mean, if they're thinking about protecting a downstream device, adding this logic would make more sense than just not supplying any power unless a negotiation is made.

In any case, since standard USB ports on a computer will output 5v without anything being negotiated, then it's really no less safe than any other USB port in that regard.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

USB c has active negotiation for power and communication via a cc pin

The usb a to c cable has a pull up resistor that mimics this and says “give 5v”

Some usb c chargers have a fallback 5v mode for this scenario but not all do