God, yeah. I try to label the USB-C cables directly by capability with my label maker, if they are more than basic charging cables.
God, yeah. I try to label the USB-C cables directly by capability with my label maker, if they are more than basic charging cables.
Somewhat recently, on a wild night out on the town, I ended up buying a USB-C <> USB-C cable tester[0]. Using it, I managed to find a few amazing cables amongst my collection. Gave away the others with context. I want something like this for every type of cable.
[0] https://caberqu.com/20-42-c2c-caberqu.html
I like your idea of a wild night out!
Note to others: that tester board looks fairly passive, i.e. I don't see (mention of) a microcontroller to talk to the chip that high-powered cables must have. So I guess it's somewhat limited in the number of things it can check?
I have a cheaper version, it does basically all one needs by telling you how many conductors the cable has, if it's only got 4 lights lit up it's a simple USB2, more power LEDs is a higher power charging cable, more data pairs, higher data throughput/USB3, nearly all of the lights (usually bar 1 of the CCX) it's full DP/Thunderbot, data, charging, A/V etc.
Sometimes it even shows USB-C connectors that are only wired for one orientation!
More often than not just knowing the contact has OK connection is good enough.
As far as I know the marker chips is mostly to tell the devices to not abuse the cable.
What makes for an amazing cable? For USB, if it carries data and power, I’m usually pretty happy with it.
For USB, if it can carry 65W+ of power to my laptop as well as the Keyboard/Mouse inputs, 4K/60Hz display and audio back to the monitor as well as KB/Mouse and perhaps some external storage or network adapter, that's a pretty amazing cable.
I also have preferences between my cables by the quality and aesthetic, I prefer some over others because they look or feel nicer even if in testing they contain the same conductors, but that's just ... me.
I currently have 3 such cables connected to my work laptop each sending 4K/60Hz video to each of my 3 x 4k monitors, audio to my soundbar and one of them is powering the laptop at 90W and sending my keyboard, mouse and webcam inputs back.
What marker do you use to mark them? Is the ink durable and easy to read?
I bought a cheap pack of 5 colors of 3m electrical tape. Each cable gets one or two pieces of tape:
Data:
White if usb2
Blue if it supports USB 3 data (because 5Gbps USB 3 ports are mostly blue)
Green if TB/USB4/40Gbps
Power:
None if low/no Power Delivery
Yellow for 45W PD
Red for 65W+ PD
I suggest finding something else, electrical tape starts coming off after a few years, leaving behind sticky residue that's impossible to remove without some kind of solvent. Same goes for masking tape.
Heatshrink?
Heatshrink is great if you're making cables but you would need a really high shrinkage ratio to fit over the connector and then shrink enough, the common cheap stuff is usually 2:1, maybe 3:1.
You could cut the heatshrink tube, wrap it around the cable and then secure it with transparent tape. It would slide around but at least it wouldn't leave residue on the cable.
Maybe clip-on cable markers like this? [1] Easy to 3D print if you're so inclined.
[1] https://uk.farnell.com/multicomp-pro/pb-250-sm0c/cable-marke...
I’ve thought about just putting it on the connector itself. It may look stupid though.
You could even do combinations of colors like on resistors.
Might get sticky residue after a few years
Love this, that sounds awesome. Thanks for sharing!
A label maker, as they said they use, prints durable and easy to read labels.
Whoops, thank, I can't read - I misread label maker as label marker!
I use a white paint pen. DATA and NO DATA.