There’s no disgrace in admitting you’ve been burned via a cheapo USB cable — ever since some bean counter learned there was once a couple of cents to be stored via generating “energy handiest” USB cables, no {hardware} hacker has been protected. However with this straightforward tester from [Álvaro Prieto] to your arsenal, you’ll by no means be fooled once more.
It’s about as straight-forward a design as imaginable, using not anything greater than a two dozen LEDs, their related resistors, and a commonplace CR2032 coin cellular. Merely plugging either side of your cable into the quite a lot of flavors of USB connectors at the tester will whole the vital circuits to illuminate the corresponding LEDs, right away telling you what number of intact wires are throughout the cable. So whether or not you’re coping with some shady cable that doesn’t have the total supplement of conductors, or there’s some bodily harm that’s severed a connection or two, you’ll know at a look.
Clearly the tester is designed basically for the 24 pins you’ll to find in a correct USB-C connector, however it’s totally backwards appropriate with older cables and connectors. We respect that he even incorporated the chunky Sort B connector, which we’ve all the time been keen on due to its robustness in comparison to the extra commonplace Mini and Micro variants.
Remember although that this tester will handiest display you if there’s a connection between two pins, it gained’t test how a lot energy it will possibly in truth care for. For that, you’ll want some further apparatus.