You understand how it goes — some devices stick round in your toolbox far longer than purpose dictates, as a result of possibly at some point you’ll want it. How many people held onto ISA diagnostic playing cards gone the dying of the interface?
However not like ISA, USB isn’t going away anytime quickly. Which is precisely why this USB and extra tester by [Iron Fuse] deserves a spot in your toolbox. This put up is just not meant to instantly lure you into shopping for one thing, however seen how compact it’s, it might be unhappy to problem anybody to reinvent this ‘wheel’, as an alternative of simply ordering it.
So, to get into the small print. That is removed from the primary USB tester to seem on these pages, however it is likely one of the most versatile ones we’ve seen to this point. On the floor, it appears to be like easy: a hand-soldered 14×17 cm PCB with twelve totally different connectors, all damaged out to labelled check factors. Hook up a dodgy cable or system, join a known-good counterpart, and the board makes it painless to probe continuity, resistance, or these pesky shorts the place D+ out of the blue thinks it’s a floor line.
You’ll nonetheless want your multimeter (automation is promised for a future revision), however the comfort of not juggling probes into microscopic USB-C cavities is difficult to overstate. Additionally, if discovering out whether or not you’ve a power-only or a knowledge cable is your purpose, this could be the software for you as an alternative.
