This post gave me the idea of making a USB-C Russian roulette chip, where plugging the USB jack in on one side works fine, but the other side fries your device.
Oh! How about a USB-C device that detects its orientation this way, and requires you to replug it in the different orientation twice before it starts to work?
Isn't something like that what made the original Raspberry Pi 4 not actually USB-C compliant, because they combined two signals that shouldn't have been combined?
Every few sentences there there is a remark like "This circuit might have edge cases,... "...perfect for the majority of use cases,..".
In other words: It will, at best, work on the developers table, but nowhere else.
Why is somebody publishing examples that won't work in the real world ?
hackaday is not about making consumer products. It's for hackers and hobbyist. The real world is vague, but should include people trying different implementations.
USB is a mess. Lots of devices that claim support are actually way out of spec. As a result it is hard to say exactly what will happen when people start plugging stuff in.
This is especially true for USB hubs of any kind, so much so that I think even Caldigit sold a hub that wasn't fully compliant to it's advertised capabilities.
So many cables aren't power delivery, just USB 2 spec: If you're wondering why your phone doesn't charge quickly, the cable tester might be able to help you find the issue.
You'd need to plug the other end into something and, unless you know what that device is, you wouldn't know if it's the cable that's lacking or the device you plugged in on the other end.
Better control of USB devices from computers would be swell though.
