There is a tendency as we get older, to retreat into an instinctive suspicion of anything new or associated with young people. All of us will know older people who have fallen down this rabbit hole, and certainly anything to do with technological advancement is often high on their list of ills which beset society. There’s a Douglas Adams passage which sums it up nicely:
“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Here at Hackaday we’re just like anybody else, in that we all get older. Our lives are devoted to an insatiable appetite for new technology, but are we susceptible to the same trap, and could we see something as against the antural order of things simply because we don’t like it? It’s something that has been on my mind in some way since I wrote a piece back in 2020 railing at the ridiculous overuse of new technologies to limit the lifespan and repairability of new cars and then a manifesto for how the industry might fix it, am I railing against it simply because I can’t fix it with a screwdriver in the way I could my 1960 Triumph Herald? I don’t think so, and to demonstrate why I’d like to talk about another piece of complex new technology that has got everything right.
In 2017 I lamented the lack of a universal low voltage DC power socket that was useful, but reading the piece here in 2024 it’s very obvious that in the years since my quest has been solved. USB Power Delivery was a standard back then, but hadn’t made the jump to the ubiquity the USB-C-based power plug and socket enjoys today. Most laptops still had proprietary barrel jack connectors, and there were still plenty of phones with micro-USB sockets. In the years since it’s become the go-to power standard, and there are a huge number of modules and devices to supply and receive it at pretty high power.
At first sight though, it might seem as though USB-PD is simply putting a piece of unnecessary technology in the way of what should be a simple DC connector. Each and every USB-PD connection requires some kind of chip to manage it, to negotiate the connection, and to transform voltage. Isn’t that the same as the cars, using extra technology merely for the sake of complexity? On the face of it you might think so, but the beauty lies in it being a universally accepted standard. If car manufacturers needed the same functionalty you’d have modules doing similar things in a Toyota, a Ford, or a Renault, but they would all be proprietary and they’d be eye-wateringly expensive to replace. Meanwhile USB-PD modules have to work with each other, so they have become a universal component available for not a huge cost. I have several bags of assorted modules in a box of parts here, and no doubt you do too. The significant complexity of the USB-PD endpoint doesn’t matter any more, because should it break then replacing it is an easy and cheap process.
This is not to say that USB-PD is without its problems though, the plethora of different cable standards is its Achilies’ heel. But if you’re every accused of a knee-jerk reaction to a bad piece of new technology simply because it’s new, point them to it as perhaps the perfect example of the responsible use of new technology.
Someone finally said it!
I’ll call it “done” when they finally get the 240W spec finished 😒
The specs are done, see USB PD Rev. 3.2 V1.0, which released in Oct ’23. There are just very few devices supporting it yet.
Laptop companies say’s that there’s 10-15% additonal heat power generated due to reducing volatego from 40 Vto 20 V
Nice to see DNA referenced. Still missed on a daily basis.
You miss your DNA on a daily basis?
So many of his quotes are profoundly philosophical, and put words to feelings that seemed indescribable, often in very simple but effective terms.
The one used in this article is yet another example of his genius.
Plus Hitchhiker’s’ Guide is really enjoyable.
I’m with you in the “standard” thing. One thing I stumbled upon while thinking about developing a really small arduino compatible board, which should have an USB socket for convenience is size. I was actually surprised that an USB-c sockets takes about twice the length as an micro USB does. So I hope micro USB won’t just vanish.
A good thing to be done! A lot can be done out of the Type-C connector, though simple things remain simple: possible to use Type-C for USB2 without any active component, USB2 wires hooked directly like they are on a Micro-USB cable.
A lot of free advantages with having this standard:
– Going to a different country does not require a power outlet adapter for your portable electric devices, only finding some USB charger
– Everything you could plug to your home might be possible to use charged in a car (Ham Radio, laptop with a mount), or with solar panels, or with any power bank, or with battery from one device to another
– Now that all small-power devices use the same power standard, you can reuse your existing power banks across all your devices
– As a consequence, fewer of your devices really need an internal battery: cheaper, easier to change the battery
– Adding a small “power delivery” adapter to your existing battery and other gears (i.e. buck boost converters) make them “USB-PD” enabled, and usable with many devices.
It’s true people grow suspicious of new things over time, but IMO we happen to be living in a rare period where the problem is often the exact reverse. Older normies remember how hard nerds owned their predecessors in the 1990s and 2000s, and now they’re so desperate not to seem out of touch that they’re often the biggest cheerleaders for terrible new tech.
Boomer media types are a main reason why Twitter got big, and why it still hasn’t died. Columnists and VCs fall over themselves to hype fraud-adjacent fads like crypto and “AI”, or just plain stupid stuff like the Metaverse or Juicero. If you ask me, the current generation of old farts has let us down badly by NOT rubbishing new things.
Not that PD is a bad thing. Like everything else USB-C, it’s late and overcomplicated and could have been done better, but… at least it exists.
>Like everything else USB-C, it’s late and overcomplicated and could have been done better, but… at least it exists.
I really like that summary. Though I think you need to add ‘and actually a real standard’ to the end. Plenty of good ideas with associated ‘standards’ never end up with any real adoption, making that standard basically no different to a secret source proprietary BS option in practice.
Your last sentence reminded me of XKCD 927.
https://xkcd.com/927
Douglas Adams wrote about a universal power connector in an essay both trenchant and amusing here:
It might be collected in The Salmon of Doubt. Titled “Little Dongly Things”.
Nice, somehow I’d never read that before (or perhaps managed to forget).
Not bothered with USB-C at all ….. I’m going to wait for Type-D
Must not use external SSDs or work with RPI-4 and RPI-5 and other devices :)
Did you mean “I must not use external…. or did you mean “It must not use externa…? Sometimes a couple more characters can make it so much easier to get your message across.
“You must not use…” referring to Reluctant Cannibal claiming to have no experience with Type-C. It reads fine to me, I just assume the “you” is implied in any comments that are replies to another comment.
But, it’s always good to be aware that everyone has a different perspective and experience, especially with language and especially in a worldwide forum. I’ve never seen miscommunication occur over too much clarity, but many times over not enough.
I’ll wait for the RPi-6.
When will usb-pd support the required 1.21 GW?
You’ll need to wait for the superconducting version.
I’m completely lost on the car analogy. A car is a network. So in your analogy the “proprietary modules” would be a complete endpoint on a network, like a PC, microcontroller, SBC, etc. Where you are discussing the PD chip it is only a board level component.
Usually it is possible to perform a repair of EG a bad capacitor or CANBUS transciever in an automobile module. On the other hand if you are talking about german cars (or Dodge who do things such as encase a standard fuel pump relay inside a $900 fuse panel installed without weather proofing in a fender), then I’m not sure why cars were brought in as an analogy.
There are few manufacturers of auto parts by and large. Bosch, Denso, Magneti Marelli. And they do the same thing as well by and large. Also quite hackable and replaced easily. See physical buttons for Tesla. Simple panels that communicate over the CANBUS and can control things that would normally require the touchscreen.
>The significant complexity of the USB-PD endpoint doesn’t matter any more
Until they stop producing your favorite module, and the replacement no longer fits your purposes, and rolling your own will be significantly difficult.
Technological complexity is a red queen’s race. You have to keep upgrading just to keep doing what you’ve always been doing.
The remaining irony of USB-PD is that you still need to carry a wall-wart and preferably your own cable despite being compatible with USB sockets and cables found everywhere.
Because you don’t want to be plugging your phone into a random USB-C socket or cable. This is because, A) if it’s too cheap, fake, or made faulty it might fry your phone or laptop, B) you can’t trust that it’s not trying to hijack your device a’la card skimmers in ATMs.
Both problems stem from technological complexity. Fly-by-night manufacturers spam the market with faulty and fake products and then disappear, because complexity costs money and people are always looking for a better deal. Stuffing power and data down the same wire and forcing you to negotiate digitally opens up security loopholes, because you can’t just use a dumb cable with only power connections.
You don’t know where that device has been.
Always wear your write protect tab!
Who’s got a link to USB-C condom? (Only power gets through.) Old news for USB3.
Plus, despite being a “standard”, there’s so many different options it offers that you can’t guarantee you can plug two things together and get the result you wanted.
And the defecto reality is that it’s too complicated for most manufacturers to follow correctly, so half the devices and cables aren’t to standard anyway.
Compare this to 110/240v AC sockets/plugs, and the associated figure-8 or kettle leads, where I’ve only extremely rarely seen an out of spec one. They just work.
I’m all for a good low(ish) voltage DC power standard, but I fear that USB-C has already complicated stuff too far, and the only way to guarantee it’ll work is to use your brand mains adapter with your brand cable to change your brand laptop. At which point we’re basically back to where we were.
I plug my $600 phone right into the mystery USB port in the airport. Haven’t been bricked yet.
Lucky you, but can you be sure it or your data is still secure? While the wild variety of chipset etc in Android phones it makes widely spread and really dangerous exploits hard to achieve it also makes keeping up on all the potential security flaws tricky – and in many cases as the software is abandoned within a year or two actually getting the security update you need…
So while both Apple and Android phones are reasonably hardened – enough to show they at least tried neither is or ever will be perfect. And in Apples case it has such a huge market share with very few hardware varieties and often the same flaws seem to be in devices across generations too I’d be more worried with Apple devices. But really plugging a strange device or your device into a strange port is not a good idea.
Get a pd based powerbank. If you have to use a public charger, charge it.
Many of the 20000mah units charge to 50% fairly quickly.. you can then go on your way and charge your phone.
Ah yes, USB-PD – replacing 20$ brick with 20$ cable, a 40$ brick and no easy way to tell what voltages/currents it supports (some list it on brick itself, some dont, pretty much noone list it in their online specsheet)
Only if you rely on the good apple quality.
If you can’t afford “the pro stand”, you’re not good enough for it!
Who said anything about apple? this is endemic to anything having USBC.
A better universal DC power connector would be an Anderson PP45 providing 13.8 volts ±15%.
They are bigger, much more robust, and can handle up to 45 amps. There are no electronics required and the power can be supplied from a LiFePO4 or lead acid battery without regulation.
I use them on pretty much anything that uses 13.8 volts.
Very few items I own require 13.8V.
But a lot use USB.
I bought a crimping tool and have yet to be satisfied with the results.
Also, my power supply is only 12v. The radio will take 14…
I product-test a broad range of consumer electronics independently; USB-C PD market is a mess. It’s not that the technology or standards are bad, but that manufacturers are widely going out-of-spec, at least on the low end of devices. The components for proper implementation cost <$0.10 at even batch scale, so the problem, as far as I can tell, is solely on manufacturers.
If you have a device with USB-C input, you will often find (if it does not have a battery in the device) you cannot power it via USB-C except sometimes from a wall charger.
Most cables are not labeled and no longer have color-coded ports, leaving it entirely to guesswork if your cable supports 240W, 120W, 90W, 45W, or 10W for consumers.
Most cables do not have directionality and devices do not negotiate in an intuitive way; you may hook up a small USB battery bank at 10% charge to a large one with 90% assuming you will charge the small device, but discover a couple hours later you drained the small battery bank to 0% instead.
-and while I have you: it is still industry-wide practice to list the mAh capacity of a necessarily-5V-output USB battery bank by giving the internal LiPo cell's mAh capacity at 3.7V — and if a manufacturer dares note this incongruity to maintain any semblance of integrity, they get roasted in reviews for it despite virtually every manufacturer engaging in this misleading practice, even Anker.
Anyway, it can work; it's a good standard, but it will only be a good standard on paper unless manufacturers and sellers implement it properly, design their products with just a little consideration, and not lie to consumers.
the super cheap stuff is annoying. They skip 2 dinky resistors to save 2 whole cents, so my kitchen scale won’t charge on the USB-C charger that actually complies to spec.
This is essentially the problem most have with usb-pd. The standard is being used as a suggestion rather than rules to follow.
There are way too many edge cases involving out of spec cables,chargers, and devices. It is to the point where I’d rather have a compatable charger and cable included with the device.
I am convinced that this madness is from viewing the the end user not as a customer or a real person, but as a “consumer”. Someone who buys stuff to use it up and throw it away.
Its not just bad/lazy actors not using the spec properly, you can be 100% spec compliant on both ends and the cable and still get no function. Device wants one of the optional parts of the spec or a part tacked on to the spec recently, and one or both of the other two parts can’t handle that – so it will just silently fail, or sort of work but really really slowly in USB2 mode etc.
And as there are not mandatory colour or labelling schemes to identify what each port/cable can do you have no way to know what of your plethora of USB-C ports and cables will actually work right. Even when all of them comply with the specification perfectly! Or in the case of cables did comply when they were new – full fat does everything USB-C cables have way too many conductors required that the cables tend to be fragile and/or so stiff they are terrible cables.
USB-C really is a garbage spec, but as it has become the standard we are just going to have to live with the idiotic parts and hope to enjoy the high bandwidth, PCIe and Display Port altmodes, high power etc more often than we spend an hour trying every cable we own and digging out other devices we know worked to figure out why this shit isn’t working this time.
My issue with it is: Disposable laptops. It was pretty darn easy to resolder a barrel plug port when a charge port failed. I really dread having to do it with USBC despite having a rework station.
USB isn’t one of these cases, but your opener sure seems to deride people getting grumpy about change, when there are plenty of legitimate gripes to be had.
Change for change sake is rarely a good thing.
Why does my phone need a new UX every 12-18 months?
“We wouldn’t want our products to look old and dated like LAST YEAR’S model”
Why would I want 8 different “settings” screens to manage different Windows admin tasks? So ‘normal’ users don’t get confused at all the options when they want to add a printer? Cool. So a task I do 15 times a day now takes 9 clicks instead of 2, so someone’s grandma can install a printer 3 clicks easier once a decade?
Change can be great.
But when a change is being made so someone can ‘leave their mark’ on something, instead of because a change improving overall usability, we have a right to get grumpy about it.
*cough* Disney deciding 30 years of Star Wars canon didn’t happen so they could rewrite/ruin their own version *cough*