You know how it goes — some gadgets stick around in your toolbox far longer than reason dictates, because maybe one day you’ll need it. How many of us held onto ISA diagnostic cards long past the death of the interface?
But unlike ISA, USB isn’t going away anytime soon. Which is exactly why this USB and more tester by [Iron Fuse] deserves a spot in your toolbox. This post is not meant to directly lure you into buying something, but seen how compact it is, it would be sad to challenge anyone to reinvent this ‘wheel’, instead of just ordering it.
So, to get into the details. This is far from the first USB tester to appear on these pages, but it is one of the most versatile ones we’ve seen so far. On the surface, it looks simple: a hand-soldered 14×17 cm PCB with twelve different connectors, all broken out to labelled test points. Hook up a dodgy cable or device, connect a known-good counterpart, and the board makes it painless to probe continuity, resistance, or those pesky shorts where D+ suddenly thinks it’s a ground line.
You’ll still need your multimeter (automation is promised for a future revision), but the convenience of not juggling probes into microscopic USB-C cavities is hard to overstate. Also, if finding out whether you have a power-only or a data cable is your goal, this might be the tool for you instead.
“it would be sad to challenge anyone to reinvent this ‘wheel’, instead of just ordering it.”
Sadly, ordering it is also a challenge, if one lives in the US. It appears that Tindie can’t currently figure out how to ship things there from overseas, presumably due to tariff uncertainty.
(Just mentioning because it’s a bummer for a reasonable subset of Hackaday readers)
It’s because they removed the “under $800 package free of customs” (except letters and something like that) and the customs need to be paid in advance, i’ve understood, so many, if not all, postal services have stopped sending anything, since US has not given any instructions on how this customs fee is supposed to be paid. That’s my understanding of the situation.
Although i think they are still sending stuff this week, but after that it stops until there is a resolution on how this customs system is supposed to be handled.
Did you try to order? I stopped short of Add to Cart when it said shipping was $91
Tindie has always been a nightmare for shipping, regardless of yours or the producers country. I’m amazed it continues to exist!