Last week we had big news for USB Type-C: we released the first version of Data Center Software supporting capture & decode of the Power Delivery protocol! Along with this, we started shipping our updated USB Power Delivery Analyzer.

Previously if you needed insight into what was happening when you plugged in a Type-C product, it was necessary to either buy a far more expensive analyzer from a competitor, or to waste a bunch of time setting up exactly the right Linux environment for the USB-PD Sniffer (aka Twinkie). Neither is ideal. The Twinkie is an inexpensive hardware design, but the software required a lot of work to setup, and once setup the usability definitely was lacking.

The integration of the USB Power Delivery Analyzer into Total Phase’s Data Center Software perfectly meets the requirements of professional users. Data Center is a breeze to setup – just plug the analyzer into your Windows 10 (or Mac or Linux!) laptop, unzip Data Center, double-click on the application (EXE) file, and you're ready to capture! Hit record & plug something in!

	Figure 1: USB Power Delivery Analyzer	Figure 2: Data Center Software

We call it beta today, but I think it's perfectly usable (even if you don't consider the difficulty or expense of the alternatives).

Over the coming months, we'll continue working on additional features. We're planning to add current/voltage monitoring on VBUS/VCONN with correlation to captured PD data, more protocol decoding, and to do a fully-tested "final-quality" release.