Earlier this month we announced that we would start shipping our new Advanced Cable Tester at the end of September.  As we developed this product,  we were thinking about the potential impact of faulty USB Type-C cables.  First and foremost was the potential safety hazard associated with up to 20V and 5 Amps.  Benson Leung of Google made one example famous:

“One Google engineer's quest to test USB-C cables sold on Amazon ended in a disaster when a particularly shoddy one fried his gadgets.”

Source:  Engadget.com (March 30, 2016)

http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/30/amazon-bans-crappy-usb-type-c-cables/

Tim Schofield explains in this You Tube video how USB Type - Standard A to USB Type-C cables can be hazardous.

Beware of Bad USB Type-C Cables

The summary of it all is simple - It's very early in the deployment of USB Type-C and issues in the design and deployment of this new technology has risks.

If you're a lab or factory seeking to make sure you're not featured in a bad way on one of these videos, contact us - We have test solutions to provide full coverage for safety (continuity, DCR/IR drop measurement, E-Marker), and signal integrity testing for just pennies a test.

We'll post more as future videos arise pertaining to cable quality and it's impact.