Products > Test Equipment

Does anyone make an affordable USB-C power sink tester?

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mwb1100:
If $190 counts as affordable, see if the Cypress CY4500 EZ-PD Protocol Analyzer will do what you need.  Some of the features:

  - decoding USB Power Delivery packets in real time on the CC lines
  - Decodes PD 2.0, PD 3.0, Extended messages and USB4 messages
  - CC line Voltages, VBUS Voltage and Current monitoring
  - Graphical view of the CC lines, VBUS Voltage and Current

Only monitors the PD protocol - it can't modify or spoof the protocol.

There's also the Google Twinkie project and various forks/improvements (such as Twonkie).

features:

   - Sniffing USB Power Delivery traffic on both Control Channel lines (CC1/CC2)
   - Transparent interposer on a USB Type-C connection
   - Monitoring VBUS and VCONN voltages and currents (Twonky supports USB PD 3.1 EPR voltages up to 48V, Google's Twinkie only SPR voltages up to 20V)
   - Injecting PD packets on CC1 or CC2
   - Putting Rd/Rp/Ra resistors on CC1 or CC2

Google the terms to find out more.

There's someone selling assembled Twonkie devices for 112 EUR here: https://shop.3mdeb.com/shop/open-source-hardware/twonkie-usb-c-sniffer/

Disclaimer: I have used exactly none of these devices

5U4GB:
Ah, the magic search term seems to be "usb-c pd sniffer" rather than (say) "usb-c analyzer".  Unfortunately all the stuff from an initial search has been quite expensive, or discontinued, or hard to use (e.g. supported under one particular release of one particular OS), but I'll keep looking.  The Plugable TKEY looked the most promising but it's EOL, then there's the Fresh-Twinkie which is DIY hardware, and a bunch of other stuff is non-USB-C.

mwb1100:

--- Quote from: 5U4GB on March 01, 2024, 10:08:44 am ---he Plugable TKEY looked the most promising but it's EOL, then there's the Fresh-Twinkie which is DIY hardware

--- End quote ---

My understanding is that the Pluggable TKEY was pretty much a faithful implementation of Google's Twinkie.  The Fresh-Twinkie  is a Google Twinkie with changes to make it easier for a DYIer to build.

The only place I found pre-assembled Twinkie-like devices is the the Twonkie I posted the link to.  If it works well, it seems the price (112 EUR) isn't a bad ask.  Maybe I'll pick one up - I have a bunch of the various USB "power meter" gizmos, but it would be interesting to be able to look a bit more under the hood.  I have no real need (other than curiosity), but that's the same for my small collection of multimeters and oscilloscopes.

5U4GB:
So it looks like there is such a device (and then some) that's readily available, it's the ST STM32G071B-DISCO which, alongside a huge amount of other functionality, provides a "spy" mode in which it sits between two USB-C devices and reports power profiles and information.

Or at least that's what the docs seem to imply, has anyone every played with one of these?

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