Acroname Universal Orientation Cables (UOCs) are specialized USB-C cables designed to automate testing of both sides of a USB-C receptacle when used with the USBHub3c or USB-C-Switch. Unlike standard USB cables that require manual flipping, Acroname UOCs enable programmatic switching between orientations. These cables pass VConn and CC signals through without the standard Ra termination.
USB cables can be a huge headache. They're deceptively simple, with huge amounts of variation underneath the same broad categories — and that's not even touching on cables that are labeled incorrectly.
We're going to look at some of the top USB cable blunders that test engineers make: mistakes can seriously undermine your test results and render the data you get back useless. Of course, we'll also look at how to avoid these common pitfalls and share some technological advancements that can safeguard against human error and poorly labeled cables in your testing process.
USB-C makes life easy for average consumers and users through two mechanisms: orientation agnostic connectors and automatic configuration. While these features are great for average users, they can make testing and validating USB systems complicated.
Acroname’s BrainStem-enabled programmable USB-C-Switch can be very useful to help automate and monitor USB connections in test environments. USB-C-Switch handles USB connections differently than a USB hub and also introduces the MUX entity to the BrainStem function libraries.
In this blog post, we will illustrate the connectivity and control aspects and show a control example in Python.