Excitement was palpable in the room at the latest USB-IF Developer Days. What are the interoperability do's and don't's of USB Type-C? What’s the latest on active cables? How do we get Type-C hosts and devices to perform optimally?

Total Phase attended the USB-IF Developer Days Conference held 9/26-9/27 in Vancouver, Canada. We showed up with open ears to learn how we can optimize our Type-C/PD test solutions as well as provide development and debug solutions to engineers in the USB space.

On showcase were our latest USB tools, the Advanced Cable Tester v2 and the USB Power Delivery Analyzer.

The Advanced Cable Tester is our latest tool that quickly verifies USB cables to ensure that they are safe and perform well. Many of the attendees are developing USB Type-C/PD solutions. Although they may not develop cables, USB Type-C cables can play a major role in Type-C development issues as verification of Type-C/PD solutions many times involve a cable. Isolating a cable and performing a quick sanity check, can eliminate the cable as a culprit.

One of the technical sessions I attended talked about the interoperability of PD sources and sinks. There was an example where a PD 3.0 source was communicating to a PD 2.0 sink and unexpected results appeared. The PD 3.0 source was a power supply and the PD 2.0 sink was a laptop. At first the sink negotiated power and the source delivered it, per usual. Next, the sink negotiated power for a PD 3.0 specific option (Augmented PDO) and the source still delivered the requested power. This should not have happened and we were able to capture this communication with our USB Power Delivery Analyzer.

The USB Power Delivery Analyzer supports real-time capture of PD traffic and current/voltage on Vbus and Vconn. PD messages are decoded.  We recently released support for PD 3.0 in our Data Center Software. The USB Power Delivery Analyzer helps PD developers gain insight to PD power negotiation and ultimately can help verify their PD solutions and working well.

After the conference wrapped up, I headed to Seattle to meet with customers. I was lucky to catch the last couple days of summer! One customer told me there are over 1,200 Avionics and Aerospace companies in the Seattle area (Wow!). It appears a new protocol is making headway in the industry - CAN. Total Phase has several tools in the CAN space, including the Komodo CAN Duo Interface. The Komodo Duo interface can simultaneously send CAN messages and monitor the CAN bus. Users also have the option to record and play back captures to simulate different test conditions.

As much fun as it was to taste Tim Hortons coffee and visit the original Starbucks location, it’s good to be back in California. Until next time!