Adafruit's $4.50 Fixer for USB-C Devices That Won't Power Up
Adafruit USB Type C CC Resistor Fixer
Adafruit's USB Type C CC Resistor Fixer is a tiny PCB that adds the missing 5.1K CC resistors to USB-C ports or cables, enabling proper C-to-C power and data connections. It passes through data, Vbus, and ground, and includes a power LED. Ideal for fixing devices that fail to power or sync due to omitted resistors, though it doesn't support high-speed or specialty protocols.
It's the only product we hope we can discontinue one day, sooner rather than later!
- lgeorget
I lost a good two hours the other day on an insufficiently documented device, looking for a way to flash a new firmware onto it.
dmesg was absolutely silent about it when I plugged in or out my C-C USB cable although the device switched on when I was using a simple charger instead. I opened it up to see if there was a special switch or something to put it in firmware flashing mode, to no avail. The little documentation I had only mentioned using one of the USB port.
In the end, out of ideas, I switched cables (even though I knew my cable was perfectly fine). As soon as I plugged in a A-C USB cables, everything worked immediately...
- eknkc
I did not know this was a thing.
I have a couple of devices that do not charge on a usb c source. I have to use a USB A - C cable on their shitty usb-c ports.
Now that I know the probable reason I’m more annoyed.
- blacksmith_tb
I have a fair number of badly designed / implemented usb-c devices with this problem (not all from fly-by-night companies, my Philips water flosser is a glaring example). I have a couple of small metal-enclosed male C to female C adapters (which don't have an exposed circuit board) that do the same thing as the Adafruit version.
- rufo
As someone with a bunch of "USB-C" devices that do this, I'd wondered for years why nobody sold these. I recently just found them on Aliexpress in a more finished format (nice-looking case and such), so I'm hopeful they'll start to filter out into the world more. (If you're interested, do a search for "usb c resistor" and you'll find them for ~$2-$4.)
- joecool1029
There were some higher profile products that left this out like the original revisions of the raspberry pi 4.