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by wereHamster 2542 days ago
The Pi4 does not work with all USB-C chargers. You may be lucky and it will work, or you may be unlucky and it will not work and you will have to buy another USB-C charger (which again may not work).

The reason is that the developers of the Pi4 made a mistake while designing the electronic circuit. They tried to design it themselves instead of copying it from the specification.

3 comments

The other reason for is that the developers of the USB-C specifications left us with a terrible confusing mess where visually identical cables have different capabilities and behaviors.
If it’s confusing, just don’t use it. They could have stuck with a micro-B charger, or a custom charger, and no one would have questioned it. Instead, they decided they were confident enough in their understanding of USB-C to implement it on their device. And they were wrong.
>They could have stuck with a micro-B charger

Somebody here said they were running into the maximum rated current for the port

>or a custom charger

Literally everyone would have complained

I don't think anyone would complain much if they supported a popular barrel connector with a popular power draw. As it stands, I'll only ever use a Pi with a charger sold as working with it after all the 3B+ issues I had (7 chargers, none worked without a warning on screen).
I said the "other" reason. I am not absolving the RPi team here...

The fact that they shipped this reveals significant gaps in their engineering and QA processes.

That doesn't change the fact that USB-C is a mess, and that mess contributed to this failure.

The article states it is an issue with an eMarked cable, not the charger. With a different cable, the Pi 4 started up with the same chargers as it was no longer detecting the Pi as an analog audio accessory.

The issue still lies with the Pi 4 for not having two CC resistors.

Can this be fixed with a dongle?
This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you kindly