Like many people nowadays, I’ve amassed a variety of USB cables. I’d like to label them, so I can more easily choose one when I need it.
USB-A and USB-B are easy. All the rest are these teeny plugs with little way to distinguish between them. It’s especially bad when there are different plugs that are approximately the same shape, and just a mm or less size difference.
I mean, how can there be a different answer than “look at them”? Mini USB is thicker, asymmetrical, Micro USB is thinner, asymmetrical, USB C is symmetrical.
See this image–they aren’t that similar.
Umm, I’ve been trying to find a image that will help me identify the different plugs and the one thing I can tell you is that there are more plugs than what your link shows
Try Wikipedia for a more comprehensive chart.
That’s pretty much the standard list, except USB-B which is mostly used for printers. If you have other ones, they may be proprietary formats.
And why are computer cables always black? A mass of (black) cables and you have to manually feel your way along the cable from one end to the other to see if it’s connected or not.
I have other wires for connections as well—Garmin, camera, etc. I finally took some masking tape and made a loop around each (taping the tape to itself), then wrote with permanent marker what the cable was for, like a little flag.
Besides the connectors, cables can differ depending on whether they’re intended for data or just charging. The latter type of cable has the voltage and ground wires but omits the two data wires.
Here is a chart with more configurations. I’ve personally never seen anything with a Mini B, Micro A, or USB 3 Micro B. (And I don’t have anthing left that takes a Mini A.)
Seriously, I recommend Monoprice for your cables. They have every kind of cable in a rainbow of colors and any length you might need. Even bulk cable. Good quality cables with probably the best everyday prices anywhere.
Besides USB standard connectors you wind up with cables with USB type A to some oddball proprietary thing for a specific device, a charging cable for something or another, or with some useful implement on the other end of it, like an LED light. I finally screwed a peg into the wall, sat down and sorted out one of each unique cable I had, and hung them over the peg with the type A connector on the left and the other end on the right so I can paw through the alternate ends and find the one I want.
I’ve definitely got USB3 Micro B. They are the drive end of the cables for expansion and backup drives. I’ve got two external drives that have those connectors. Mind you, they’re not likely to be unplugged very much.
The two connector USB3 Micro B was on some phones for a little bit. They’re backwards compatible, I think with a slower charge speed. USB C has since supplanted it.
Over the years I have mindlessly amassed a tangle of USB cables every time I bought a new device - phone, mouse, iPod, tablet, GPS, whatever. Last year I finally sorted nearly all of them by type, bagged them up and put them in a box, and put that box on a shelf (although I’m not sure why I didn’t just put it in the trash).
In easy-to-reach locations (car, desk, etc.), I now have a couple of USB-mini cables cables that are black, a couple of Apple/Lightning cables that are white, and a couple of USB-C cables that are red. With those colors, they are easily distinguishable on sight: no squinting at a connector, no locating/reading a tag. It required buying the red USB-C cables, but overall this whole endeavor has made things much easier.
I highly recommend a color-coded solution like this. You might also check each particular use you have for a cable, and think about whether right-angle connectors on either end might make things even easier. Cables with right-angle connectors (left and right-handed) are readily available.
I got sick of doing the “is it this one?” thing so I went to one of those craft stores and bought a package of fancy labels for a few dollars. I write the matching tablet/phone/whatever on a label and then fold it over the cable so that the sticky sides adhere to each other like a little flag/tag. No more searching for the right cable.
Most are pretty easy to identify by shape and pin count.
But I have found camera cables have similar shape, but different pin counts.
For cables of any kind, really:
Eons ago I worked for an office supply company and stumbled across a product by Smead office products. They’re little colored stickers that go on file folders to color-code things systematically. I bought a packet of 1 of each color and threw them all in an index card box. Among other uses, I’ve organized dozens of HDMI cables for my current company’s conference rooms, putting the same color on the cable just behind the connector or strain-relief point. That has made it easy to find the blue-stickered cable behind the TV and look for the blue-stickered cable at the media cluster across the room. Depending on how many rolls you want to buy, you could use colored masking tape or electrical tape (or duct tape or X-tape or…) with or without letters or numbers written on them. I prefer to avoid written labels that dangle, even though that may afford better descriptions. I find that, at the multi-port cluster, those dangling tags tend to get in each other’s way and/or get torn off.
I originally organized several black ethernet cables in a similar fashion, putting a colored sticker right by the connector at both the router and the wall jack ports, and putting the same colors on the ends of the cable coming out of the wall port in each remote office. This works well for small businesses, but numbering the ports and wall plates allows greater capacity in medium and larger offices. Since ethernet cables are available in more colors now, I’ve swapped out the black color-taped cables at home for color-marking the ports and running the same color cable from the ports to the router (or end-user’s device).
–G!
