Seek Thermal Compact, Samsung a21s, micro USB to USB-C adapter

So you have your Seek Thermal Compact thermal USB camera with its micro USB type B male plug. As the time flies by, you buy a new smartphone, Samsung a21s it is, and it does have the new USB-C rotationally symmetrical connector socket. And you buy a micro USB to USB-C adapter, and you plug it all in, and it does not work.

Well.

It sucks, doesn’t it? But that type of thing happens. It is to be expected. Maybe the next adapter you buy will work. Or the next. Or the one after that. Right?

But!

It turns out that not all is lost yet. It turns out that the sequence of plugging in the components in matters! Who would have expected that, right?

What you do, is you plug in the adapter into the phone first, and only then you plug the camera into the adapter. Voila! Everything now works just fine!

You even can turn the micro USB to USB-C adapter around its axis by 180 degrees, plug it in, and you still have your Seek Thermal Compact camera working, even though it is looking in the opposite direction now. How nice is that?

Probably, as some people are suggesting, USB-C sockets of the new smartphones have current so weak, that it can’t wake up the camera if it has the bulk of the adapter already attached to it, so the camera remains undetected.

The particular adapter successfully tested was the small and neat Fusion Accessories Adapter Micro USB to USB Type-C Black, item code 695208 (whatever that means), priced around 3.00 EUR. It is OTG capable and it clearly says so on the packaging.

NB! Beware of the adapters and adapter cables neither labelled as OTG capable nor listed online as such. Not having OTG label plastered all over it does not necessarily mean that the adapter can’t do OTG, but it somewhat reduces the chances. And if in a situation like this it does not work, it will leave you guessing – was it the physical properties of the adapter that prevented it from working in the particular setup, or it indeed is just a dumb charging cable with no OTG capability whatsoever to begin with.

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