[HN Gopher] Fixing an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device with the...
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Fixing an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device with the help of Ghidra
Author : miles
Score : 468 points
Date : 2024-09-17 04:06 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.downtowndougbrown.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.downtowndougbrown.com)
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| What a well written reverse engineering project :)
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| We need to encourage our kids to repair stuff. It aids the
| environment (less e-waste) and teaches them a valuable trade. I
| know that's it's typically cheaper to replace than repair, but to
| me that's a market failure.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Most devices nowadays are unfortunately not only not repair-
| friendly, they are straight impossible to take disassemble.
| They are welded, soldered, glued together, and any attempt at a
| repair is intentionally destructive :(
|
| This one is an odd exception, that usually happens only with
| the early versions of a product.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Germany is rolling out an incentive to get products repaired.
| For example, repairs that can be done by yourself or in a
| repair cafe will be subsidized by EUR200 and repairs that
| require a professional or sending in, will be subsidized by 50%
| up to EUR200.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but in this example, how much
| domain expertise was required?
| pjc50 wrote:
| > market failure
|
| Industrialization has massively optimized the "hot path" for
| any kind of production, largely by taking out the humans. It is
| incredibly cheap to manufacture consumer electronics - because
| everything is standardized and predictable and amenable to
| machine operation. This is what market _success_ looks like.
|
| The downside is that as soon as there is a deviation from the
| process, it gets more expensive.
|
| It's worth thinking about what happens to repair _inside the
| factory_. Some percentage of units will be coming off the
| production line defective and fail initial QA. This is usually
| a very low percentage, well below 1%, because the entire
| economics of the factory depends on not having to do any
| rework. Even there, the technicians will take a look, determine
| if it 's something that can be fixed quickly, or is a novel
| kind of failure, and if not just throw it away right there.
| Why? Because while you're standing there looking at it, another
| hundred have come off the production line. The broken one in
| your hand is not a unique snowflake.
|
| At the start of a run though, this is an interesting and
| important job, because any failure is a novel failure. The
| first batch through the process _should_ have high yield, but
| it might not, and then you stop the line (
| https://mag.toyota.co.uk/andon-toyota-production-system/ ) and
| figure out what's happened (something misaligned? Defective
| inputs? Material problems? Design issue?)
|
| The first batch will often get reworked and sent out as demo
| units.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| What happens when a unit is defective and not easily
| repairable, maybe because the PCB itself was already
| defective?
|
| Do technicians salvage the high value components, like the
| CPLD in this case, off the board? That chip alone is probably
| worth 15$.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| The engineering time to "salvage" and test the 15$ chip,
| and the cost of downtime reintegrating the part to the
| production line is probably worth more that 15$, so unless
| the lack of that specific part is a bottleneck, probably
| no?
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Yeah, probably, but I do wonder where it starts to make
| sense to desolder a chip and give it another try.
|
| Surely at the point of high end GPU Boards one would
| invest considerable amounts of time and money to salvage
| a chip, which could sell for thousands of dollars.
| coldpie wrote:
| I think you're right that for high end chips, it is worth
| the time to salvage it[1]. But I think that's the vast
| minority, like you said, most stuff being manufactured
| isn't at the cutting edge of consumer tech like GPUs are.
|
| [1] They show a bit of the RMA/failed unit process
| towards the end of this surprisingly good GPU factory
| tour from Linus Tech Tips. There's some discussion of de-
| soldering and testing retrieved components.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS35VHEfFDU
| pjc50 wrote:
| As other commenter says, spending human time to save a $15
| chip is uneconomic. This only happens if they're especially
| expensive parts or (as during COVID) supply is short and
| you can't just buy some more.
|
| (COVID shortages saw the opposite phenomenon in a few
| places: _working_ consumer electronics being bought and
| stripped for a particular part critical to something else,
| then the rest thrown away!)
|
| Remember that after you've hotgunned it off the board and
| cleaned the solder you have to re-ball BGA parts. Again, a
| process that's cheap in the original manufacturing line and
| very hard to do by hand. It also means the part has been
| through more thermal stress which will shorten its life.
| You don't want to have to rework a unit _again_ if you put
| a recycled chip in it which fails.
| xnzakg wrote:
| Not the user you replied to from my experience usually it's
| not worth it due to several reasons:
|
| - desoldering the chips takes time and is a manual process
| ($), with risk of tearing off a pad or bending leads. In
| case of BGA ICs reballing is needed to reuse them. -
| components are usually not rated for a lot of reflow
| (heat/cool) cycles, and some are moisture-sensitive and may
| crack if they have managed to absorb moisture - you usually
| end up with some solder and flux left on the IC, which can
| cause issues - ICs come on tape for feeding into automated
| pick-and-place machines, so you would need to feed and
| mount them manually ($)
|
| And if you only realize you have damaged the IC after
| mounting it on the new board you end up having to rework it
| again ($).
|
| Sure, it might be worth it if the chip is really expensive
| or hard to get, or you're soldering everything by hand
| anyway, but usually the math just doesn't work out.
| Razengan wrote:
| I appreciate the intent, but.. Do you suppose _time_ is free?
| and renewable?
|
| Time that could be spent doing other things instead of learning
| how to repair, buying the tools, and repairing something that
| you could just hire someone else to repair, or buy anew?
|
| As for environmental waste, figure out ways to make stuff out
| of more easily degradable stuff, or to reuse it, instead of
| _guilting_ people into repair.
| blitzar wrote:
| A robust economy for parts and repairs would be ideal. Parts
| are (reasonably) obtainable, however, professional or even
| decent repair is about as reliable as a used car salesman.
| pjc50 wrote:
| To repurpose a sentence from somewhere else, repair is only
| free if your time is worthless.
|
| (Imagine trying to contract someone to do the OP's level of
| thorough work; it would be a five-figure dollar sum)
| varispeed wrote:
| Unfortunately, due to lobbying, it's now less of a trade but
| skill that corporations exploit for profit. In Western
| countries working on your own account is getting more and more
| restricted under guise of tackling tax avoidance (many tax
| authorities engage in anti-small business propaganda), so that
| the profit people generate is captured by corporations they
| have to work at if they want to pursue their "trade".
|
| edit:
|
| I find it fascinating that working class supports this, even
| though it is against their interest. It has a lot to do with
| crabs in the bucket mentality and the cultivated perception
| that venturing out of ones lane is wrong. Most people think
| they need to serve the rich masters and that is their calling
| and reject the idea that concept of class has been created to
| keep them in mental captivity.
| the_biot wrote:
| If the US gets into a full-blown trade war with China, i.e.
| massive tariffs on everything, I expect consumer electronics,
| clothing etc to become much more interesting to repair instead
| of replace.
| XorNot wrote:
| This repair makes the case I've found more obvious though: we
| need microcontroller firmwares to be made available (I would
| argue as a public government archive honestly).
|
| I've had several Yamaha amps blow micro-processors or DSPs, and
| on the older ones there were no firmware upgrades so you just
| plain couldn't do anything afterwards.
|
| I've got the same problem with the controller for my heat
| exchange ventilation - microcontroller is dead, and while the
| chip is easy to get and replace, there's 0 chance I can source
| a replacement firmware for it.
| jwong_ wrote:
| Really enjoyed this write up. You both had the skill and the
| patience to even buy a working version to fix the broken ones!
| russdill wrote:
| The reason it likely goes into bootloader when the lock bit isn't
| set is that it's likely using this as a "flashed successful"
| signifier.
| echoangle wrote:
| Thats explicitely stated in the post:
|
| Interestingly I discovered that if the chip is set for
| unprotected mode, the bootloader actually waits around for
| update commands instead of booting the application firmware. So
| Elgato is using the locked/unlocked bit as a way of signifying
| whether it should stay in the bootloader or not, which I find
| to be a little bit weird. That completely explained why my
| second HD60 S stopped working after I installed my unlocked
| firmware -- it was stuck in the bootloader waiting forever
| because the chip was unprotected.
| flimflamm wrote:
| Thanks for the writeup! It was great as you explained the tools
| and rabbit holes you went it to.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Elgato stuff is cheap but _horribly_ unreliable in my experience.
| Thanks for the writeup, it 's showing _why_ that is very
| detailed...
| db48x wrote:
| The flashing and corruption problems point to a very poor
| software engineering culture.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| How does the corruption point to a software engineering
| issue? What could cause corruption and how could it be
| avoided by better software engineering?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's a _culture_ issue when such cases don 't get caught in
| testing and support staff either doesn't know about it
| (=the scripts are bad), doesn't get told that there is a
| workaround (because clearly there is), or (the worst of the
| possible options) gets told to act like everything is fine.
| crote wrote:
| It's a race condition which involves physical interaction
| with the product, which only occurs during a very rare
| operation, which looks pretty much identical to a genuine
| hardware defect.
|
| This isn't something you can just trivially unit test. If
| you don't see this happen _multiple_ times during initial
| hardware development, you are _never_ catching it. A
| single failure of a prototype can easily be attributed to
| a manufacturing defect - especially if it was hand-
| soldered.
|
| Once it's in the field replacing the 0.01% of units
| suffering from random issues under warranty is far
| cheaper than having an engineer spend weeks trying to
| diagnose every single weird failure mode. Unless it
| affects a number of units, it's just not worth the money.
| You have to consider that support doesn't get a "the LEDs
| stopped working when I unplugged the device immediately
| after flashing it" message, they just get "the LEDs don't
| work". Support scripts are made for horses, not zebras.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Once it's in the field replacing the 0.01% of units
| suffering from random issues under warranty is far
| cheaper than having an engineer spend weeks trying to
| diagnose every single weird failure mode. Unless it
| affects a number of units, it's just not worth the money.
|
| It _does_ affect a number of units, that 's the point,
| and it's serious enough that the brand image is
| suffering. Just google "elgato unreliable" - tons of
| results, and when the top result is a Reddit post _in the
| official Elgato subreddit_ of all places literally titled
| "My elgato experience has left me with nothing but hate
| in my heart", all alarm sirens should go fucking off.
|
| To top it off, Elgato used to be a German brand right out
| of Munich [1]. German products used to be noteworthy for
| top-notch engineering and reliability...
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/elgato/comments/18k92zy/my_e
| lgato_e...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgato
| robocat wrote:
| That is awfully close to blaming the engineers.
|
| You don't know what kind of pressures they are under to
| deliver.
|
| I know of significant compromises in all the software I have
| written, and I would make hardware mistakes if I had taken
| the electronic engineer path. Sometimes we have to prioritize
| and I've never had an unlimited time budget on any project
| (not even my own).
|
| Projects with no issues are mostly dead!
| aftbit wrote:
| Well high pressure to deliver is sort of a poor culture
| isn't it? I agree we should be forgiving of others
| mistakes, but I also think we ought to strive to develop
| better solutions that lead to fewer bugs at any given
| velocity.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| It's sad because their stuff, like the key lights and the
| stream deck are neat and really useful. and the software has
| all the features you'd want and you can make your own plugins
| for it and they document the process for making the plugins.
| All really cool.
|
| But in practice I'm constantly having to power cycle my key
| lights and having to restart the stream deck app on windows.
| ajolly wrote:
| Btw I switched from using their app to bitfocus companion
| instead. Still lets me control my stream deck but no more
| elgato Corsair bloat
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I maintain a lot of their stuff for my coworkers. It's nice
| looking, and easy to understand, but they also have a lot of
| things that are kludgy clunky or strange that don't make any
| sense.
|
| Their ring light, for instance, can't be manually turned off
| using the shoulder buttons. It can only be set to a low dim.
| Why not? Makes no sense.
|
| Their FaceCam needs a high bandwidth usb 3.0 port all to
| itself. Won't reliably work over a hub. Why not? I mean, give
| it a low bandwith 720p mode or something.
|
| The Mic has a headphone jack, sure, no problem, but why does
| it install 8 audio devices during the install? Only install
| what is needed!
|
| Their USB capture cards have issues staying connected unless
| they are plugged directly into the laptop/desktop
| motherboard, and even then they flip out every few hours.
|
| These issues have ensured that I won't buy any of their
| stuff. I've recreated an entire elgato stack that would have
| cost $500+ for like $90 in cheap chinesium crap and it works
| perfectly.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| What a humbling writeup. This is real fullstack engineering.
| abraae wrote:
| Humbling all right. I think it would take me weeks to achieve
| this - and that's assuming I had this article to start from!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I suspect it may have taken the author weeks as well, given
| they indicated waiting for chips from China and that there
| was communications with Elgato's customer support. This
| writeup looks like it's the report of a few weeks if not
| months of on and off work.
| dougg3 wrote:
| I'm the author of this article and you're absolutely
| correct! This was a long, drawn-out project. For some
| context, I ordered the replacement regulators in February.
| The new LED driver chips were ordered in March, so that was
| around the time that I actually had the failed hardware
| fixed. Then everything sat idle for months. The firmware
| reverse engineering to figure out the LEDs was several
| weeks of on and off work in my spare time.
|
| This type of thing is definitely not something you can just
| figure out in a couple hours (or even days).
| robocat wrote:
| Your writeup is inspiring.
|
| I most appreciate the honesty about mistakes and failures
| and dead-ends. Too often wasted effort and small failures
| are elided from articles and instead you get something
| that is written retrospectively as though everything went
| perfectly...
| rkachowski wrote:
| amazing work! ultimately it comes down to a firmware bug - I
| would not have had the fortitude to continue when it came to
| debugging
| fhackenberger wrote:
| Would love to see Elgatos response to your writeup :-)
| squarefoot wrote:
| Same here. I can totally imagine the excitement in their
| engineers eyes after reading this fascinating writeup, paired
| with their managers anger while they ask for a better way to
| protect the company's IP.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Now i am curious if they know what causes their LED troubles or
| what causes the underlying memory corruption.
| 1-6 wrote:
| It'll have to come from Corsair who now owns Elgato. IMHO,
| they're a 'conventional' company with stock listed on the
| exchange. If they respond I will be pleasantly surprised.
| aftbit wrote:
| Buy one share of their stock, then call investor relations
| and ask them why a hobbyist was able to fix the LED bug that
| their support claimed didn't exist while their whole
| expensive engineering team was not.
| ghoomketu wrote:
| Growing up in India about 20 years ago, we often repaired or
| renewed almost everything because our buying power was low and
| things were expensive. We used a lot of hacks, known as
| *jugaads*, to make things work. Even clothes were reused, with
| tailors doing *rafu* (patchwork) to extend their life. This was
| especially common in middle-class homes like mine.
|
| My dad, who worked in a garment export house, used to tell me
| stories about how people in the West preferred disposable items
| and often opted for newer stuff, whether it was cars, gadgets, or
| clothes. At the time, I didn't understand this mentality. But
| now, with increased buying power and lower costs (thanks to
| China), we too tend to just chuck things away and get
| replacements.
|
| I deeply admire people who don't give up midway and think it's
| easier to buy new. This type of persistence and resourcefulness
| is truly commendable.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This was how things went for a long time in my region (western
| europe) as well, my parents grew up patching clothes and
| repairing stuff a lot. It's only in the past 50 years or so
| that consumerism has gone up and the quality and cost of e.g.
| clothing has gone down.
|
| I've been doing maintenance on my motorcycle myself recently,
| it does take some small investments in some tools to get
| started (like a tool to undo the oil filter, although in
| hindsight a strap and a stick would do the job) and you need to
| source some parts and replacements (fluids, copper washers, but
| also replacement screws for the weathered brake fluid reservoir
| ones), but it's in the region of EUR100-EUR150 instead of the
| EUR1000 the garage quoted me for.
| ghoomketu wrote:
| Yes Reflecting on it, making things last longer had some
| great side effects. For instance, almost every woman in my
| family knew how to *rafu* clothes (1), and people understood
| how things worked under the hood of a car (like you my father
| did all the maintenance too). These skills were passed down
| through generations, becoming a part of our everyday
| knowledge.
|
| I guess a lot of things aren't that simple or accessible as
| most of it is often a black box nowadays. But anyway, Skills
| like these not only saved money but also fostered a sense of
| self-reliance, resourcefulness and stuff your parents taught
| you as life skills.
|
| (1) https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=Rafu+clothes
| T3OU-736 wrote:
| I cannot help but winder if, as a part of 'Fix, don't toss'
| mentality, there is an attendant[1] additional tenacity
| present.
|
| [1] Or a pre-requisite. Correlation, not causation and all.
| masklinn wrote:
| > It's only in the past 50 years or so that consumerism has
| gone up and the quality and cost of e.g. clothing has gone
| down.
|
| The "quality" part is a big factor, cost optimisations and
| fast turnaround means it's often not worth repairing things
| at all e.g. a fast fashion T designed to survive for a season
| (if it survives even a wash).
|
| An other major issue is scams around price signals and brand
| degradation. It used to be you got what you paid for and some
| brands were known for quality, so you could pay a fair amount
| of money to a reputable brand and you'd get stuff worth
| maintaining and repairing.
|
| But big groups and P-E have taken to "value extract" from
| brands, so they take a reputable brand and start white-
| labelling / cost-optimising, initially keeping prices in
| order to get maximum money for the moo their start selling
| instead of milk. Then they drop the price as understanding
| slowly spreads, until a once reputable brand becomes bargain-
| bin fare even to the general public.
|
| There's a similar issue around more bespoke products, which
| optimise for quality signals (e.g. external design and
| materials) and sell generic inner parts (or outright garbage)
| for top-shelf prices.
|
| Then there's the shuffling of 6 months brands on generic
| white label goods (amazon is absolutely infested with that,
| you'll get the exact same product under half a dozen brands,
| and 6 months later most of those have disappeared).
| Panzer04 wrote:
| It seems to me the real problem is that repairs are, in
| general, labour intensive. Few products today are
| sufficiently valuable that a repair is better than a new
| item.
|
| Cars are worth fixing, a 10$ shirt is not, if you value
| your time. This only becomes more true as expertise becomes
| required to effect a repair, since you become less capable
| of repairing and the time of the repairer becomes more
| valuable.
| XorNot wrote:
| You can avoid the copper washers! The main reason to change
| them is under compression the copper work hardens to seal up.
| To get a good seal though you just need to re-anneal the
| copper so it's soft - heat it to cherry red and let it cool
| down. Takes about 5-10 seconds with a blowtorch - I've been
| doing it for oil changes on my car for several years now with
| no problems.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| The best tool I have bought in the last 3 years was a
| 3d-printer... It lets me make other tools - even if they
| aren't as durable as steel, I can design them chunkier, or
| print a new one if they break.
| ddalex wrote:
| I agree that repairing is vastly preferable - I grew up in a
| poor communist country, where repairing and self-
| resourcesfullness was the norm.
|
| However it's not the consumerist mentality driven by increased
| buying power - it's sheer economic sense - the time and effort
| is way better spent, economically speaking - by simply
| replacing. It's the lower price of goods that drive this thing.
|
| My fridge broke the other week. I called the repairman who
| quoted a repair bill that was 10% MORE EXPENSIVE then buying a
| new fridge. Simply the time of the repair shop and the
| transportation from home to shop and back was more expensive
| them just buying a new fridge, chucking out the older one, and
| calling it a day.
|
| My grandparents, nah, my parents would be horrified by throwing
| up a "nearly" good fridge. To me, it makes economic sense.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| This is often due to the total costs being externalised
| (pushed off to others) and therefore not reflecting the true
| cost of the replacement nor the costs of (safe) disposal of
| the old unit.
|
| Externalised costs such as emissions from manufacturing of
| new raw materials (metals, plastics, gases, etc.),
| transportation, disposal, and more.
|
| Obviously it depends on what exactly fails. I've kept 'white
| goods' going for over 20 years despite: 1)
| known defect where Hotpoint Fridge/Freezer evaporator
| thermistor fails due to freeze/defrost thermal cycle.
| Replaced more than 10 times; cost of new thermistor is
| pennies; time to replace (after initial explore) 10 minutes.
| 2) Freezer control PCB misreading thermistor; replace PCB:
| UKPS35. 3) LG Washing machine bearing failures;
| replaced about 6 times; time to replace (after initial
| explore): 45 minutes.
|
| I think sometimes repair-or-replace depends on one's state of
| mind. Figuring out what is wrong and how to fix can be
| frustrating but, equally, it can be extremely satisfying to
| realise you can do it and are no longer reliant on some
| mystical "expert" !
|
| Society as a whole in many countries is losing (or has
| already lost) the ability to be self-reliant and that lack
| makes people and communities generally more fragile.
|
| Self-reliance is one of the drivers of hackers and tinkerers.
| varispeed wrote:
| I often develop feelings for the products I use (I
| know...). When I look at dishwasher I reminisce how many
| moments I had whilst standing next to it tirelessly working
| through my dirty dishes. I'll give it a tap. Sometimes I
| talk to it when loading like "Hey there, I got you some new
| stuff. Don't worry I'll feed you salt at the end of the
| week. Now I'll do your favourite program". Then once it
| finishes I say like "Oh what a great work you did there!"
| and so on. Then when it broke (the motor seized) I just
| wouldn't have heart to simply dispose of it. I sourced the
| motor and called in repair guy who installed it. It did
| cost me in total as much as I would pay for a new
| dishwasher, but I would never get the sense of feeling that
| I saved a friend.
| robocat wrote:
| My economic theory is that the price reflects ecological
| costs fairly well.
|
| At first glance it might appear that fixing would have a
| lower environmental cost. But the money spent will be spent
| by the repairman on things like international travel or
| whatever - and each of the things the money is spent on
| have environmental costs and externalities.
| gessha wrote:
| I don't quite think so. I think we're in a status quo
| that prevents/obfuscates a more efficient economic
| activity because it inflates GDP which makes the
| politicians and economists happy.
|
| The magic number won't go up much if you call somebody
| and they tell you what you need to do change the PCB and
| ship you the part(for a small markup price).
| gessha wrote:
| Don't forget the emission offset credits somebody will pay
| for to dispose of that refrigerant liquid in the fridge!
| asicsp wrote:
| > _Even clothes were reused_
|
| My mom repurposed old pants as bags (I used it to carry my
| books at college - did get a lot of odd looks, but that's what
| I could afford at that time). Even now, I cut pieces of old
| clothing to be used for cleaning purposes. Those habits die
| hard.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| In our past, this seems a community thing: Someone in your
| neighbourhood had advanced knowledge in welding, someone else
| advanced electricity, masonwork, clothes repair, ... They could
| coach other people to a basic enough level and help if
| unexpected troubles popped up. The community as a whole had
| knowledge and basic apprenticeships built in.
|
| Today, repair is something you do on your own. Things like
| youtube are a great help, but the community aspect is lost.
| uep wrote:
| This is how it was for me growing up blue collar in the
| northeastern USA in the 80s. My father fixed everything in the
| house and the vehicles. I inherited my older siblings clothes,
| and my younger siblings inherited mine. My mother would hem
| pant legs shorter when we were young, and then let them back
| out as we grew older. If you wore a knee or an elbow out of
| clothes, it was getting patched.
|
| This instilled some good and bad tendencies in me. I do almost
| all of the repairs around the house myself. I work too much
| though, so I don't always have enough time or energy. Even
| though I can easily afford it, I have a hard time paying
| someone else to do them. This means I live with broken stuff
| longer than I should.
|
| I'd probably have more money if I spent that time working on
| side projects instead of doing maintenance and repairs.
| mc32 wrote:
| I feel like it's giving good money away when you hire someone
| to do work for you that you know you can do. You look at the
| markups for things and it gives you pause. Things like a
| valve or whatever. You can go to the Home Depot and get it
| for cheaper even when you include the cost of whatever tools
| you need to get.
|
| But at some point you have to say, let's just get someone to
| to it (the deck, the fence, the gutters, etc.) still it's
| like zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. There is some
| personal satisfaction in being self reliant.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > This is how it was for me growing up blue collar in the
| northeastern USA in the 80s. My father fixed everything in
| the house and the vehicles. I inherited my older siblings
| clothes, and my younger siblings inherited mine. My mother
| would hem pant legs shorter when we were young, and then let
| them back out as we grew older. If you wore a knee or an
| elbow out of clothes, it was getting patched.
|
| Thing is, they were _able to_ in the first place.
|
| Forget about fixing a modern car. The electronics side is a
| mixture of "a datacenter on wheels", DRM and anti-tamper
| technology (sometimes enforced or heavily suggested by law
| such as in emissions control, sometimes by reality, e.g. "Kia
| Boys") and high-speed protocols instead of early age wires
| and relays that you could troubleshoot with a decent
| multimeter. The physical side is a ton of plastics designed
| to absorb crash energy and finely tuned metal alloy stuff
| (with the form also having crash safety implication) that
| your average DIY person cannot reasonably weld instead of
| plain old steel sheets. You can't buy a "reasonably
| repairable" new car any more because of the legal mandates
| and because you don't want it to be stolen by some kid having
| watched a YouTube or Tiktok video showing how to bypass the
| locks.
|
| And clothing... patching a 1980s piece was possible, the
| fabrics had weight and structural integrity of their own.
| Nowadays it's extremely thin fabric everywhere that shreds
| itself after a few washing machine cycles. Try to patch it
| and you'll more likely than not find out that your very act
| of pushing a needle through it to apply the patch just causes
| the next rip to appear. You are still able to purchase better
| quality clothing technically but you end up paying like 4x
| the amount and it's _still_ made in some Bangladeshi or
| Chinese sweatshop under horrible safety and employee rights
| standards.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| If one has the proclivity, then: One can get into rather
| far into troubleshooting and (and ultimately repairing)
| common modern automotive electronics with an Autel rig
| that, adjusted for inflation, costs less than an Atari 2600
| did.
| craftkiller wrote:
| When I bought my phone, it was on sale and so I got it new for
| $94. I dropped it and broke the screen. The replacement screen
| cost $106, more than the entire phone (just for the part, I do
| the work myself). I still did it anyway, for
| environmental/e-waste reasons and because repairing electronics
| is a fun hobby but the sad reality is, it often makes more
| financial sense to replace than to repair. That's not even
| going into the time lost and the money sunk on tools.
| throw10920 wrote:
| This is fascinating. How were these usually jugaads obtained -
| did you more commonly get them from friends, family, shop
| owners, the Internet, or just (re)discover most of them
| yourself?
| hagbard_c wrote:
| I live in Sweden, coming from the Netherlands, both countries
| somewhere in the global top yet I still repair hardware, mend
| my clothes, repair the tractors and car, restored the 17th
| century farm we live on and extended it, built a barn and more.
| I intentionally do not make myself lust after the 'latest and
| greatest' of anything since I realise that such a lifestyle
| puts you on a treadmill, always running for the next treat.
| Hence I'm typing this on a computer from 2009 I got for free
| because the video card was 'broken' (27" iMac, a short stay in
| the oven later fixed the video card) connected to a second
| monitor I got for free because of a broken power supply (two
| capacitors later it worked again) which sits on a stand-up desk
| I got for free because of some trivial electrical defect
| (quickly fixed). In a way I still partake of the 'fruits' of
| that latest-and-greatest lifestyle, only with a decade or so of
| delay and without the compulsion to 'upgrade'.
|
| Why do I do this? For a few reasons, most of them quite basic.
| I like fixing things. I get far more satisfaction out of using
| abandoned hardware which I have fixed myself than I get out of
| using whatever new gizmo I happen to lay my hands on because I
| know I can keep the former working (or find an alternative
| which I can get to work) while I do not know that for the
| latter. I like being self-reliant. With a soldering iron, a BGA
| rework station, a few old oscilloscopes and meters and a few
| decades worth of experience and scavenged parts I can keep
| things working for the most, design and build circuits to
| extend whatever is needed, etc. The advent of cheap and
| relatively open microcontrollers - the ESP series, Arduino,
| Raspberry Pi pico etc - has given a boost to the DIY
| electronics sphere which adds to the appeal of keeping older
| stuff working, e.g. I'm currently looking in to replacing the
| worn out control circuit and assorted switches of our 35 year
| old oven with something totally different and more functional,
| not because I can't get a new oven but because the current one
| works quite well apart from those switches. The same goes for
| the tractors and car, motorbikes (Russian Ural and Ukrainian
| Dneprs with sidecars), etc. There are no electronics in my
| tractors, they are purely mechanical. They can be repaired by
| anyone who knows how without the need for proprietary tools,
| dealer-only computer terminals and such.
|
| Of course I could save a lot of time if I abandoned this 'life
| style' and just went with the flow, buying new clothes as soon
| as the old ones needed mending, buying a new computer every 3
| years, a new car every 5 years, a new tractor every 10 years, a
| new dishwasher every 7-12 years, a new washing machine every 10
| years, etcetera. I could stop cycling to the village and just
| take the motorbike, that would be much quicker after all. Think
| what I could do with all that time saved:
|
| - instead of cycling to the village I could spend time at a
| sports school for exercise
|
| - instead of fixing that computer (and learning a bit more
| every time I fix one) I could watch some series on some
| streaming service
|
| - instead of mending that hole in my trousers (using the Elna
| sewing machine I got for free because it was 'jammed', took me
| all of 5 minutes to unjam it) I could browse the web looking
| for some new trousers - something I'd have to do every few
| weeks since my clothes somehow seem to acquire holes quite
| easily, why would that be?
|
| - instead of building that barn I could be working a few more
| months to pay someone else to build me a barn
|
| - instead of gaining self-reliance I could make myself become
| more and more dependent on outside sources and 'experts'
|
| Well, thanks but no thanks, I'll just keep on mending my own
| stuff simply because I can and I like it that way. Here, in
| Sweden, in the land of plenty.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| If you're interested in extending the service life of that
| old iMac, I recommend OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It lets you
| run newer versions of macOS on old hardware.
|
| https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-
| Patcher/MODELS.ht...
| CivBase wrote:
| The "consumerism" mindset is a luxury created by a strong
| economy and high upward mobility. An unfortunate side effect is
| that as repair & reuse became less desireable, so too did
| repairability and logevity as features. Now that economic
| growth in the US has stagnated (particularly for the 99%), it's
| becoming aparent what we lost as nothing is made to last and
| companies are unwilling or unable to offer repairable, long
| lasting products. So even those who go out of their way to
| repair their property encounter a myriad of roadblocks.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| I grew up lower-middle class in America and to and extent I
| understand this.
|
| Disposability is especially offensive when it comes to
| ~computers.
|
| To have perfectly functional (from a hardware perspective) 10>
| year old smartphones become "e-waste" is absurd to me.
|
| Even a cheap smartphone is a remarkable achievement in
| manufacturing and engineering. Its wild to think of something
| like that as "junk" even though it effectively is.
| toast0 wrote:
| Cost to repair has grown while cost for new has reduced.
|
| If you can repair things yourself, and you can find the parts
| you need to repair things, then sure. But if it's something
| I've got to pay for someone's experience and wisdom, that's
| pretty expensive these days, at least where I'm living, and
| it's just plain hard to find people who repair things too; lots
| of signs for TV repair outside empty shops.
|
| Thankfully I'm semi-retired, and am on a salary for part time
| work, so my marginal time has no dollar cost, so I can take a
| day to try to repair a dishwasher, and then another day to
| install a new one when it rebreaks a couple days later. A
| professional installer probably would have had the new one
| installed in an hour instead of my all day, but I didn't have
| to wait for scheduling, at least.
| smolder wrote:
| This was my attitude towards cars when younger. Always bought
| cheap used ones and fixed them. It frustrated me to no end
| seeing people fail at basic maintenance and cut the lives of
| their vehicles by half or more compared to a maintained one.
| (Stuff like not changing fluids or driving with the fluids
| leaking out, driving with slipping belts or broken suspensions,
| etc.)
| londons_explore wrote:
| If the right to repair movement succeeds fully, OP would have had
| access to the complete source code and hardware schematics of
| this device, and the fix for his flashing lights probably would
| have been a 5 line shell script that someone else had already put
| on github.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > would have had access to the complete source code and
| hardware schematics
|
| Forcing every company to open source their products is a pipe
| dream. This is never going to happen.
|
| Even if one country passed such a law, manufacturers would move
| their production to a different country. The products would
| then be imported and redistributed as foreign products,
| circumventing the law.
| londons_explore wrote:
| People would have said the same 100 years ago about forcing
| food companies to reveal their ingredients list. Yet now it
| is required in almost every country, and doesn't appear to
| have been that detrimental to the food industry.
| dannyw wrote:
| Ingredients listing don't tell everything about how it is
| made, etc.
|
| A closer analogy might be detailed API specs.
| immibis wrote:
| For electronics it would probably show the part number
| and position of each component on the PCB, without
| showing how they are connected.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Hardware schematics and full source code doesn't tell you
| everything about how a piece of hardware is made either.
|
| How was the hardware tested? How was it calibrated? How
| was it assembled?
|
| An ingredients list tells 90% of the story about how food
| is made, and in most cases an expert could guess the
| remaining 10% to get a decent result. Likewise, hardware
| design+code tells 90% and an expert could figure out the
| remaining 10%.
|
| The government could totally require all consumer
| products have published source code. (published source
| code != a license for others to use the code)
| hex4def6 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, but:
|
| To what level would the "source code" have to be published?
| Chip-level? Should I expect HDL code that allows me to
| reproduce the microcontroller? If not, expect a bunch of
| gadget companies to pay cypress or whoever to make "custom"
| chips with their firmware burned in. After all, what's the
| difference at that point between HDL and firmware?
|
| If yes, expect most companies to simply refuse, and not
| authorize their chips for sale in the US. International IP
| / licensing agreement would make it literally impossible
| for them to comply without being sued into oblivion by the
| Taiwanese company they licensed the IP from.
|
| I think stuff like design files and source code should be
| held in escrow by the government. If you continue to
| provide replacement parts to customers, the information
| remains protected. Once you stop providing reasonably
| priced replacements ("reasonably priced" = less than the
| cost of the product), the information gets published so
| others can reproduce it.
| userbinator wrote:
| _It was hard to understand their purpose in the grand scheme of
| things though. Sometimes they were buried deep inside multiple
| layers of function calls._
|
| I must say this is often true even when I'm looking at the source
| code. I think the vast majority of software out there is heavily
| overabstracted, and MCUs have gotten big and cheap enough ( _two_
| ARM cores in an HDMI capture device!?) that this is appearing in
| embedded stuff too. This device shouldn 't have needed more than
| one MCU.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Great work! I find it bizarre that they even bothered with this
| wild SPI Flash muxing thing if all it does is drive some LEDs.
| Seems massively overengineered.
| aftbit wrote:
| Great writeup, with very handy links!
| aftbit wrote:
| >A light bulb went off in my head. Yes, these chunks of data in
| the flash chip were pictures! But not in the conventional sense.
| They were describing the various LED animations. Each set of 16
| bytes is an animation frame written to the 14 LEDs. In the
| example above, a single red LED turns on and six of the seven
| white LEDs do stuff. The last two bytes in each row are a delay
| time before moving onto the next frame. The first 16 bytes looked
| kind of weird though. They looked like they possibly contained
| some header data for the animation or something.
|
| I have independently invented this format, albeit in text instead
| of binary, for animating my Hue lamps. Animations in my version
| look like this: bulb1 bulb2
| dly R G B WW CW R G B WW CW 100 10 25 20 0 0
| 25 10 20 0 0 200 10 50 20 0 0 50 10 20 0 0
|
| where the first value is the number of milliseconds to delay
| before moving to the next line, then each led channel's
| brightness (out of 100) is represented on each line. A line that
| starts with anything but a number is a comment, and any number of
| spaces (1+) are allowed between channels.
|
| I'm tickled to see a similar (binary) format in a commercial
| product. It really is quite obvious, but still interesting to
| see.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| The ability to explore & chase down truths is what makes us
| divine, is the aspect of us that builds & enhances. This guy
| walked a deep deep spiritual path to exploring something of the
| mundane world.
|
| It's just so sad, so frustrating, so hellish & infernal that
| devices do resist us. Computers & devices should be amplifying &
| radiating the truths they are made of. But humanity is trapped in
| shells of their own making, in descending consumerism that
| rejects engagement & learn ability. Computers, alas, especially
| so, are often the prime obfuscater of truth and understanding!
| What a vast disuse of so much potential!
|
| I hope we see some break through currents, of machines that are
| open, emerge in my lifetime. Well done, this dude Doug.
| dpedu wrote:
| If you don't have a thermal camera, you can also paint rubbing
| alcohol onto the board and watch where it evaporates the
| quickest. Obviously, this only works for low voltage stuff...
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