first impressions of the Lego smart brick, before I do any actual tearing down: wow, I forgot how good they are at working with plastic.
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@maehw do you know what the WLCSPs are?
@whitequark the big one is the custom ASIC and the other one should be the external flash. Do you know about https://github.com/nanash1/smart_brick ? I think they did a great job and this way I didn't have to beep out the PCB myself. Expect for the missing CS line maybe. BTW, when I read the SoC's datasheet, I wondered why they had external flash at all if it already has half a Megabyte internally. Firmware got too big? Guess we'll see soon.
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@whitequark Lego plastics are something else…
@mnl @whitequark heck the little LEGO on the top of every stud being readable on every brick is them showing off. They could run those molds much longer which would cause the lettering wear off or get hard to read but they don't and that is definitely a sign of quality.
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@whitequark @timonsku really braindead tip: search "ultrasonic kinfe" or "ultrasonic knjfe", because AliExpress censors the word "knife" in listings
@gsuberland I can see a blurred listing in the search, and it's asking for age verification when I try to view the item
cc: @whitequark @timonsku
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@gsuberland I can see a blurred listing in the search, and it's asking for age verification when I try to view the item
cc: @whitequark @timonsku
@webhat @whitequark @timonsku yeah, the other way to go is to search "ultrasonic cutter", because a "cutter" is not strictly age restricted like a knife. which in this case is particularly funny because ultrasonic knife blades aren't really that sharp, it's barely sharper than a metal spudger.
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also, here's a close-up of the markings on the tiny WLCSP between the BGA and QFN
decided the next thing to do would be to dump the presumed Winbond flash WLCSP
here it is mounted on a SOIC-8 pinout with a tiny bit of UV epoxy, like a particularly exotic dead bug
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@webhat @whitequark @timonsku yeah, the other way to go is to search "ultrasonic cutter", because a "cutter" is not strictly age restricted like a knife. which in this case is particularly funny because ultrasonic knife blades aren't really that sharp, it's barely sharper than a metal spudger.
@gsuberland @webhat @whitequark @timonsku
*thinks* Is the cutting action similar to how doctors remove plaster of paris casts off people's limbs? Blunt instrument that just pushes material out of the way at a very high oscillating speed?
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@whitequark yeah, I'd love to see that being done. What's your plan of how to do it? I think you'd need to un-power or desolder the Bluetooth SoC as this one connects the the CS signals and hence should be the bus master. Or desolder the flash? It's so teeny tiny... I can't do it. You could have it from my second PCB.
@maehw oh i'll just desolder and mount it manually
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@gsuberland @webhat @whitequark @timonsku
*thinks* Is the cutting action similar to how doctors remove plaster of paris casts off people's limbs? Blunt instrument that just pushes material out of the way at a very high oscillating speed?
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@whitequark content of the data matrix code
@claudius Can you point me to the tool(s) you used to get to this decoded view of the DMC? I could use that for a totally different use case I have where I need to reverse-engineer DMCs
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@claudius Can you point me to the tool(s) you used to get to this decoded view of the DMC? I could use that for a totally different use case I have where I need to reverse-engineer DMCs
@Musicaloris this is what "binary eye" QR-Code/Barcode/Datamatrix/... scanner shows you after recognizing a code.
Neat thing: you can throw a static image at it, not just live camera view!
Binary Eye | F-Droid – Freies und quelloffenes Android-App-Repository
Einfach ein weiterer Barcode-Scanner
(f-droid.org)
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@Musicaloris this is what "binary eye" QR-Code/Barcode/Datamatrix/... scanner shows you after recognizing a code.
Neat thing: you can throw a static image at it, not just live camera view!
Binary Eye | F-Droid – Freies und quelloffenes Android-App-Repository
Einfach ein weiterer Barcode-Scanner
(f-droid.org)
@claudius Thanks so much! I even have that app already installed, just never got around to using it apparently
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@whitequark @timonsku really braindead tip: search "ultrasonic kinfe" or "ultrasonic knjfe", because AliExpress censors the word "knife" in listings
@gsuberland @whitequark https://hozodesign.com/products/neoblade is the one I have. Also available on Amazon
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@webhat @whitequark @timonsku yeah, the other way to go is to search "ultrasonic cutter", because a "cutter" is not strictly age restricted like a knife. which in this case is particularly funny because ultrasonic knife blades aren't really that sharp, it's barely sharper than a metal spudger.
@gsuberland @whitequark @timonsku in the end I found a couple of listings, because the listings were in Dutch and they didn't flag the age verification
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first impressions of the Lego smart brick, before I do any actual tearing down: wow, I forgot how good they are at working with plastic. the injecton molding remains impeccable, at least for this specific piece (I know about their recent QC issues elsewhere)
it's hard for me to look at the positively microscopic (I am literally using a microscope to look at it) "Li-Ion" lettering and think of anything but "showing off!"
(treehouse doesn't let me attach the full size images, you can grab them here: front, side)
@whitequark is love to see what of the CAT scans that Tested does on various things.
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I'm not yet sure how I'll open it up. I don't have a hacksaw (somehow... I should fix that), so my options are somewhat limited: it's either cracking or melting plastic. from what others have done I know I there's plastic welding all around the joined region.
@whitequark
No razor saw?
(a super fine modelling saw with a reinforced back) -
@whitequark
No razor saw?
(a super fine modelling saw with a reinforced back)@kirtai me: i don't have a hacksaw
you: no razor saw?
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@kirtai me: i don't have a hacksaw
you: no razor saw?
@whitequark
They're not the same kind of saw
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decided the next thing to do would be to dump the presumed Winbond flash WLCSP
here it is mounted on a SOIC-8 pinout with a tiny bit of UV epoxy, like a particularly exotic dead bug
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Interesting... I wouldn't do the port myself due to lack of time, but it should be doable.
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@whitequark Wow they've come a long way since the Mindstorms NXT bricks! I wrote my first embedded stuff on that brick, debugging my LCD driver by beeping out register values one bit at a time. Simpler, more innocent times when I didn't have the tools to hook into the handy JTAG port that was right there.
