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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@gsuberland @whitequark @timonsku
Or add the word 'kitchen'.
@gsuberland @whitequark @timonsku
Ali Express is now AI express
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@gsuberland @whitequark @timonsku
Ali Express is now AI express
@gsuberland @whitequark @timonsku
No capacity for alt text right now. Soz.
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EM9305 is an em|bleu microcontroller in QFN
@whitequark Calling an ARC CPU industry standard is very funny to me
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ok so this would be the JTAG pins
@whitequark Great to see that you got yourself a #LEGO #SmartBrick. Curious to know what set you got yourself. And eben more curious if you can get JTAG working... or find the relevant test pins. Yesterday, I started sniffing the SPI bus. Unfortunately, the ASIC Chip Select pin was not identified in the test pad matrix when I last looked up published schematics.
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@whitequark Great to see that you got yourself a #LEGO #SmartBrick. Curious to know what set you got yourself. And eben more curious if you can get JTAG working... or find the relevant test pins. Yesterday, I started sniffing the SPI bus. Unfortunately, the ASIC Chip Select pin was not identified in the test pad matrix when I last looked up published schematics.
@whitequark You'll probably also try to power it with a DC power supply instead of the battery, right?
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@whitequark And (checking the datasheet) apparently a log2() accelerator? That seems like an oddly-specific thing to accelerate.
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okay, i've extracted the firmware-bearing parts. this is a tiny 45 mAh battery. (part of the lettering was torn off by the glue it was attached with)
@whitequark oooh looking forward to the self-igniting lego made with this
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@whitequark oooh looking forward to the self-igniting lego made with this
@vfig bullshit. even if you shorted a 45 mAh battery absolutely nothing of sort would happen. try it if you don't believe me
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@whitequark Great to see that you got yourself a #LEGO #SmartBrick. Curious to know what set you got yourself. And eben more curious if you can get JTAG working... or find the relevant test pins. Yesterday, I started sniffing the SPI bus. Unfortunately, the ASIC Chip Select pin was not identified in the test pad matrix when I last looked up published schematics.
@maehw do you know what the WLCSPs are?
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also, here's a close-up of the markings on the tiny WLCSP between the BGA and QFN
@whitequark someone had identified it as a Winbond SPI flash (to be confirmed, I guess).
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@whitequark someone had identified it as a Winbond SPI flash (to be confirmed, I guess).
@maehw lemme dump this flash then
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@vfig bullshit. even if you shorted a 45 mAh battery absolutely nothing of sort would happen. try it if you don't believe me
@whitequark okay, fair enough
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@maehw lemme dump this flash then
@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.
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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
