Welcome, weary traveller.
At TOHacks, we take learning — and corgis — seriously. As such, believe us when we say it: the rough plunge into virtual-everything does not need to stunt your learning.
Muster the courage, whip out your digital notepad and connect with us @ TOConnect 2021 — a 4-week accelerator designed to help you build out your next BIG idea.
Cross-posted from Medium:
https://medium.com/@TOHacks/maximize-your-experience-at-tohacks-2021-boot-camps
A good friend of mine recently had their HP Envy x360 fan die on them – which kind of sucks since the system won’t actually boot past the post screen warning of fan malfunction. Cause looks to be burn-out – a combination of heavy dust and an impact on the bottom led to a jam.
Thankfully HP provides spares, and goes through the effort of labeling everything with an ‘HP Spare’ part label.
Now here’s the kicker – the lad goes out and gets the wrong fan.
Not just the wrong enclosure, but wrong dimension and connector as well.
Normally this is the point where most technicians would acknowledge the part incompatibility and purchase a new one, but we were both feeling a little… experimental.
And that’s where this story begins – a tale of how I Frankenstein together a completely illegitimate HP Spare 809825-001 laptop fan.
The only commonality between the two fans is that they’re 5V 0.5A, brush-less. While both are 4-pin, they’re wired differently and with a different connector. Form factor of their enclosures is very different, no room here for negotiation. In addition, the propeller for the new fan is significantly larger than the old one.
All in all, my goals are to swap all the components from the new fan (minus the housing and connector cable), with the old fan.
Key things I’ll need to keep track of are:
First step is to get at just the fan assembly. To do so I had to remove the top keyboard assembly covering the system above, then remove the green highlighted assembly altogether. The fan is held onto the heat pipe with a plastic clip, and black tape serving as a dust shield.
Extracting parts from both fan assemblies wasn’t too bad. The new one used plastic rivets which were destroyed in the disassembly but don’t matter since we only care about re-using the old assembly.
The column where the propeller spindle rests in was press-fit into both assemblies. Heating that area with a heat gun helped soften the plastic enough so that I could push the motor assembly out of the housing.
First impressions of both open assemblies – I’ll either have to mount the new motor in the same location and cut the fan smaller, or move the mount to the center of the housing, and dremel that.
Either way, both motors were removed from their respective housings and their wiring swapped.
The one thing they never tell you about these laptop fan assemblies… the motors are press-fitted.
Actually, let’s be more specific. Looking at the above figures, we can see the rear of each motor unit and a plastic extrusion. That extrusion is press-fitted in a particular contour of its housing. The fan propeller’s spindle fits into here, with this piece sitting in the center of the motor.
To secure the new fan assembly in the old housing, I had to dremel a hole in the housing, along with stand-offs which would hit the fan propeller. Holding this piece is strong epoxy. The motor would then rest on the yellow plastic circle.
Centering and securing the motor assembly wasn’t bad, and once secured, the fan propeller fits without issue. At this point we’ve got something just like this. All that’s left is to secure this housing to its other half.
That other half just so happens to be a part of the heat pipe assembly.
A part which does not fit the new clearance required for the fan propeller.
Yes, we whip out the dremel once more.
I found it helped to sharpie out the area I need to clear, that way I’m not removing excess.
Once dremelled, the rest of the heat pipe and fan re-assembly went well. Reattachment was done with just 3 screws. I made sure to check for free fan movement before completing re-assembly of the machine.
And there we go, that concludes the story of how we made an illegitimate HP Spare fan for the HP Envy x360 using a fan that definitely did not belong in this laptop.
A few things that if done again (which if I do, know I’m being held against my will):
Introducing Scarborough Repair and Bike Cafe’s series of virtual repair and bike safety/mapping workshops via zoom. These workshops aim to encourage a culture of reducing waste and promoting sustainability.
Neat little virtual event being organized by the Woburn Scarborough Community.
I’ll be there talking about PC Hardware & Software, namely common failure mechanisms and how to prevent, anticipate and react to them.
Check us out here for more details!
Final-Scarborough-Repair-and-Bike-Cafe-WorkshopsA majority of the gaming I’ve done throughout the years has been on the PC – keyboard & mouse are a lot more in my comfort zone, not to mention the plethora of titles available. Despite this, if I was to choose a favourite console, it would have to be the Nintendo Switch. It’s a highly versatile piece of hardware, capable of mobile or docked game-play on a larger screen while maintaining a decent battery life, touchscreen, and detachable controllers. Not to mention the internal system specs, which are pretty hardcore considering the package size:
| CPU/GPU | Custom NVIDIA Tegra (X1-based) |
| Storage | 32 GB Internal, supports microSD up to 2TB |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) Bluetooth 4.1 |
| Video | 1080p when docked, 720p on built-in 6.2-inch LCD Screen / 1280 x 720 |
| Audio | Stereo, supports 5.1ch PCM output |
| Battery | 4310mAh |
| Sensors | Accelerometer, gyroscope, and brightness sensor |
The only drawback is that it’s, well, a console. Like all consoles, access to the underlying system is greatly restricted in the favor of a ‘just works’ system – meaning no custom software, and definitely no hardware mods. The Nintendo Switch in this case operates on Horizon OS, closed-source software with pieces from FreeBSD and Android.
Either way, it’s a shame considering the computing power packed into such an elegant, mobile package. Imagine its potential in areas such as robotics and automation where the system can operate as a control panel!
Definitely lots of potential here, and thanks to the hacker/homebrew community, steps are taken every day to unlock more of the system’s true potential – the most daunting and groundbreaking of these was exploiting the system in recovery mode (RCM) to be able to inject custom payloads via the Fusée Gelée coldboot vulnerability. This permits arbitrary code execution – effectively allowing us to run custom code in the active stack while the system remains powered on. Enter left-stage, homebrew.
Here’s to a contribution that should hopefully get more feet off the ground – let’s look into how we can build into the Switch’s natural system a safe way to enter RCM.
While we can enter RCM on a patched Nintendo Switch system, it’ll probably be less useful from a homebrew perspective since Fusée Gelée is patched. You can check if your system is patched by validating its serial # against known lists containing device models created before/after the patch, or by entering RCM and trying to inject a payload. Both of these are covered over at switch.homebrew.guide.
If it wasn’t clear, this is a hardware modification to your Nintendo Switch system – specifically the RIGHT JOYCON. This exploit leverages the right Joycon rail by adding a switchable short to two pins in the Joycon, which when combined with power and volume UP trigger RCM on boot. Stuff we’ll need to get this going include:
We’ll be working in tight delicate quarters so an overhead lamp along with helping hands to secure components would be great. Otherwise, some tape and wooden blocks to hold parts in place will suffice.
In the end we’ll use a multi-meter on continuity mode to test our work.
We’ll be soldering in areas with ~1mm distance from other joints, so steady hands and patience are going to be key to reduce chances of damaging the right Joycon. With all of the above equipment and sufficient skill, estimated time to completion is 30 minutes to 60 if you’re new to this.
The rear cover will lift off, leaving the majority of components in the front cover. Pry the two off gently – there are two ribbon cables running from the rail attached to the rear cover and the PCB in the front cover.
To give us more room to work, unscrew the two silver Phillips screws holding the LED PCB in place. That’s one ribbon cable we can move aside now. Note that this piece holds the rail buttons (SR, SL, Bluetooth Sync). Remove all 3 of these buttons and put them aside should they fall out of the rail and go missing while we’re working.
To reveal our actual work surface, carefully remove the grey foam pad and put it aside – we’ll be reapplying this in the end. We now have access to the pins we’ll be soldering to.
Cut two 10 cm (4 1/2″) lengths of thin wire. Strip 1mm (1/32″) off one end of both (or melt it with your soldering iron). We will be soldering 1 wire to Pin #7, and the other to Pin #10. Both lengths will be running along the rail heading towards SR. We’ll trim excess later.
Some strategies for this solder job:
This will result in a complete joint from both solder melting and joining.
I noticed this works great with multi-strand wire as it keeps it together long enough to complete the solder. Here’s my make-shift setup on a block of wood.
Replace the SR, SL, and Bluetooth sync buttons (make sure not to mix them up), and screw back in the LED PCB. Hot glue the two strands of wire to the back of this PCB running along the length towards SR.
Make sure to flatten your hot glue blobs, otherwise you’ll have difficulty in reassembly of the Joycon. These blobs help us secure the wires for the next operation – building our switch.
(graphic in last step)
To make this switchable, we’ll leverage the Joycon release button and make it electronically functional. The 1cm (1/2″) of stripped wire extending past the black screw is to be wrapped tightly around it (helps to unscrew it slightly first). The screw and silver piece of metal are conductive, and will serve as the static part of our switch.
(graphic in last step)
Measure the remaining Pin #10 length all the way to the gray Joycon release lever and cut off the excess. Strip 2mm (1/16″) of wire off this end for some solder. We’ll be making a 5mm (3/16″) wide circle, 1mm (1/32″) thick of solder at the end. Solder’s pretty soft, so you can get away with adding the solder, then flattening with a plyers.
Attach this solder pad to the face of the lever actuating inwards (the lever moves in/out of the Joycon) using epoxy. Care should be taken that epoxy does not leak (hence, use a toothpick to apply), and is ONLY contacting the surface of the lever moving inwards, and not the arm of the lever moving behind the small silver metal plate.
When the lever is fully actuated (pressed inwards), the solder pad should contact the edge of the metal plate, completing our switch circuit and creating a short between pins #7 and #10. You’ve just built a de-facto normally-open (NO) switch!
If your continuity test results in continuity when our lever is pressed inwards, and none when released, then our NO switch is complete and functional.
At this point we’re done modifying our right Joycon. We can begin reassembly by placing our little gray piece of foam back over the rail pins, trim any exposed wire and flatten connections/hot glue to keep the entire unit compact. Due to the gauge of chosen wire, your reassembly may be a little tough. Squeeze the two halves together like a sandwich, and use a rubber-band if needed to keep the unit together long enough to screw back in the back cover.
Whenever you have a Nintendo Switch unit that needs to enter RCM, attach the right Joycon to the unit, and power the unit down.
Hold the RIGHT JOYCON release button, Volume UP, and Power at the same time for 1 second, then release.
If nothing happens visually, then your switch is in RCM mode, and you can proceed with injecting whatever fun payloads you have in mind over USB-C 🙂
Big thanks to the following communities and projects for making this possible.
My team from Repair Cafe Toronto and FreeGeek Toronto worked together with CBC Marketplace to bring this narrative to life – what does it take to get my mobile computing device repaired?
The short answer – a hell of a lot more than the typical consumer has available to them in terms of finances, skills, and time. Considering the typical repair, a modern laptop that may need a screen replacement can easily expect replacements to be in the $100 CAD range. This isn’t including tool costs needed to deconstruct overtly complex enclosures with torx and tri-wing screws, all the while exercising surgeon-level patience and skill.
CBC does an okay job at bringing to light that there’s an issue, but doesn’t quite elaborate on it in detail, something I wish they would’ve done. Guessing they did so to adhere to as much of the general public as possible? Eh, who knows.
Either way, my hope was that everyone took away 1 thing at minimum – that repairability of electronics has gone down the drain. Instead, I scroll down and find that some of the most popular comments are those criticizing the evidence, the repair, the expectations:
“10 years for a laptop is pretty good… I’d be satisfied”
“‘They almost feel like make the battery not to last’ That’s how lithium ion battery works”
“How do you expect for an phone or any technology to last forever?”
Well damn, when did we start accepting that garbage endurance/durability were the price of innovation?
I cannot fathom the individuals who would use this mindset in other fields of science. Today, the lifespan of humans has grown tremendously from what it was decades ago thanks to the same mindset shared by my team – we need to be better than we were. No exceptions.
Those who are okay with devices and components having significantly less lifespan than their predecessors, those who are okay with being unable to repair their device as long as it is future-tech, you need to check yourselves. This is toxic mentality that goes against progress, and your normalization is letting the big players know that it’s okay to get away with this nonsense.
Our family owns and regularly uses a blender about as old as I am.
I’m afraid the day this thing kicks the bucket and I can no longer repair it, it’ll be disposable blenders from there on out.
Now here’s something I wished more people talked about. For the uninformed, Bill 72 is an amendment to the consumer protection act in Ontario. It requires a company to give a consumer or repair shop what they need to repair the electronic products themselves. The company can charge for this, but within limits.
Some key takeaways from this include:
Now this is the good stuff. We’re talking some major quality-of-life improvements for electronics owners!
Now these are just a few benefits. There are so many more if you give it a quick search and/or observe it yourself from various grassroots such as ourselves, Fixit Clinic, IFixit, and more.
There’s not to say there aren’t any cons – the major one being concerns about intellectual rights violations. But really, these pros outweigh those cons you selfish bastards, you should think twice if your product loses its integrity the moment the lid comes off.
To round out the narrative, why were only 2 of the dozen or so devices we saw that day repaired successfully?
A lot of our repair setups were improvised the day-of, replacements weren’t available, we had 30 minutes per device (take was done in 1 afternoon), not to mention that some of these were plain irreparable (severe water damage, physical trauma, etc).
It’s really unfortunate that CBC didn’t show this stuff, because they should’ve had it all recorded – a majority of our interactions as fixers were very descriptive and informative. That’s just how we work – we’re not some 3rd party repair shop, we’re skilled volunteers contributing back to the community, teaching others how we’re doing things, why it’s that way, all while learning more ourselves.
To summarize, repairability is pretty neat, thanks CBC, and looking forward to doing more of this in the open once COVID-19 settles down.
Part of the communications architecture for this research project I’m working on depends on TTL (time-to-live) of data as it travels through various networks.
tracert is the perfect tool for such an application; it’s just a shame that there’s no friendly way to generate and output analytics-ready data.
Check out the project on Github; https://github.com/AlvinRamoutar/tracert2csv
tracert2csv <PATH_TO_TRACERT_EXPORT> <OUTPUT_CSV>Tracing route to somenextdomain.com [34.102.136.180]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 3 ms 15 ms 2 ms hitronhub.home [192.168.0.1]
2 265 ms 49 ms 17 ms 99.227.240.1
3 26 ms 22 ms 14 ms 24.156.158.245
4 16 ms 12 ms 13 ms 9019-cgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com [69.63.248.205]
5 14 ms 18 ms 17 ms 209.148.235.18
6 17 ms 13 ms 14 ms 72.14.209.126
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 15 ms 12 ms 13 ms 180.136.102.34.bc.googleusercontent.com [34.102.136.180]
Trace complete.1,3,15,2,hitronhub.home [192.168.0.1]
2,265,49,17,99.227.240.1
3,26,22,14,24.156.158.245
4,16,12,13,9019-cgw01.ym.rmgt.net.rogers.com [69.63.248.205]
5,14,18,17,209.148.235.18
6,17,13,14,72.14.209.126
7,*,*,*,Request timed out.
8,15,12,13,180.136.102.34.bc.googleusercontent.com [34.102.136.180]Alright it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these.
Been meaning to share this track for a while ever since its feature on BBC Radio 1.
Pretty radical remix, completely flipping genres over to DnB with that Dawn Wall twist that always seems to bring something, electric, to the scene.
Give it a listen;
Being stuck home for the past month due to Covid-19 has not only given me drive to learn new things, but has also driven me to the walls with boredom.
After all, what’s the use of learning something new if you don’t apply it?
sudoku_api is a pure dart package which simplifies the generation, interaction, and management of Sudoku Puzzles.
Well, how does it do that?
Whoah that sounds pretty cool – but what’s this ‘sue dough que’ you keep talking about?
Sudoku is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 subgrids (segments) that compose the grid contain all of the digits from 1 to 9. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid, which for a well-posed puzzle has a single solution.
Wikipedia
import 'package:sudoku_api/Puzzle.dart';
void main() {
PuzzleOptions puzzleOptions = new PuzzleOptions(patternName: "winter");
Puzzle puzzle = new Puzzle(puzzleOptions);
puzzle.generate().then((_) {
print("=====================================");
print("Your puzzle, fresh off the press:");
print("-------------------------------------");
printGrid(puzzle.board());
print("=====================================");
print("Give up? Here's your puzzle solution:");
print("-------------------------------------");
printGrid(puzzle.solvedBoard());
print("=====================================");
});
}I’ve mentioned a few years ago that one of the first games I completed, 100%, was Brain Age Sudoku on the DSi. I really loved the simplicity and clean, non-bloated interface.
Flash forward a few years, and I still haven’t found an app that gives me the same feel.
My goal is to develop a highly customizable, clean, and easy to use Sudoku Toolkit in Flutter using this API – and perhaps encourage others to do the same.
A solid chunk of logic was re-used (namely, solving) from a previous project in college; Java Sudoku. The rest was an experiment in developing a dart package for the first time.
Creating a health dashboard by hacking intelligence into an AOpen (the ‘A’ for ancient) monitor; with metrics aggregated by Graphite and beautifully displayed with Grafana.
This marks the completion of hardware needed for the GraPi system – our AOpen monitor now functioning as a smart Kiosk.
Minor mishap; realized at the end that the USB/Ethernet Hub’s mounting orientation results in the Ethernet port to the RIGHT of the monitor rather than the left.
However, I’m planning to hide these cables within the rail, so once the Ethernet cable gets pulled behind the monitor, it shouldn’t be noticeable.
You might be able to notice from the images above, but we do have a working Graphite & Grafana setup running – something I’ve been working on alongside all this, and will be discussing in the future.
The metrics seen are an example, with data from WorldPing targeting a friend’s server in the states – the purpose being to illustrate a loaded Grafana dashboard.
From here on out, it’s all software.
In the next few posts, we’ll cover setup of Graphite and Grafana on Ubuntu Server, followed by setting up a Grafana dashboard kiosk on Raspbian Lite.
Creating a health dashboard by hacking intelligence into an AOpen (the ‘A’ for ancient) monitor; with metrics aggregated by Graphite and beautifully displayed with Grafana.
I’d like to say that the build went on without a hitch, but I ran into two issues. Not project critical issues, but troublesome nonetheless.
Let’s talk about them, and how I’ve managed to successfully resolve some dastardly slow performance, and fail to resolve high static audio issues.
Super excited to get the system going, I dd’d Rasbian Buster (desktop) onto a 16 GB card, and completed setup for my Pi Zero.
Immediately after boot, I noticed how sluggish the system was. Some symptoms I’ve experienced include:
Half of me thought it had something to do with my configuration.
However, these symptoms were prevalent since the first boot into Raspbian.
Furthermore, a majority of my configuration was network related, nothing that would cripple other system components.
The other half of me thought it had to do with my Pi Zero. I’ve done some reading online and found others also experiencing poor system performance with Raspbian Buster (desktop) on the Pi Zero. Perhaps a full desktop environment image of Raspbian was asking too much?
Well, I didn’t let that stop me, and took to exploring a wide breadth of light-weight OSes for the Pi, including PiCore, Raspup, and DietPi.
I’ve wiped this MicroSD card enough times to give it an identity crisis.
I eventually got tired of testing out different distributions, and defaulted over to Raspbian Buster Lite, where I installed LXDE along with Midori, Epiphany, and Chromium to decide which would serve as my kiosk browser.
The final image after setup served to be the most responsive but browsing a single page was still taking forever (>60 seconds to load alvinr.ca) – and even then, the load wasn’t complete.
The more numbers I put together, the stranger the situation looked.
It was here when I put software aside, and started looking at some hardware specifications
The Pi Zero runs a 1GHz single-core CPU with 512MB RAM.
My CPU utilization on a fresh installation of Raspbian Lite was always near 100%, while RAM usage on my own image never exceeded ~200 MB.
The entire unit remains quite cool while operating, barely deviating from room temperature – it wasn’t like I was giving it a reason to, nor the means to with a 5V/1A supply.
Huh.
Taking a look at the power requirements for the Pi Zero made me realize I was using a supply below recommended. This was taking into account my ‘desktop’ setup, with a USB/Ethernet hub housing a wireless keyboard/mouse dongle.
I’m telling you – if there’s anything I’ve learned as a FIRST alumni from 4 years of competitive FIRST Robotics, it’s to know your power draw, and always charge your damn batteries.
As for our system here, we know the power draw.
Some further research for the Raspberry Pi yielded the following documentation – recommending a supply of 2.5A.
I’ve got something close enough – a Samsung S7 5V/2A charger.
I swear, if I plug in this supply and it turns out that was the problem all along…
Well.
After an hour of playing around with it (and several sanity-driven reboots later), I now experience U N P A R A L L E L E D performance.
Really though, performance has improved drastically.
CPU utilization with Chromium running sits at around 60%, and it only takes 20 seconds to complete load alvinr.ca.
Network performance was better as well, managing to perform an SCP transfer at ~8 MBps – close enough to the 10/100 Ethernet adapter capabilities.
All that’s left now is to replace the existing 5V/1A adapter with this one.
Sweet – let’s move on.
It’s the end of the final assembly – we’ve got a better power supply, wires and components have been neatly organized, and everything is secured down.
Let’s perform one more test – except instead of loading alvinr.ca, let’s load SoundCloud and listen to a cover by Anson Seabra – Love The Way You Lie by Rihanna.
I couldn’t even make it 10 seconds in – the sound was absolutely jarring, a rough mix of tones and high static.
Not the song mind you – I’ve definitely broke something along the way.
Let’s get this out of the way – I haven’t resolved this yet, nor have I pinned down an exact cause. I’m moving forward with the project, considering all the time invested into troubleshooting (and since audio was an optional feature).
However, if you manage to run into something similar, here are some things I’ve tried:
At the least; I’ve narrowed it down to a hardware fault, either with the Pi, or more likely, the Mini HDMI to VGA adapter (since it splits audio to AUX output).
A little light and some hot glue digging eventually led me to finding a possible fault, present in this very adapter.
While I don’t know what purpose this wire serves, I’ll leave the blame on it for now, until I find the time to either investigate it further, or purchase another adapter.
