That connector cassette washing machine does not look very robust to me. 50-100 insertions?
Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
281–290 of 360 posts
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in the same spot when I met this brilliant hardware hacker at this hackerspace who had no formal EE degree but could design circuits in his sleep. "How do you do it?" "I read data sheets and a lot of wikipedia". I already spend tons of time on wiki, so I started reading data sheets. And he was absolutely right, datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe b…
> datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe books for circuits that use them. Curious, I looked into the datasheet linked in the post[0]. While I get what you mean by "chock full of information", I can't make the head or tail of it. Where do I get started? (genuinely)
There is usually an example circuit in the datasheet. I start there. Many ics now also sell that example circuit on a pcb you can buy from the same supplier you buy your ics from. Then to make your own custom thing you just start with that example circuit, change it or add to it as needed for your specific application, and then you can physically make those same modifications or additions to the example circuit board you bought and test your design before ordering custom boards.
It's basically like tracing an outline of a drawing with tracing paper and then filling it in with color. You trace the example design, add your own color.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#283I am, more and more, deliberately choosing boring technology. Knobs in the car and on appliances. No screen interfaces. Low-tech where possible. We just replaced our "high tech" Maytag dryer and its "advanced" feature set for a low tech SpeedQueen, the same dryers you find in most Laundromats. Why? Repairability. While we could _technically_ replace the burnt out fuse in the Maytag, it would take at least two hours f…
> Knobs in the car and on appliances. I want knobs in my car, but I specially want no GPS tracking, no connection to the internet. My not-that-old dead-dinosaur-powered car doesn't have it, but I'd like to switch to an electric car in the next few years and I'm fearing it. Will anyone build an electric but dumb car? I know some of the earlier electrics were dumb (in this desirable sense) but they also had significat…
Essentially every modern car is deliberately optimized to fail within 10 years and requires expensive subassemblies primarily made from fragile plastic.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#284Am I the only one who looks at these projects with a combination of awe and apathy and jealousy? I do software, not hardware, and I like knowing how things work. When an expert in a different field glances at a PCB and identifies components, their purpose, by sight, and then rummages around a loose parts bin to go deeper, it dawns on me: this is someone's life. The same way I've been swimming in (application) softwar…
you should just try it. It’s not as bad as it looks. You’re reading an article in 5 minutes that contains probably a week’s worth of work or something.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#285I see the point of that dishwasher for someone who doesn't have easy access to a sink like a student in a dorm, but I can't fathom why you'd put one in a house or apartment. With such a tiny capacity you're better off hand washing.
That definitely works if you have two functioning hands, and some may not. I would love a product like this.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in the same spot when I met this brilliant hardware hacker at this hackerspace who had no formal EE degree but could design circuits in his sleep. "How do you do it?" "I read data sheets and a lot of wikipedia". I already spend tons of time on wiki, so I started reading data sheets. And he was absolutely right, datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe b…
> datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe books for circuits that use them. Curious, I looked into the datasheet linked in the post[0]. While I get what you mean by "chock full of information", I can't make the head or tail of it. Where do I get started? (genuinely)
I (being not a hardware person but able to blink a LED) would start with the diagrams of talking with the device on page 7 and refer to them while reading the text descriptions of same on pages 5–6, maybe refresh my memory on how I2C works[1,2] as well. At the same time, almost any controller you can get is happy[3] to talk I2C for you, so it’s unlikely the details matter beyond “controller writes device address and RW bit then (either!) reads from or writes to the peripheral accordingly until end of transaction” (whence the “dummy write” the datasheet says is needed to set the read address). Many even come with libraries that will talk to I2C EEPROMs specifically (because they are everywhere), so the diagrams might not be so important either.
The rest of the datasheet is (as commonly happens with simple digital components) concerned with “how do I wire this up”, “how good of a digital signal can I expect to get out”, “how bad of a digital signal can I get away with putting in”, a refresher on I2C, and miscellanea like power consumption, operating temperature, and sizes of little plastic boxes it comes in. Necessary if you want to design a board properly, not so much if you’re just going to wire it up for a quick hack (the device seems to have a supply voltage and logic levels of “whatever”).
The only thing you maybe do need these for is to look at the board photo and figure out how they wired it. Dot indentation marks pin 1. Pins 1–4 shorted, picture on page 1 says 4 is ground and 1–3 are address, so per page 4 it ends up with[4] address 1010 000. Power (called Vcc for reasons that are not important here) is on pin 5, wired up to top pin of connector on the close-up photo; the next one down goes to data (SDA as I2C calls it) on pin 8; following one goes under the chip but is almost certainly the bus clock (SCL) on pin 6 because that needs to go somewhere; and the bottom is at first glance only connected to an isolated island of copper but the small holes (“vias”) to the other side of the board probably connect it to the other islands so it has to be ground. That leaves write protect on pin 7, unconnected to anything but Vcc (through a dummy “pull-up” resistor to limit how much power the chip will waste examining it), which, to do a sanity check, page 3 says means writes are permitted (so the name of the pin is a bit unfortunately).
There. Done. You still need to find or make something for the other side of the I2C conversation, but either an off-the-shelf programmer or a tutorial for a cheap board with a controller should be sufficient for that. (Won’t be completely trivial the first time around, but it’s a one-time thing like any other development environment.)
[1] https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/i2c/all
[2] https://learn.adafruit.com/i2c-addresses/overview
[3] https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder/blob/6227...
[4] https://github.com/dekuNukem/bob_cassette_rewinder/blob/6227...
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've justed installed 5 years' worth of Revit on my new laptop today, and with each year the UI on their installers are getting worse. On Revit 2022, some of the splash screen prompts are not resizable and not MOVABLE, ie they don't respond to alt+space for windows menu. This is not OK. On one of them, I had to answer input prompts that they rendered OFF SCREEN. I solved that by changing display resolution.. Another…
Revit installs are the worst. Iused to freelance for an engineer and once I moved on from that it was amazing how much cruft from Autodesk was left on my machine. I'm guessing most of it was based on anti piracy measures. I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech.
Reminds me of Adobe. The sheer number of dubious services and "stuff" and god awful updates is insane. All this just for Acrobat.
Using Firefox to read PDFs now and its a pleasure. Its blazingly fast and does exactly what I need.
Adobe can jump off a cliff.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#288Wow. So I'm watching the Techmoan review and it's just amazing. You've got this pretty awesome product.... up until you can clearly see the business types shoving their grubby hands in the way of UX and good engineering. Oh no no no. We can't just sell a product. We need recurring revenue. So we'll make DRM proprietary detergent pods that require electronics in each one. Ah, but people will reject that because they k…
The problem here is that in a perfect world this would not be a viable business model. This device makes so many trade-offs (both in terms of performance as well as eco-friendliness - shipping back spent cartridges for recycling significantly offsets if not completely eliminates the benefit of recycling) that it wouldn't exist.
The only reason why this exists isn't because it's a good product, it's because they can use marketing to mislead people into thinking it's a great eco-friendly product, grift ecology-related government grants or raise investment to keep their sinking ship afloat (this is where the DRM comes from).
The issue here is that in today's world we've normalized lying and screwing people over, both the investors and end-users alike.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in the same spot when I met this brilliant hardware hacker at this hackerspace who had no formal EE degree but could design circuits in his sleep. "How do you do it?" "I read data sheets and a lot of wikipedia". I already spend tons of time on wiki, so I started reading data sheets. And he was absolutely right, datasheets for components are often chock full of information on how to use them, often with recipe b…
Same goes for construction materials. So many people fail to read the wood/adhesive/countertop/screw/paint datasheets which sometimes include recommendations against the way the product is often used. reminds me of medications and antibiotics which include their own datasheets that not all medical providers cross-check against your current medications.
Oh c’mon, if I read those things I wouldn’t ever use a q-tip again in my life.
Re: Bob Cassette Rewinder: Hacking Detergent DRM
#290I am, more and more, deliberately choosing boring technology. Knobs in the car and on appliances. No screen interfaces. Low-tech where possible. We just replaced our "high tech" Maytag dryer and its "advanced" feature set for a low tech SpeedQueen, the same dryers you find in most Laundromats. Why? Repairability. While we could _technically_ replace the burnt out fuse in the Maytag, it would take at least two hours f…
> Knobs in the car and on appliances. I want knobs in my car, but I specially want no GPS tracking, no connection to the internet. My not-that-old dead-dinosaur-powered car doesn't have it, but I'd like to switch to an electric car in the next few years and I'm fearing it. Will anyone build an electric but dumb car? I know some of the earlier electrics were dumb (in this desirable sense) but they also had significat…
It ought to be possible to locate the cellular antenna on any car and disconnect it or wrap a Faraday cage around it. (The latter is probably a better solution because it makes it harder for the software to detect a fault. You want the software to think the car is simply in a no-cell-coverage area.)