The Leikr Multi-Sport GPS Watch
The year was 2012 and I was using a Garmin Foretrex 401: The GPS market at the time was dominated by Garmin - with one or two exceptions. These were your choices in 2012: Timex Ironman Triathlon - surprisingly good for diving.Garmin Forerunner 205Garmin Forerunner 305 Needless to stay that most devices on the market...
Xiaomi Precision Induction Cooker Teardown
Just in case this is useful to someone, here are some photos of the inside of a Xiaomi Precision Induction Cooker. The device uses an ESP8266 WiFi Microcontroller as it's main controller, which is seemingly attached to a power supply board and thermal sensors via I²C. Xiaomi Precision Induction Cooker Top RemovedXiaomi Precision Induction Cooker...
Reverse Engineering a Solar Inverter Telemetry Protocol
A look at the protocol used by the Must Power PH1800 inverter and integration into Home Assistant.
BirdDog SSH Access and Custom Firmware [Mini Variant]
![BirdDog SSH Access and Custom Firmware [Mini Variant]](https://aquarat.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201120_135006-1024x576.jpg "BirdDog SSH Access and Custom Firmware [Mini Variant]")
Give yourself ssh access to BirdDog NDI Encoders. While you're at it give your OBS sync'ed NDI feeds.
SlingStudio HDMI/WiFi Transmitter Teardown aka GIF ME ROOT
A dump of photos taken during a teardown of a SlingStudio Transmitter. I couldn't see any obvious serial console. The HDMI signal enters the ARM SBC through an HDMI->CSI bridge chip (also available for the Raspberry Pi, and something I've previously blogged about) called the TC358743XBG. Of interest is the relatively high performance WiFi card,...
BirdDog Encoders – Firmware Analysis and (basic) Hardware Teardown
Hardware teardown and firmware analysis of the BirdDog Mini and 4K Flex NDI Encoders.
Experiences with an Axpert 5K King Inverter and a Pylontech LiFePo4 US3000 Battery Pack
I recently had the privilege (and pain) of being able to experiment and install a PylonTech US3000 battery pack. In typical Chinese-product fashion (Xiaomi and DJI excluded) the manuals and technical documentation for both of these devices is muddled, missing and often plain incorrect. I've learnt a few things through trial and error and for...
Barebones Zigbee Router: The nRF52840 (PCA10059) Dev Dongle from Nordic
I recently started setting up a home Zigbee network - partially to experiment but also to try and reduce the number of esp8266-based devices on my home network. esp8266s are great, but I've discovered that they're noisy in that they seem to emit a lot of 2.4GHz interference (calibrating them helps though). Tasmota on esp8266...
Specialized Turbo Levo Battery Teardown
Someone lent a Specialized Turbo Levo 2017/2018 Battery to teardown 😀 I wonder what the button does? The battery in question had suffered from water ingress (a common problem for this model of battery - water comes in through gaps between the control panel and the rest of the battery).
Teardown: Sony UTX-B2 Wireless Microphone Receiver/Transmitter
Bought used for an extremely good price, but the tradeoff is that they arrived smelling very strongly of something sweet but unknown. After extensive cleaning of the exterior the smell remained, so I disassembled them to clean inside. They still smell, but less so...