Fixing An Elgato HD60 S HDMI Capture Device

September 20, 2024 by Maya Posch 2 Comments

There’s a special kind of satisfaction found in the act of repairing a previously broken device, which is why YouTube is full of repair channels and guides on how to do it yourself. Inspired by this, [Doug Brown] decided to give it a shot himself, with an Elgato HD60 S HDMI capture device as the patient. As per the eBay listing, the device did not show up as a USB device when connected to a computer — a quick probing of the innards revealed that not only were the board voltages being dragged down, but some of the components on the PCB were getting suspiciously hot.

One of the broken switching regulators on the Elgato HD60 S capture device PCB. (Credit: Doug Brown)

On a thermal camera the hot components in question turned out to part of the voltage regulator circuits, one a switching regulator (marked fiVJVE, for Fitipower FP6373A) and another a voltage inverter marked PFNI (Ti TPS60403DBV).

Since both took 5 V, the suspicion was an over-voltage event on the USB side. After replacing the FP6373A and TPS60403 with newly purchased ones, the voltage rails were indeed healthy, and the Elgato sprung to life and could be used for HDMI capture and pass-through. However, the device’s onboard LEDs stubbornly refused to follow the boot-up pattern or show any other color patterns. Was this just a busted Innotech IT1504 LED driver IC?

Swapping it with a pin-compatible Macroblock MB15040 didn’t improve the situation, and the LEDs worked fine when externally controlling the MB15040 on its SPI bus, as well as with the original IT1504. Asking Elgato whether there was a known issue with these status LEDs didn’t lead to anything, so [Doug] decided to tackle the presumed source of the problem: the Nuvoton M031LD2AE MCU that’s supposed to drive the LED driver IC. The PCB helpfully provides a 4-pin JST connector on the board for the MCU’s SWD interface, but Elgato did protect the flash contents, so a straight dump wasn’t going to work.

The binary firmware is however helpfully available from Elgato, with the MCU already running the latest version. This is the point where [Doug] loaded the firmware into Ghidra to begin to understand what exactly this firmware was supposed to be doing. Putting on a fresh MCU with the correct firmware definitely worked, but debugging was hard as the new MCU also enabled protections, so in Ghidra the offending code for this was identified and neutralized, finally allowing for on-chip debugging and leading down another rabbit hole only to find an SPI flash chip at the end.

Ultimately it turned out that all the hardware was working fine. The problem ended up being that the LED patterns stored on the SPI EEPROM had become corrupted, which caused the Nuvoton MCU to skip over them. The same issue was confirmed on a second HD60 S, which makes it seem that this is a common issue with these Elgato capture devices. As a next step [Doug] hopes to figure out a way to more easily fix this issue, as even the streamlined process is still quite convoluted. Whether it is an issue with Elgato’s software or firmware (updater) is unknown at this point, but at least there seems to be a fix for now, even if Elgato support seems to just tell owners to ‘ignore it if capturing works’.

There’s nothing quite as inspirational as reading about a successful repair. If you need another shot of endorphins, check out the work [BuyItFixIt] put into a video baby monitor to bring it back online.

Hackaday Podcast Episode 289: Tiny Games, Two Modern Modems, And The Next Big Thing

September 20, 2024 by Kristina Panos 9 Comments

This week on the Podcast, Hackaday’s Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos joined forces to bring you the latest news, mystery sound, and of course, a big bunch of hacks from the previous week.

First up in the news: we’ve announced the 2024 Tiny Games Contest winners! We asked you to show us your best tiny game, whether that means tiny hardware, tiny code, or a tiny BOM, and you did so in spades. Congratulations to all the winners and Honorable Mentions, and thanks to DigiKey, Supplyframe, and all who entered!

We also announced the first round of Supercon speakers, so if you haven’t gotten your ticket yet, now’s the second best time.

But wait, there’s more! We’re already a few weeks into the next contest, where we want you to show us your best ~~Simple~~ Supercon Add-On. We love to see the add-ons people make for the badge every year, so this time around we’re really embracing the standard. The best SAOs will get a production run and they’ll be in the swag bag at Hackaday Europe 2025.

Then it’s on to What’s That Sound, which completely stumped Kristina once again. Can you get it? Can you figure it out? Can you guess what’s making that sound? If you can, and your number comes up, you get a special Hackaday Podcast t-shirt.

Now it’s on to the hacks, beginning with non-planar ironing for smooth prints, and a really neat business card that also plays tiny games. Then we’ll discuss USB modems, cool casts for broken wrists, and archiving data on paper. Finally, we ask two big questions — where do you connect the shield, and what’s the Next Big Thing gonna be? Inquiring minds want to know.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Download in DRM-free MP3 and savor at your leisure.

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast Episode 289: Tiny Games, Two Modern Modems, And The Next Big Thing” →

COBB Tuning Hit With $2.9 Million Fine Over Emissions Defeat Devices

September 20, 2024 by Maya Posch 109 Comments

Recently, the EPA and COBB Tuning have settled after the latter was sued for providing emissions control defeating equipment. As per the EPA’s settlement details document, COBB Tuning have since 2015 provided customers with the means to disable certain emission controls in cars, in addition to selling aftermarket exhaust pipes with insufficient catalytic systems. As part of the settlement, COBB Tuning will have to destroy any remaining device, delete any such features from its custom tuning software and otherwise take measures to fully comply with the Clean Air Act, in addition to paying a $2,914,000 civil fine.

The tuning of cars has come a long way from the 1960s when tweaking the carburetor air-fuel ratios was the way to get more power. These days cars not only have multiple layers of computers and sensor systems that constantly monitor and tweak the car’s systems, they also have a myriad of emission controls, ranging from permissible air-fuel ratios to catalytic converters. It’s little surprise that these systems can significantly impact the raw performance one might extract from a car’s engine, but if the exhaust of nitrogen-oxides and other pollutants is to be kept within legal limits, simply deleting these limits is not a permissible option.

COBB Tuning proclaimed that they weren’t aware of these issues, and that they never marketed these features as ’emission controls defeating’. They were however aware of issues regarding their products, which is why they announced ‘Project Green Speed’ in 2022, which supposedly would have brought COBB into compliance. Now it would seem that the EPA did find fault despite this, and COBB was forced to making adjustments.

Although perhaps not as egregious as modifying diesel trucks to ‘roll coal’, federal law has made it abundantly clear that if you really want to have fun tweaking and tuning your car without pesky environmental laws getting in the way, you could consider switching to electric drivetrains, even if they’re mind-numbingly easy to make performant compared to internal combustion engines.

Embossing Graphics By 3D Printing On Wood

September 19, 2024 by Dave Rowntree 9 Comments

Embossing (making raised shapes) and debossing (making sunken shapes) on 3D-printed surfaces is not a new idea; we do it all the time. [Cory] from Vancouver Hack Space was playing around with 3D printing on wood, and came up with the idea of creating raised tactile surfaces using a simple transfer process.

We don’t often try to print directly onto a wooden surface for various reasons, but [Cory] wanted to give it a go. They hoped to get some grain patterns to transfer to the surface, but as they say in the blog entry, the beauty of wood patterns is in the colouration, which doesn’t transfer. Next, they laser etched a logo into the wood surface to see how well that would transfer. It did create a discernable raised impression, but they forgot to mirror the image (oops!) and relevel the bed, so the results are less impressive than they could be. Still, it’s another useful technique to consider.

Embossing is the process by which braille sheets are made. This DIY braille encoder is pretty sweet. Of course, the process can simply be decorative. Here’s how to use a laser cutter to create your own embossing seals. The traditional way to emboss paper for a fancy effect was to use embossing powder to selectively change the properties of drying paper. But how can you make the stuff for cheap?

Meet The Winners Of The 2024 Tiny Games Contest

September 18, 2024 by Tom Nardi 12 Comments

Over the years, we’ve figured out some pretty sure-fire ways to get hackers and makers motivated for contests. One of the best ways is to put arbitrary limits on different aspects of the project, such as how large it can be or how much power it can consume. Don’t believe us? Then just take a look at the entries of this year’s Tiny Games Contest.

Nearly 80 projects made it across the finish line this time, and our panel of judges have spent the last week or so going over each one to try and narrow it down to a handful of winners. We’ll start things off with the top three projects, each of which will be awarded a $150 gift certificate from our friends at DigiKey.

First: Sub-Surface Simon

While this contest saw a lot of excellent entries, we don’t think anyone is going to be surprised to see this one take the top spot. Earning an exceptionally rare perfect ten score from each of our judges, Sub-Surface Simon from [alnwlsn] grabbed onto the theme of this contest and ran like hell with it. Continue reading “Meet The Winners Of The 2024 Tiny Games Contest” →

Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles

September 17, 2024 by Maya Posch 86 Comments

Although battery fires in electric cars and two-wheeled vehicles are not a common phenomenon, they are notoriously hard to put out, requiring special training and equipment by firefighters. Although the full scope of the issue is part of a contentious debate, [Aarian Marshall] over at Wired recently wrote an article about how the electric car industry has a plan to make a purportedly minor issue even less of an issue. Here the questions seem to be mostly about what the true statistics are for battery fires and what can be done about the primary issue with batteries: thermal runaway.

While the Wired article references a study by a car insurance company about the incidence of car fires by fuel type (gas, hybrid, electric), its cited sources are dubious as the NTSB nor NHTSA collect statistics on these fires. The NFPA does, but this only gets you up to 2018, and they note that the data gathering here is spotty. Better data is found from European sources, which makes clear that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) catch fire less often than gasoline cars at 25 per 100,000 cars sold vs 1529/100k for ICE cars, but when BEVs do burn it’s most often (60%) from thermal runaway, which can be due to factors like a short circuit in a cell, overcharging and high ambient temperatures (including from arson or after-effects of a car crash). Continue reading “Thermal Runaway: Solving The Bane Of Electric Vehicles” →

A person examines a diamond with a loupe.

We’ll Take DIY Diamond Making For $200,000

September 16, 2024 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

They say you can buy anything on the Internet if you know the right places to go, and apparently if you’re in the mood to make diamonds, then Alibaba is the spot. You even have your choice of high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) machine for $200,000, or a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) version, which costs more than twice as much. Here’s a bit more about how each process works.

A sea of HPHT diamond-making machines. — A sea of HPHT machines. Image via Alibaba

Of course, you’ll need way more than just the machine and a power outlet. Additional resources are a must, and some expertise would go a long way. Even so, you end up with raw diamonds that need to be processed in order to become gems or industrial components.

For HPHT, you’d also need a bunch of good graphite, catalysts such as iron and cobalt, and precise control systems for temperature and pressure, none of which are included as a kit with the machine.

For CVD, you’d need methane and hydrogen gases, and precise control of microwaves or hot filaments. In either case, you’re not getting anywhere without diamond seed crystals.

Right now, the idea of Joe Hacker making diamonds in his garage seems about as far off as home 3D printing did in about 1985. But we got there, didn’t we? Hey, it’s a thought.

Main and thumbnail images via Unsplash