So I have a dispute with Westjet over a trip I took a few months ago. I was trying to get a phone number for their legal dept but “legal@westjet.com” refused to provide me with one. While I’ve been looking for that number I found some other ones that might be useful as they don’t publish a directory.
So good news there is a micro USB port and boot mode jumpers to be able to get the hub into SDP mode.
[4215213.643950] usb 3-4.4.2: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[4215213.753446] usb 3-4.4.2: New USB device found, idVendor=15a2, idProduct=007d, bcdDevice= 0.01
[4215213.753448] usb 3-4.4.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[4215213.753450] usb 3-4.4.2: Product: SP Blank 6UL
[4215213.753451] usb 3-4.4.2: Manufacturer: Freescale SemiConductor Inc
[4215213.906618] hidraw: raw HID events driver (C) Jiri Kosina
[4215213.924124] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
[4215213.924126] usbhid: USB HID core driver
[4215213.986475] hid-generic 0003:15A2:007D.0001: hiddev0,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Device [Freescale SemiConductor Inc SP Blank 6UL ] on usb-0000:00:16.2-4.4.2/input0
For this you’ll need a couple of parts
J8 is the micro USB plug https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/molex/1051330011/4356675
R703 and R704 are 10K 0402 resistors
With all of those populated the board will power from the micro USB slot. To put it into SDP mode short R709 while applying power.
So for a while I’ve been looking at hacking into the wink hub 2. I’ve had it for a number of years and so far it has just worked for what I needed it for. Then wink starts with the subscription nonsense and this morning it refused to connect at all. So time to take it apart.
It’s a pretty easy disassemble.
2 screws under the rubber bumper on the device.
Pull the base free, you’ll see the bottom edge of the PCB.
The one side snaps of with a little bit of pressure separating the 2 halves. I used a spudger to help it along.
Awesome looks like there are headers on the board again. Lets see the other side.
Front side
They were even kind enough to label all of them. So I soldered on a UART header and connected up my FTDI cable.
No surprise here, it’s running u-boot
U-Boot 2015.04 (Sep 02 2016 - 20:09:54)
CPU: Freescale i.MX6UL rev1.1 at 396 MHz
CPU: Temperature 30 C
Reset cause: POR
Board: MX6UL Flex Wink Hub V2
I2C: ready
DRAM: 512 MiB
NAND: 128 MiB
In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Net: FEC0
Normal Boot
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
UBI: attaching mtd1 to ubi0
UBI: scanning is finished
UBI: attached mtd1 (name "mtd=2", size 10 MiB) to ubi0
UBI: PEB size: 131072 bytes (128 KiB), LEB size: 126976 bytes
UBI: min./max. I/O unit sizes: 2048/2048, sub-page size 2048
UBI: VID header offset: 2048 (aligned 2048), data offset: 4096
UBI: good PEBs: 80, bad PEBs: 0, corrupted PEBs: 0
UBI: user volume: 1, internal volumes: 1, max. volumes count: 128
UBI: max/mean erase counter: 1444/964, WL threshold: 4096, image sequence number: 720637420
UBI: available PEBs: 0, total reserved PEBs: 80, PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 20
Loading file 'DO_UPDATE' to addr 0x83000000 with size 1 (0x00000001)...
Done
Total of 1 word(s) were the same
Loading from nand0, offset 0x3700000
Image Name: Linux-3.14.52
Image Type: ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
Data Size: 50856042 Bytes = 48.5 MiB
Load Address: 80800000
Entry Point: 80800000
Secure boot on, reading 50868256 bytes to get SRK data
Authenticate image from DDR location 0x80800000...
Secure boot enabled
HAB Configuration: 0xcc, HAB State: 0x99
No HAB Events Found!
I was trying to install a dkms package on focal and it would ask for the MOC signing password but then on reboot it would not confirm it so I still couldn’t load the module
I figured out how to manually add the signing key. I likely broke the whole secure boot thing while I was at it but that’s a problem for another day.
First make sure that a key has been generated
sudo update-secureboot-policy --new-key
Then copy that key to somewhere accessible during boot
So I finally have a design of the TNC I’ve been working on that I think is ready for release. Initially this started with me wanting a replacement for my mobilinkd and AP510. With feature creep it has turned into much more.
The current board has a VHF radio module, a CHIP Pro computer module running Linux ( NTC calls it gadget OS ) and a Mikrobus slot. I’m currently using the Mikrobus for a GPS module but there are lots of variants.
Features
I’m going to split the features into ones I’ve had the time to test with the current design and features that did work on previous designs but haven’t been tested on the current design or haven’t been tried at all.
Some of the parts are small ( 0805 ) so you will need soldering gear that can do finer parts. All of the fine parts get mounted on the top side of the board near the RF module. The connectors all go on the back of the board.
Next Steps
The software needs some polishing so if anyone wants to contribute patches please do.
It also needs a case designed for it so I’ll likely start doing that in openscad soon.
Since I’ve started this design NTC has become less and less responsive so I don’t know is there’s any future in the CHIP or CHIP Pro boards. I hope there is but I’ve been waiting for a year fro the CHIP pro’s I ordered and it’s been more than 4 months since I received any email from them. If anyone else has actually got an email from them I’d be interested in hearing about it.
Thanks goes out to Herb Peyerl andRob Riggs for design assistance and motivation during the project.
