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Is there something a consumer electronics company can do allowing people to update or upgrade components or firmware in such a way that we are not basically for

Is there something a consumer electronics company can do allowing people to update or upgrade components or firmware in such a way that we are not basically forced to void the warranty?

leggomylibro 9y ago
Provide breakout headers or pogo pads to the relevant chips. Like, if your pebble had its STM32F439's SWDIO and SWCLK pins broken out, you could probably flash it just like an Arduino if it weren't for the copy/write protection stuff that they likely used. I dunno, what about others? Make several small and removable boards rather than one a single large one? Don't use BGA components whenever possible? Publish your layout schematics, or at least pinouts? But as a manufacturer, why would you do any of that if you don't have to? It'll just let your competitors easily steal your hard work, and 99.9% of people will never use it. The problem comes when Apple makes that sort of thinking part of the zeitgeist when talking about iPhones, and before you know it fucking tractor companies are decides that 'licensing' a product is much better than selling one. I tell you what, I'm just waiting for a high-tech lathe that is 'owned' by some manufacturer to accidentally tear someone's arm off. Or worse, a semi-autonomous warehouse/assembly robot goes haywire around people. If the operator was just licensing it, the owner had better have good insurance.
- pdelbarba 9y ago
  Most of these chips can actually be flashed no problem. They just have a fuse/bit that disables read over JTAG and to disable that you have to zero the entire device memory. This means that you can put whatever firmware on that you want, but you'll never have access to the old binary code that was running it, so making patches is impossible unless you can either A) rewrite all the firmware from scratch, B) find a way of tricking the existing software into dumping firmware over a port via some sort of overflow, etc or C) glitch the chip into allowing JTAG access with the bit/fuse set (used to be pretty common, more rare these days)
Fej 9y ago
In the United States, a company cannot necessarily void your warranty for repairing a device yourself. See the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warran... Of course, that doesn't stop them from trying, and usually succeeding, because the FTC has been de-clawed and no one bothers to sue.
- MrQuincle 9y ago
  Note, in this case I am the one on the manufacturing side. If our smart power outlets get a firmware update that for example destroys the current soft fuse or thermal protection, we would be screwed. How would we be able to give the people the ability to tamper, but without incurring the risks that come with that?

Is there something a consumer electronics company can do allowing people to update or upgrade components or firmware in such a way that we are not basically forced to void the warranty?

leggomylibro 9y ago

Provide breakout headers or pogo pads to the relevant chips. Like, if your pebble had its STM32F439's SWDIO and SWCLK pins broken out, you could probably flash it just like an Arduino if it weren't for the copy/write protection stuff that they likely used. I dunno, what about others? Make several small and removable boards rather than one a single large one? Don't use BGA components whenever possible? Publish your layout schematics, or at least pinouts? But as a manufacturer, why would you do any of that if you don't have to? It'll just let your competitors easily steal your hard work, and 99.9% of people will never use it. The problem comes when Apple makes that sort of thinking part of the zeitgeist when talking about iPhones, and before you know it fucking tractor companies are decides that 'licensing' a product is much better than selling one. I tell you what, I'm just waiting for a high-tech lathe that is 'owned' by some manufacturer to accidentally tear someone's arm off. Or worse, a semi-autonomous warehouse/assembly robot goes haywire around people. If the operator was just licensing it, the owner had better have good insurance.

pdelbarba 9y ago
Most of these chips can actually be flashed no problem. They just have a fuse/bit that disables read over JTAG and to disable that you have to zero the entire device memory. This means that you can put whatever firmware on that you want, but you'll never have access to the old binary code that was running it, so making patches is impossible unless you can either A) rewrite all the firmware from scratch, B) find a way of tricking the existing software into dumping firmware over a port via some sort of overflow, etc or C) glitch the chip into allowing JTAG access with the bit/fuse set (used to be pretty common, more rare these days)

Fej 9y ago

In the United States, a company cannot necessarily void your warranty for repairing a device yourself. See the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warran... Of course, that doesn't stop them from trying, and usually succeeding, because the FTC has been de-clawed and no one bothers to sue.

MrQuincle 9y ago
Note, in this case I am the one on the manufacturing side. If our smart power outlets get a firmware update that for example destroys the current soft fuse or thermal protection, we would be screwed. How would we be able to give the people the ability to tamper, but without incurring the risks that come with that?