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Unlocking a locked/deactivated e-waste Cricut Maker
- EvanAnderson 1mo agoI was hoping this would be a hack that repurposed the unit to work standalone. Getting the unit to work again in the Cricut "ecosystem" just means Cricut can disable it later when they catch on. Companies that "lock" or otherwise brick viable hardware as part of the business model (I'm thinking about Sonos here, too) are really terrible. People shouldn't be rewarding them by buying their garbage to begin with.
- Benanov 1mo agoI'm just imagining the amount of damage some determined people can do to the Cricut ecosystem because the serial numbers are guessable...
- hypfer 1mo agoWould be a shame if anyone did that at a large scale, invoking a PR desaster and forcing some change. Oh and illegal. Highly illegal and probably would get you in prison for a very long time + come with crippling debt too. So don't do that, unless you're like.. idk terminally ill and die tomorrow or something like that. Then still don't do it because it's illegal and causes real harm to real other people that didn't do anything wrong.
- Mountain_Skies 1mo agoOr maybe if you live in one of the places where illegal telemarketing calls originate from but can't be stopped.
- rithdmc 1mo agoChannel your inner Maia arson crimew
- arcanemachiner 1mo agoReminds me of this old WKUK skit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KivCRqfFcqY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KivCRqfFcqY
- AlfeG 1mo ago> So don't do that, unless you're like.. idk terminally ill and die tomorrow or something like that. Or You are from Iran, Russia or North Korea and you don't care much USA laws.
- greggsy 1mo agoI’d expect a certain YouTuber to pick it up in due course
- charcircuit 1mo ago>are really terrible. They are not as terrible as people who commit fraud by lying about throwing away the "bad" unit and selling it, nor are they as bad as people stealing them and then also reselling them.
- josephcsible 1mo agoNo, they're worse than both of those groups. I'd accept having to deal with both of them forever if it meant manufacturers didn't have a way to remotely brick things after they sold them anymore.
- kennywinker 1mo agoJust a PSA to anybody considering buying a new cricut: They are cool machines mechanically, but the software is an absolute nightmare, DO NOT BUY. Source: i bought one. Regret sunk in the moment i tried to do anything even slightly interesting. This isn’t a bambulabs situation where it’s mostly a philosophical objection to a closed ecosystem. It’s bad software that makes it hard or impossible to use the machine except in a very narrow set of ways. I’ve not firsthand used any of the competing machines (silhoutte, et al) but i hear they are a bit better - and i don’t know how they could be worse.
- cellular 1mo agoCould you just hook new motor controllers to the motors / puncher and add an Arduino to control it?
- kennywinker 1mo agoPossibly. But i wanted a machine to play with, not to tinker with. At that point it’d be wayyy cheaper and easier to just convert an old CR-10 printer into a vinyl cutter
- tdeck 1mo agoThis is a very Hacker News usage of the word "just".
- CamperBob2 1mo agoThe modern equivalent is "Just" use Fable or Sol to reverse-engineer the protocol, then write new control software that works locally the way you want to work, using the file formats you want to use. There is no longer any reason to put up with hardware like Cricut that doesn't do what you want, or that includes artificial dependencies on remote servers. If worst comes to worst, then yes, have the clanker write a new controller.
- zardo 1mo agoProposing cost to reverse engineer a cricut and cut out some pelican art as a new llm benchmark.
- xgulfie 1mo agoI see so many of these at resale stores for next to nothing. What a shame.
- cyberge99 1mo agoHe got it working, so there’s hope.
- mikestorrent 1mo agoI guess if one needs furry decals badly enough you could just cut them out by hand
- SchemaLoad 1mo agoIt would be pretty miserable when typically you want like 100+ stickers to hand out at events.
- kotaKat 1mo agoThat's why you don't use a Cricut to make furry stickers. It's already miserable to use a Cricut to cut them because of the fight to get proper alignment and cutting because the machine has no way to properly home materials to the cutting position. You use a Brother Scan-n-Cut instead, since it can actually perform registration on the material you've printed out.
- josephwegner 1mo agoI have a silhouette cameo pro 4 (and love it), and have been wondering around similar things. The Cameo can only be controlled via the provided software, or a couple proprietary plugins for popular design software. The provided software is clunky, and the plugins suck. I’ve been building an app for designing stickers, and what I really want is to either be able to drive the Cameo from the app directly, or output a design file in a format that can be loaded straight into the software to start cutting. The thing I’m stuck on is… how do people reverse engineer these devices protocols, without fear of bricking the device? My understanding is that reverse engineering like this is a lot of “try shit and see if it works”. It seems to me that a few wrong commands could get the cameo in some irrecoverable state. Obviously that’s not a risk I’m willing to take on a machine I use very regularly.
- timhh 1mo agoI don't have a Cameo Pro 4 to test, but I have reverse engineered software to control some of their other devices. It's a little janky but if you want to help I'd appreciate it! https://robocut.org/ https://robocut.org/ I believe there is (or once was) also an Inkscape plugin somewhere but I never tried it. As for how I reverse engineered it, I just used a USB sniffer and wireshark. I don't think there's a big risk of bricking these devices - I don't think they even have non-volatile storage, so worst case you turn it off and on again. I would like to reverse engineer my solar power inverter too, but that is definitely brickable (the first one they shipped me came pre-bricked!) and is a lot more expensive so I've had to resist. :/
- dvdkon 1mo agoI mostly deal with the possibility of bricking a device by not caring too much :) That said, I usually start by reverse-engineering the software at one of the ends, so I don't blindly "fuzz" the device. There's still some risk, but not that much.
- RobotToaster 1mo agoI always used to export from inkscape to the silhouette software.
- unrented7977 1mo ago
- jakzurr 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricut#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricut#Controversies Also, it's a very fun article to read.
- phoronixrly 1mo agoI am very surprised that the ceo backpaddled on the limit of cloud usage that was going to force users into subscription...
- greggsy 1mo ago“Provo Craft contended that in order to understand and replicate this obscured protocol, Craft Edge had disassembled the DesignStudio program, contrary to the terms of its end-user license agreement, thereby (the company asserted) breaching copyright law.” I wonder if the wireshark USB intercepts discussed in this thread would classify as ‘disassembly’?
- redlinedtm 1mo ago[flagged]
- slipperybeluga 1mo ago[dead]
- bityard 1mo agoIf anyone has an old Silhouette vinyl cutter sitting around gathering dust, there's an actively maintained open source Inkscape plugin that lets you "print" your design straight to the cutter: https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette I wrote about it a couple years ago: https://blog.bityard.net/articles/2022/June/diy-vinyl-cut-motorcycle-emblem https://blog.bityard.net/articles/2022/June/diy-vinyl-cut-mo...
- djmips 1mo agoThanks. I DO have an old Silhouette vinyl cutter sitting around... gathering dust! I picked it up at a thrift store many years ago and just waiting for you comment I guess!
- poetaster 1mo agoNice write-up! I was also a Suzuki fan (1980s) and always liked the stylized S logo. Now to go find a vinyl cutter.....
- grommet_kit 1mo agoNo checksumming on the serial number packet makes this kind of proxy trivial. Using an RP2040 as a USB man-in-the-middle is a clever and cheap fix.