Hacking DEAD [Shutdown]DragonInjector - Game Cart Payload Injector (Trinket M0 Clone)

[MatinatorX]

New design is done! Will be sending out the gerbers tonight. It's not as fancy looking as the first concept was but it'll be magnitudes easier to print and assemble and has a bunch of other benefits like:

- Charging via the card slot.
- APA-102 is back! This means no firmware forking for status stuffs.
- Charging via USB.
- Board is held in with one screw and easy to remove.
- Lots more meat on the case. Should stand up to abuse pretty well.
- No battery to replace.

Now it's just a waiting game for the parts to arrive.

 

[MatinatorX]

"This would require you to have the dongle plugged into the USB Type C port on your Switch while gaming if you needed to charge the dongle on the go, which is not ideal. It would also mean you would have to charge it in a different piece of equipment while the Switch is docked,"

well i have a SX pro dongle but i have not even set it up yet
but from what i understand that is not how it works at all ,i thought that the dongle can charge itself through the switches USB C port
and that it can also be charged with the micro USB female connector on the dongle but that that is not really necessary since the dongle can charge itself through the switches USB C port in something like just under 3 seconds and have enough juice to dump the payload
i though i read that you can charge it from the female micro USB on the dongle and that will get you like 10 payload injections with having to wait the 2 or 3 seconds to charge the dongle from the USB C port on the switch
maybe i am wrong but i could swear this s what i read if anyone else who uses their can chime in and let us know
but i am almost positive that is how it works
so even if your caps are smaller that TX , TX caps and hold like 10 or 12 payload dumps worth of juice
you really only need enough for one , i mean who is really impatient enough to not be able to wait a few second upon rebooting their switch
didn't you say the cart slot delivers 3.3v ? the USB C will deliver 5v so wouldn't that get the caps charges faster? or rewqire more circuitry to lower the voltage?
Also i those pics of the SX pro donlge are only mockups so i would not put too much stock in them we dn't know what they are using in there
and the dongle is really small it fits in a game card pouch in my switch case
maybe there are actual photos now and maybe even tear down video i haven't checked lately

It may very well charge from the USB C port on the Switch, but then you have a dongle sticking out preventing you from docking it or using it in table top mode. I'm sure this is fine for many people, but I know it would bother me.

A higher input voltage can give you a faster charge sometimes, but in this case it's the available current that matters. If you use a higher voltage than your MCU can handle to charge your caps, you will have to step it back down with an LDO anyways. With more space you can use a nice high efficiency switching power IC to step the power down and get a bump in current in the conversion, but there's not enough space in this case. Even a 1/4W SMD resistor is quite large for such a small device. I had one in my latest design that doubled the charging current (thus doubling the recharge speed) when charging via USB, but the smallest package size at that wattage capability was a 1206, and it just wouldn't fit.

Amazing project, good work but when warmboot or coldboot found, your work will be forgotten..

That may be true, but it'd be much worse for all the companies making the dongles commercially that will be stuck with shelves full of useless merchandise. As for me, having a compact payload injector slash RCM jig would be great, but really the biggest motivation for this project is just to see if I can. Making things is fun. I won't consider it wasted time if a better solution comes along.

 

[CYB3R]

This project looks good, I hope you finish it and be a successful friend

 

[weatMod]

It may very well charge from the USB C port on the Switch, but then you have a dongle sticking out preventing you from docking it or using it in table top mode. I'm sure this is fine for many people, but I know it would bother me.

A higher input voltage can give you a faster charge sometimes, but in this case it's the available current that matters. If you use a higher voltage than your MCU can handle to charge your caps, you will have to step it back down with an LDO anyways. With more space you can use a nice high efficiency switching power IC to step the power down and get a bump in current in the conversion, but there's not enough space in this case. Even a 1/4W SMD resistor is quite large for such a small device. I had one in my latest design that doubled the charging current (thus doubling the recharge speed) when charging via USB, but the smallest package size at that wattage capability was a 1206, and it just wouldn't fit.



That may be true, but it'd be much worse for all the companies making the dongles commercially that will be stuck with shelves full of useless merchandise. As for me, having a compact payload injector slash RCM jig would be great, but really the biggest motivation for this project is just to see if I can. Making things is fun. I won't consider it wasted time if a better solution comes along.

but it only charges for a few seconds not much more time than it takes to inject the payload
you need to put the dongle in to inject the payload anyways
SX pro works fine and does not prevent you from docking your switch you just insert the dongle wait a like 3 seconds then it is charged and injects the payload and then you can remove it

 

[jj56185]

Here ,I will show you the TX PRO wakeup schematic to you.
When the switch in RCM. the USB D+ has been pullup to 3V, with the Diode, it can turn on the LOD or DC-DC .
When everything done, we can reset the MCU and turn off all the power.(the LDO EN must pull down with a Resistor )

 

[lordelan]

Looks really good. I'd even prefer this over my SX Pro dongle.

 

[tiliarou]

This is the most interesting trinklet project IMHO.
Would spend some euros on it even if open source or printable from common parts to thank the dev.

 

[borngborn]

New design is done! Will be sending out the gerbers tonight. It's not as fancy looking as the first concept was but it'll be magnitudes easier to print and assemble and has a bunch of other benefits like:

- Charging via the card slot.
- APA-102 is back! This means no firmware forking for status stuffs.
- Charging via USB.
- Board is held in with one screw and easy to remove.
- Lots more meat on the case. Should stand up to abuse pretty well.
- No battery to replace.

Now it's just a waiting game for the parts to arrive.

Are your using one of those button shaped super caps??

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[MatinatorX]

Here ,I will show you the TX PRO wakeup schematic to you.
When the switch in RCM. the USB D+ has been pullup to 3V, with the Diode, it can turn on the LOD or DC-DC .
When everything done, we can reset the MCU and turn off all the power.(the LDO EN must pull down with a Resistor )

Nice share! I won't really need to enable/disable the LDO since most of the time it will be bypassed by card slot charging, and there isn't room for the hardware to take advantage of the higher current capability of the Type C port. That said, this would be an awesome external interrupt to resume the MCU from deep sleep for payload injection. Thanks for the idea!

Are your using one of those button shaped super caps??

I am! Specifically, I'm using the Korchip DMS3R3224R. I'd have used the 0.3F DMS3R3304R but it's almost five times the price.

 

[P4RI4H]

Amazing project, good work but when warmboot or coldboot found, your work will be forgotten..

Your comment is both unnecessary and incorrect. You obviously haven't been in the mod scene very long. Even little simple mods to consoles that do little are archived and used for a while. Plus, I really dont expect a coldboot option to be coming any time soon at all.

 

[borngborn]

@MatinatorX May i Pm you i have a Question it is unrelated to this thread

 

[MatinatorX]

@MatinatorX May i Pm you i have a Question it is unrelated to this thread

Of course, but you should know that I consider questions about the hardware/tools used for this project, or other projects that have things in common with this one, completely on topic. There will likely be those here that are also interested to know so if it's anything like that feel free to ask here. I consider this a kind of development thread and will be making a new one if the completed project works well which will be more focused.

 

[Naendow]

This project looks really amazing!
Are you planning to sell this after finishing? I would love to grab one.

 

[isoboy]

Any news to share? Still very interested.

 

[Quicksilver88]

I think Having the jig is a good idea, cause not everyone wants to brick their switch ;P

Good point, I know there are the AutoRCM fanatics but honestly with AutoRCM you can brick your boot block, without not even a consideration. Eventually it will be recoverable but only if you have a Nand dump. SX needs to add that to their startup menu. I reboot my Switch so infrequently, its not like the jig and usb dongle are that big an issue.

This project is cool, would love a boot injector the size of a cart.

 

[RHOPKINS13]

Good point, I know there are the AutoRCM fanatics but honestly with AutoRCM you can brick your boot block, without not even a consideration. Eventually it will be recoverable but only if you have a Nand dump. SX needs to add that to their startup menu. I reboot my Switch so infrequently, its not like the jig and usb dongle are that big an issue.

This project is cool, would love a boot injector the size of a cart.

Meh, every time your Switch does a system update it overrides AutoRCM anyway. I'm sure it wouldn't be too terrible to recover if something bad happened.

 

[MatinatorX]

Any news to share? Still very interested.

Nothing much right now, the board and case are designed and both are in the mail, as are most of the parts. Won't be much news until I solder up the prototype board and start testing.

I do have a picture of the printed prototype case sent by the print shop (final version will be black) and some release graphics I've been working on for fun. I've attached them here.

 

[MatinatorX]

There is one other update, actually. After going over all the options I've decided to license the project under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). In a nutshell, this means you can do whatever you want with it as long as I'm credited as outlined in the license. I've added it to the release graphics I'm working on, too. No going back now!

(As mentioned earlier, the project files will hit GitHub once I've got a working prototype.)

 

[bartys]

Where i can order your trinket m0 clone board?

 

[MatinatorX]

Where i can order your trinket m0 clone board?

Once the prototype is finished and working I'll stick a small batch of 10 on tindie, and if that goes well I'll see about a bigger batch.