- Thread starter MatinatorX
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That made me just realize that since this is an open-source project, and all the design files are freely downloadable, there's a chance that one of the $15/16 Chinese dongle makers will release their own using these design files.
Just a thought, I'll still prefer buying it here.
Last edited by bundat,
From what I understand, I'm allowed to send a direct purchase link to members who request it via PM, and I'm allowed put that same link in my sig. Obviously, I can't spam that link to anyone who doesn't request it, nor would I want to. This should be enough for anyone to be able to find the purchase link (once it's ready) while still respecting the rules of the forum.
In terms of actual forum threads, I'm not allowed to post the purchase link outside of the selling section, but I am able to share a link to a thread I'll make in the selling section (when it's ready) in this thread, as well as in my sig.
Posting the link to that selling section thread anywhere else on the forums should be fine as long as it's relevant to the conversation and not spam. Please respect other user's threads!
I know we've thrown you a lot of questions @linuxares, but if you'd be so kind as to confirm the above it would be very appreciated. I think that should answer any current and future questions on the matter so we don't have to bother you again
@MatinatorX I can't send PM. I'll take one please, PM when you start selling.
What about tester units?From what I understand, I'm allowed to send a direct purchase link to members who request it via PM, and I'm allowed put that same link in my sig. Obviously, I can't spam that link to anyone who doesn't request it, nor would I want to. This should be enough for anyone to be able to find the purchase link (once it's ready) while still respecting the rules of the forum.
In terms of actual forum threads, I'm not allowed to post the purchase link outside of the selling section, but I am able to share a link to a thread I'll make in the selling section (when it's ready) in this thread, as well as in my sig.
Posting the link to that selling section thread anywhere else on the forums should be fine as long as it's relevant to the conversation and not spam. Please respect other user's threads!
I know we've thrown you a lot of questions @linuxares, but if you'd be so kind as to confirm the above it would be very appreciated. I think that should answer any current and future questions on the matter so we don't have to bother you again
That made me just realize that since this is an open-source project, and all the design files are freely downloadable, there's a chance that one of the $15/16 Chinese dongle makers will release their own using these design files.
Just a thought, I'll still prefer buying it here.
This is true, however, they will be required to link back to my original license and source material to comply with the CC BY-SA 4.0 license the project has been open sourced with. The goal of this project is not profit, so I'm not cutting a large margin here, making it unlikely you'll see clones for more than a few bucks cheaper. If the license is complied with I'll likely gain more customers with free awareness than I'll lose to clones anyways.
If potential customers choose to purchase a clone it is their right under the terms of the license and I completely understand. However, any profit I make from this endeavor will be put back into tools, equipment and resources to make even better projects in the future, so don't forget that.
--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
All the tester units have already been claimed via PM a good while ago. I'll be sending them the link for a different, non-public purchase page once those units are ready, likely this Friday. I'll give those on that list a day to purchase before moving up the list to the next request that didn't make it in time.
Last edited by MatinatorX,
In theory, PMs aren't okey. But I'm not going to stop you. Message along the link but it's not a good idea to take pre-orders until everything works. And yes, put it in your sig, should be fine. Also it's okey to message me in PM if you got questions.From what I understand, I'm allowed to send a direct purchase link to members who request it via PM, and I'm allowed put that same link in my sig. Obviously, I can't spam that link to anyone who doesn't request it, nor would I want to. This should be enough for anyone to be able to find the purchase link (once it's ready) while still respecting the rules of the forum.
In terms of actual forum threads, I'm not allowed to post the purchase link outside of the selling section, but I am able to share a link to a thread I'll make in the selling section (when it's ready) in this thread, as well as in my sig.
Posting the link to that selling section thread anywhere else on the forums should be fine as long as it's relevant to the conversation and not spam. Please respect other user's threads!
I know we've thrown you a lot of questions @linuxares, but if you'd be so kind as to confirm the above it would be very appreciated. I think that should answer any current and future questions on the matter so we don't have to bother you again
I made an account here just to say that I'm looking forward to buying this. Great work/thread!
Thanks for the kind words! If you take a look a few posts back in the thread, you'll see the different color options I'll be able to provide down the road, as well as a joke render of a skintone color version.
If the unthinkable happens and we cross about 7500 orders, injection molding becomes a possibility with many more color options such as transparent, silver and gold etc. I'll also eat my shoe.
I do! However, I haven't created the actual product page yet. I want to be 100% sure it works before setting that up.
Once the tindie link goes up, I'll (politely) bug the mods to clean up this thread (or give me the ability to do so) so we can get it back on track as a development and support thread. Tindie will be able to handle stock notifications etc.
Im one of the testers!
I was planning on making a Tindie listing for you testers, but now I'm thinking I'll have to make one under a different handle or find another way to make sure it's actually the testers that make the purchase.
I might also set up a Discord channel if any of you are interested so we don't fill this thread with fluff. Open to suggestions.
Last edited by MatinatorX,
Time for another update. Bad news. Skip to the second last paragraph if you want a TL;DR.
So, I thought I'd do some further testing on game card slot power behavior, so I soldered some more tiny wires to an unpopulated V2 PCB and wrote down the results. It's looking like I won't be able to grab power from the game card slot like I wanted to.
Previously, as I didn't have any kind of game card breakout adapter (since one didn't exist), I soldered tiny wires to an actual game cartridge and did my tests that way. You can find that post here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/dragoni...r-trinket-m0-clone.511780/page-2#post-8171816 but the long and short of it is, I was able to measure a constant 3.06v from the game card slot anytime the Switch wasn't sleeping. Generally, something like a game card slot will either have constant power or have some physical mechanism to enable power when a cartridge is inserted, and there was no real reason to assume the Switch would be any different. Unfortunately, it seems Ninty is doing things a little differently now.
Much like the USB Type C connector I was dealing with earlier, The Switch does not keep it's VCC terminal hot for the game card slot. As it turns out, there exists a 17th pin in the game card slot that I couldn't find documented anywhere. I've attached the best picture I could get to this post. This pin shares the same pad as the ground pin, but sits at negative 1.8v. When a game card is inserted into the Switch, "Pin 17" is shorted to ground and is effectively "pulled up", which lets the Switch know there's a game card inserted so it can start sending power. At this point, VCC becomes hot and 3.3v is sent to the cartridge.
Now, this is where the trouble begins. Once the game card starts receiving power, the Switch expects it to start communicating. It sends a few commands and then listens for a response. In my tests, the Switch will send power for anywhere between 2 to 10 seconds, and once it decides a response isn't coming, it shuts down power to the game card slot and displays an "error reading cartridge" message on the screen. The Switch won't send power to the card slot again until "Pin 17" becomes floating once more, followed by getting "pulled up" to 0v (ground) again. In a perfect world, I'd do my best to emulate a cartridge using the ATSAMD21, but almost nothing about the proprietary data format is known, and that's not even considering that at some point shortly after the initial handshake, the data becomes encrypted with an unknown algorithm. It's also likely this approach would involve code copyrighted by Ninty, which is just asking for trouble.
As it stands, charging via the game card slot is not really viable. It is very possible a software solution to this could be made, since it's software that's controlling the power to the game card slot. To test this, I booted into the SX OS boot menu, and no matter what I did I could not get 3.3v from the card slot. Something in Horizon is reading "Pin 17" and deciding to send power when it shorts to ground. Unfortunately, I don't have the coding skills to even try to figure out how to implement a possible software fix.
In summary, card slot charging is probably a bust without a software fix I don't know how to make. I'm still going to continue with the project, as you can still charge the dongle via the Switch's USB port when not in RCM or via a computer, and it's still really convenient to have the dongle on you all the time along with the RCM jig and not have to worry about losing it. It just won't pop out of your card slot fully charged. The V3 set of PCBs arriving tomorrow will work with no issues aside from the card slot pins serving only to make it look more like a real game cart. No other feature is affected by this - only the ability to charge the dongle via the game card slot, so I think it's still a worthwhile project. (Technically you still could charge it in the game card slot port, but you'd have to insert and remove it a couple of times and clear that annoying error, which is rather inconvenient - at that point you might as well just plug it in to the Type C port.)
I'd really like to hear what you all think, or if anyone might have a lead on a software solution. Normally, something like this would've been a brief bump in the road for me and then I'd keep moving on without thinking much on it, but this project has garnered a lot of attention now and it's hard to say exactly what people were most excited about. Is this a dealbreaker for most, or just a minor annoyance? A lot of people had requested the ability to disable charging from the card slot, so perhaps it was just a "nice to have" feature, or perhaps not.
Let me know!
Thanks everyone!
EDIT: The silver lining is that without the paltry 27.5mA limit I had for max power consumption from the card slot, I can up the charging current to around 500mA for much faster charging. 5 seconds for a full charge when brand new (0v), 4 seconds for a full charge from shotdown (1.7v) and half a second for 3 or 4 injections.
So, I thought I'd do some further testing on game card slot power behavior, so I soldered some more tiny wires to an unpopulated V2 PCB and wrote down the results. It's looking like I won't be able to grab power from the game card slot like I wanted to.
Previously, as I didn't have any kind of game card breakout adapter (since one didn't exist), I soldered tiny wires to an actual game cartridge and did my tests that way. You can find that post here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/dragoni...r-trinket-m0-clone.511780/page-2#post-8171816 but the long and short of it is, I was able to measure a constant 3.06v from the game card slot anytime the Switch wasn't sleeping. Generally, something like a game card slot will either have constant power or have some physical mechanism to enable power when a cartridge is inserted, and there was no real reason to assume the Switch would be any different. Unfortunately, it seems Ninty is doing things a little differently now.
Much like the USB Type C connector I was dealing with earlier, The Switch does not keep it's VCC terminal hot for the game card slot. As it turns out, there exists a 17th pin in the game card slot that I couldn't find documented anywhere. I've attached the best picture I could get to this post. This pin shares the same pad as the ground pin, but sits at negative 1.8v. When a game card is inserted into the Switch, "Pin 17" is shorted to ground and is effectively "pulled up", which lets the Switch know there's a game card inserted so it can start sending power. At this point, VCC becomes hot and 3.3v is sent to the cartridge.
Now, this is where the trouble begins. Once the game card starts receiving power, the Switch expects it to start communicating. It sends a few commands and then listens for a response. In my tests, the Switch will send power for anywhere between 2 to 10 seconds, and once it decides a response isn't coming, it shuts down power to the game card slot and displays an "error reading cartridge" message on the screen. The Switch won't send power to the card slot again until "Pin 17" becomes floating once more, followed by getting "pulled up" to 0v (ground) again. In a perfect world, I'd do my best to emulate a cartridge using the ATSAMD21, but almost nothing about the proprietary data format is known, and that's not even considering that at some point shortly after the initial handshake, the data becomes encrypted with an unknown algorithm. It's also likely this approach would involve code copyrighted by Ninty, which is just asking for trouble.
As it stands, charging via the game card slot is not really viable. It is very possible a software solution to this could be made, since it's software that's controlling the power to the game card slot. To test this, I booted into the SX OS boot menu, and no matter what I did I could not get 3.3v from the card slot. Something in Horizon is reading "Pin 17" and deciding to send power when it shorts to ground. Unfortunately, I don't have the coding skills to even try to figure out how to implement a possible software fix.
In summary, card slot charging is probably a bust without a software fix I don't know how to make. I'm still going to continue with the project, as you can still charge the dongle via the Switch's USB port when not in RCM or via a computer, and it's still really convenient to have the dongle on you all the time along with the RCM jig and not have to worry about losing it. It just won't pop out of your card slot fully charged. The V3 set of PCBs arriving tomorrow will work with no issues aside from the card slot pins serving only to make it look more like a real game cart. No other feature is affected by this - only the ability to charge the dongle via the game card slot, so I think it's still a worthwhile project. (Technically you still could charge it in the game card slot port, but you'd have to insert and remove it a couple of times and clear that annoying error, which is rather inconvenient - at that point you might as well just plug it in to the Type C port.)
I'd really like to hear what you all think, or if anyone might have a lead on a software solution. Normally, something like this would've been a brief bump in the road for me and then I'd keep moving on without thinking much on it, but this project has garnered a lot of attention now and it's hard to say exactly what people were most excited about. Is this a dealbreaker for most, or just a minor annoyance? A lot of people had requested the ability to disable charging from the card slot, so perhaps it was just a "nice to have" feature, or perhaps not.
Let me know!
Thanks everyone!
EDIT: The silver lining is that without the paltry 27.5mA limit I had for max power consumption from the card slot, I can up the charging current to around 500mA for much faster charging. 5 seconds for a full charge when brand new (0v), 4 seconds for a full charge from shotdown (1.7v) and half a second for 3 or 4 injections.
Last edited by MatinatorX,
Three main questions:
After the console boots can we just leave it in the USB-C port for a minute or so to recharge it?
How many boots does the charge last? How long would it take to bring it to full?
Will leaving it in the game cart slot cause damage to any hardware in the long run?
As long as it can be charged by the console itself in some capacity, and leaving it in the slot won't damage anything, I see this as a non-issue
Last edited by OkazakiTheOtaku,
Absolutely! I have a post here with estimated charge times and uses: https://gbatemp.net/threads/dragoni...-trinket-m0-clone.511780/page-11#post-8213184
It will last at least a dozen injections, probably double that. I'll have numbers within the next day or two when the new boards arrive and the prototype is finished.
Absolutely not! The pad layout is identical to one on a real game cart in layout and dimensions, they just won't do anything anymore. I will be removing a small section of the ground pad to prevent that annoying message from popping up, otherwise it's just like putting any other game cart in there.
Thank you very much for the encouragement!
So, the only issue is, no charging via gamecard slot.. Not an issue for me. I love it because it is tiny and can de carried with out an issue. Im still down, just take it out, place it into the usb-c port a few seconds to charge before shutting down, then just boot into RCM and done. No issues there.
my thoughts exactly and someone might program a app to let it charge in the cart slot later
Not a deal breaker for me
Awesome. Charging from the game slot, while cool, isn't something that is close to being a dealbreaker for me. I'm still highly in support of this project and can't wait until it's in my hands, haha.Absolutely! I have a post here with estimated charge times and uses: https://gbatemp.net/threads/dragoni...-trinket-m0-clone.511780/page-11#post-8213184
It will last at least a dozen injections, probably double that. I'll have numbers within the next day or two when the new boards arrive and the prototype is finished.
Absolutely not! The pad layout is identical to one on a real game cart in layout and dimensions, they just won't do anything anymore. I will be removing a small section of the ground pad to prevent that annoying message from popping up, otherwise it's just like putting any other game cart in there.
Thank you very much for the encouragement!
Thank you for being transparent with us and giving us honest updates instead of saying "all is well" and then making changes right at the end.
Oh I'm absolutely still 100% on board. My favorite aspect is the form factor itself, the lack of game slot charging is not a big deal at all.
There is actually a silver lining to this situation, believe it or not. Now that I don't have to worry about the card slot, I will likely just omit the current limiting resistor and bridge the pads with solder to let more power through. USB Type C can safely deliver well over 600mA in comparison to the 27.5mA I had as a safe maximum for the card slot. The LDO I'm using already has a built in current limiting function of 600mA and the board has been engineered to handle even more than that for extended periods of time.
What this means is that I should be able to get the charging time down to just a few seconds like the SX Pro dongle safely.
Last edited by MatinatorX,
While charging via the card slot would be convenient it's not a big deal. It doesn't take long to charge up enough to inject a payload and the initial selling point was always having the injector with the Switch either in the console or in a case. The cartridge charging was a bonus.
I think this becomes interesting on the software side now. What I'm curious about is for the current PCB design, how many of these pins for the cartridges are controllable by the Trinket and which pins are involved in this handshake (if any others beyond the ones you mentioned at further stages). It'd probably be possible to reverse engineer the system and any crypto that's involved and maybe emulate a donor cart (not completely but as much as needed) by dumping relevant data from the image. I don't know how you would emulate a real cart but add in protections so you can't actually boot it though (maybe something in CFW with some unique data on the DragonInjector) that can be snuck in.
I think this becomes interesting on the software side now. What I'm curious about is for the current PCB design, how many of these pins for the cartridges are controllable by the Trinket and which pins are involved in this handshake (if any others beyond the ones you mentioned at further stages). It'd probably be possible to reverse engineer the system and any crypto that's involved and maybe emulate a donor cart (not completely but as much as needed) by dumping relevant data from the image. I don't know how you would emulate a real cart but add in protections so you can't actually boot it though (maybe something in CFW with some unique data on the DragonInjector) that can be snuck in.
Right now none of the card slot data pins are broken out to the ATSAMD21, but if someone really wants to pursue this angle and has the skills to handle the software side of things, I can easily make them a dongle specifically tailored to reading and manipulating and reverse engineering the card slot pins easily. I could even build something you could add a real cartridge into that piggybacks the data lines to sniff out the raw data. Custom hardware is no problem, I just need a software genius partner.
Last edited by MatinatorX,
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