@ubik Yeah, these pins seem to be unused. Maybe I could attach a probe or something :D I don't have much hardware to do this kind of stuff though. And this is so insanely tiny I have no chance of soldering anything in there even if I had steady hands.
@niclas@ubik I think this light could do so much more if it was possible to program your own effects. The ones there mostly stuff I won't use, but stuff I would use is not :P
Those traces should lead to a header or to pads, that they use to program it. If you can locate those, then one can probably re-program it with a standard ST-Link programmer (original or clone).
It would help a lot to get hold of a programmer's manual and figure out if the peripherals are STM32 compatible (good chance, many others are, and wouldn't surprise me if this is STM32F030-like)
Then simply use STM32CubeMX/CubeIDE to program it.
@niclas@unfa I would suggest the same thing, but using a Raspberry Pi Debug Probe and probe-rs/Rust. Whatever you're the most comfortable with. If you're lucky you might be even able to run Micropython on it!
@ubik@niclas Hmm. I do own a Raspberry Pi 4, and I have a breadboard with patch cables and power unit. I got that to make MIDI-controlled LED lighting for my #BespokeSynth music jams, but RPi now works as a #HomeAssistant server.
I could put it on hold and use it to connect to this thing though!
I wonder if the 5-pin throughole is a place where some dev connection could be made?
It might be just to reach the other side of the PCB, (wher the scren is) but the arrangement is suspicious and the sceen needs wy more pins thant that anyway. The LEDs are conneected from the front, so no need to move the big amps through these holes.
@unfa 👍 would also be my best guess. But you also need to find out what the controller chip is, find a datasheet or other documentation for it to find the pinout and then, trace/continuity check where relevant pins go, thereby maybe confirm the 5 holes/pins.
Also "cheap thing" is probably not what gets a lot of interest/resonance from experts.
@chris Thanks! @ubik thinks he knows what chip it is and it seems like SWD and SWclock pins are connected to some traces. That or this is a different chip alltogether :D
@unfa wait, you already have an usb port there with at least 7 pins wired out; why not connect it to your pc (linux?), see what lsusb gives you as device ID and search internets for what you can do that way with that chip?
@tivasyk Yeah, imagine having this light, only it shows up as mass storage and you could edit a text file describing the animation effects...
I would be shoicked if filmmakes wouldn't be all over something like that.
Is there no cheap hackable portable RGBW light like this?
@unfa man, i'm so with you on this. no, i don't care about portable lights, but i desperately want to learn practical #electronics (got a bachelor's in electronics from those soviet times, useless as i had never touched a live mcu during studies!) and thus try to play with every #arduino howto or tutorial i can find & understand… but there's a huge gap between simple lessons (lady ada) and any «real life» application :-/
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