[ale] OT: hacking wireless module

[Charles Shapiro]

Ah!  Cool! Betcha those 4 pins on the non-antenna side are in the usual USB
Pinout then ( VCC, Data1, Data2, Gnd).  All you gotta do is figure out
which end is which, and that's probably a matter of inspection.  Sounds
like a Win!

-- CHS


On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Boris Borisov <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:

> I forgot to take picture on my tablet. I have four pins on one side and
> two on the other of the board. The side with two has printed on the main
> board "antenna" I suppose these are RF and ground. The trick is to figure
> the other four :)
>
> I'm thinking of soldering it to my raspi or raspi zero if there usb header
> or pins are available.
>
> So can safe usb port.
>
> On Nov 15, 2016 11:13 AM, "Charles Shapiro" <hooterpincher at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hmm. Pretty interesting.  A quick search on sparkfun (
>> http://sparkfun.com ) turns up an Arduino shield using the RT5350, which
>> looks to my untutored eye like a pretty similar part.    The sparkfun
>> shield costs, like, $60, so it might be worthwhile to get this one working.
>>
>> I take it the chips are SMD ed to the daughterboard?  That means you are
>> probably not going to be able to un-solder them from the carrier.  Sounds
>> like you have some poking around to do to figure out what is going on in
>> there. USB is only 4 wires, so you have two unknowns. They could be extra
>> power, extra ground, or even just there to strengthen the physical
>> connection to the motherboard.
>>
>> As a first step, I'd power on the tablet (assuming it's still un-broken
>> enough to do that) and use a multimeter to try to figure out which
>> connection(s) is//are vcc and which is//are ground.   An oscilloscope might
>> hint at which of those 6 lines are carrying data.
>>
>> -- CHS
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Boris Borisov <bugyatl at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have broken cheapo tablet from which i'm thinking to salvage the
>>> wireless module. The module is rtl8188eus mounted on small half by half
>>> inch PCB. This small board is soldered in 6 points to the mainboard i think
>>> easy to take out.
>>>
>>>
>>> 1. I assume the board is connected via USB but no certain?
>>>
>>> 2. Anyone done it to give some advice?
>>>
>>>
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>>
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