Voodoo Business

Why update the firmware !

My answer here is a bit unconventional, and certainly not a fact.. I even think I am wrong, but it can’t hurt, so here it goes

Seagate recommends you update the disk’s firmware to improve performance and longevity of the hard drive, I on the other hand have an extra mission…

The firmware on a hard drive is stored partially on a chip on the PCB, and partially on the disk itself ! I know that disk platters have a data retention life of 10 years, the area where the firmware is written is never refreshed since it is read only when the disk boots up, So i am hoping (even though doubtful) that the firmware update might re-write this area of the disk and breath new life into it.

A disk certain application claims to refresh the data on that area of the disk, After testing that application I will come here and add my findings accordingly

Getting the firmware

Let us start by downloading the firmware ! To download firmware from seagate’s website, you will need to know your hard drive serial number, to do just that, open the command prompt elevated, and run the following command

wmic diskdrive get model,serialnumber

The result of me running that command is as follows

The results of executing the command above show that I have a hard drive of the model (ST2000DM001-1CH164) as you can see with a serial number that I now have (Masking serial numbers just in case seagate has a problem with me publishing them as it allows you to download the firmware using the serial number)…..

Now that I have the serial number, I can go to seagate’s firmware download page here and grab the firmware… once done, I unzip it, and the following folders appear

Creating a bootable USB flash disk

Now, inside the Bootable tools, there is a file (SeaChest_RC_2.7.4_10-18-2018.usbBootMaker.exe) that will create a bootable flash stick for you, insert a flash stick of any size that is to be deleted by this application, run the application, and now you have a bootable drive, but without the firmware, so copy the firmware folder you see above into the flash stick, and now you are ready to boot from it, for instructions how to boot from a flash stick, you will need to check with your motherboard’s manufacturer documentation, it is usually a simple thing such as hitting F11 at boot time.

Updating the firmware

Once booted, you should be presented with a linux command prompt, where we can run commands to update the firmware

To see what disks are on your system, run the following command

SeaChest_Firmware --scan

The scan should give you the handle for the drive, if you have never used linux before, the handle started with /dev/ (Short for device), and sata disks usually start with sdX (Where X starts with A and ends with a letter corresponding to the last disk you have in your system) old PATA disks usually start with hdX… but that is usually not something you need as PATA disks are virtually non existent at this stage

Now, execute the firmware update command like so

SeaChest_Firmware -d /dev/sg3 --downloadFW /firmware/filename.LOD

Now, if you want to know whether the update was successful or not, just run the scan command again, and note the firmware on it !

My Problem !

As you can see from the image below, I have 3 firmware files, named 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB, when i ran the command above, The system claimed that the update was successful, but didn’t really update the firmware, I was still stuck with 26 rather than 29 !

So i decided to use Seagates own configuration file to do the update with the command

SeaChest_Firmware -d /dev/sg3 --fwdlConfig GPCC2949.CFS

Surprise was that I got the following error

model matched but the current firmware version does not match the available updates

So, I went back in time and remembered that for this particular disk, I had changed the PCB before (Trying to get a 3TB disk to work by moving a certain chip from one board to the other, diagnosis turned out the problem is not the PCB)… So instead of flashing the 2TB firmware file, I flashed the 3TB, and what do you know, It worked.

Anyway, I will come back with screenshots of the whole thing… and more data for those who are having trouble updating their firmware, until then, hang in there

If you are like me, you already know how to use MOD-REWRITE in apache2, but need guidance to implement things in nginx !

There are three directives in nginx concerning rewriting, namely return, rewrite, and try_files Directives, what i will be starting with is rewrite, since most websites on Apache use “rewrite_rule” which can be easily translated into rewrite

I will also provide the most common examples for software such as WordPress, laravel, and other software so that you can get up and running in the shortest possible time

1- Translating my RewriteRule from Apache into nginx

The good news is, it is very easy, I will provide a few simple guidelines, then provide examples.

• The counterpart to RewriteRule in apache2 in nginx is rewrite, so start by changing the text RewriteRule into rewrite
• Replace [L] or [QSA,L] with the string “last;”, Notice that configuration entries in nginx end in a semicolon
• Wherever there is an occurrence of ^ follow it with a /, Making it ^/
• In nginx, curly braces are used for two purposes, block control and regular expressions, so if your existing apache2 rules contain those curly braces for regular expressions, you can tell nginx that this is a regular expression not block control by surrounding the regular expression with quotes (double or single).

So let me create an example, explain what it does, and show you how it is translated into nginx rewrite

What it does	In Apache	In nginx
This rewrites everything onto the index.php file, except for the contents of one folder named norewrite	* RewriteEngine on * RewriteRule ^norewrite(.) – [L] * RewriteRule ^(.)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]	Create a separate section for the folder norewrite, and then use the following * rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;

First of all, check what ports nginx is currently listening on, you can do that with any of the following commands

netstat -tlpn| grep nginx
ss -tlpn| grep nginx

So, you probably found nginx listening to port 443 for SSL connections, and on port 80 for plain http….

On many occasions, you may want other application (Such as varnish or apache) to be listening on port 80, So nginx needs to move to another port, in this example, I am moving it to port 8080

Step 1: Go to sites available, there is the default site, and there are any other sites you added to nginX, open those config files that you will find in /etc/nginx/sites-available, search for 80, and replace it wherever it may occure with 8080 or any port of your choice, restrictions are the following, port numbers under 1024 will requier root privilages (So keep it above 1024), and the maximum port number is 65535, Also port 0 can not be used for http (Relevant to UDP though)

So i have a 2008 Mercedes-Benz E 200 Kompressor 5G-Tronic (W211). being aware of the theory that changing transmission fluid after having 135K Kms on the car will break my transmission/gearbox and finding it hard to believe, I decided to try it myself.

Why I am doubting this theory

My theory is about the origins of “transmissions breaks when fluid is changed”, and why it is likely WRONG.

The origin of that theory is probably the number of people who have problems soon after changing transmission fluid, and basically there is nothing wrong with the theory in this regard but bear with me.

my counter theory is, when people change their transmission fluid at such high mileage, they are not exactly servicing the car on proper intervals, the reminder to change the fluid for them was probably that the transmission acting up, so the transmission is on it’s last leg, you change the fluid, but the fluid can’t save the transmission, it is too late, the dirt in the dirty transmission fluid was creating a bit of friction (and accelerating the wear in the process), the situation is bad enough that you went to change the fluid to see if that helps, the transmission keeps on deteriorating because it is already going in that direction, so what do you do, you blame the oil change ! “It was working at least before I changed the oil !”

So my car comes with the 1.8L M271 , My transmission is probably the 722.695.

I have already drained 3Liters of fluid (All that was in the pan), and filled the transmission with 3 liters of Mercedes-Benz 236.14 transmission fluid, I have also replaced the oil filter and the pan gasket. there is a magnet stuck to the pan from the inside, be sure to clean that too !

Later on, I drained another liter and a half, and added a liter and a half, and kept half a liter to top it up once i find my relevant dipstick (Does not come with the car)

There are alternatives to the somewhat expensive MB fluid, but since i couldn’t find an MB certified one, or at least a fluid that claims to be the same, I decided to bite the bullet and go with the original.

UPDATE: After one year (today is April 19 2024), the transmission is working exactly the same as it was before changing the fluid, things seem to be going just fine.

Attention: the stuff/information you need is at the beginning, Most of the stuff that follow the practical section you will not need (The some theory section), whatever more you see is for my reference, for the curious, and for those who are wondering why i do it this way.

The lowdown: I have successfully repaired my 2014 (3rd gen) Prius battery, despite the fact that most information on rebuilding your Prius battery online is Bull, almost as if it were engineered so that you kill the remaining good cells after a month or two.

this is going to be one long article, and probably a video will follow.

Here are the tools you need

• An android phone (You can use Apple/iPhone with torque pro, but the instructions here are for android)
• The Torque Pro app on the phone
• Prius PIDs for torque pro (Download here)
• A compatible OBD2 adapter, I use a WiFi adapter, you can use a Bluetooth or any other that works with torque pro
• A laptop with software like excel or LibreOffice calc, A paper and pen should also work
• A charger capable of charging a battery of 6 NIMH cells (Battery means in series), I use the SKYRC imax B6 mini
• Car headlight lamps (To drain the batteries)

Like everyone else, it all started with CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM STOP THE VEHICLE IN A SAFE PLACE getting displayed on my center “multi information display / instrument panel” or MID for short.

Connecting the OBD2 adapter resulted in fault code (P0a80) other relevant codes might display with P0a80 such as p3011, p3012, p3013 etc. which should point you to the failing module pairs that are causing the failure. in my case, I only had the P0a80.

Prius battery terminology (As per Toyota)

Hybrid battery: the whole Prius traction battery pack of 28 modules
Module Pair: the car reads voltages of modules in pairs, So voltages of the 28 modules in a Prius battery are reported to the car as 14 values, meaning every 2 modules are read together as the sum of the voltage of those 2 modules.
Battery Module: in a Prius battery, every 6 cells are enclosed in a sealed container called a module, this is why you don’t directly see the cells, a module’s nominal voltage is 7.2, which is the nominal voltage of 1 cell multiplied by 6.
Battery Cell: A 1.2V NIMH cell that you will not see because it is hidden inside a module.

So, without further ado, let us get started

Diagnosis, which modules are bad

Before we take the battery out, we can save a hell lot of time by looking at what the car has to say about it’s battery pack.

I have broken this down to steps you see below

• Install torque pro to your phone (android in my case)
• Download the Prius 3rd Gen PIDs file by clicking here
• extract the file you have just downloaded to the (/.torque/extendedpids) directory in your phone
• Open torque pro, and go to the Menu -> Settings -> Manage extra PIDs/Sensors -> Menu -> Add predefined set.
• Create an Realtime Information page in torque pro to display battery voltages in real time such as the one below, you start with an empty page, then add (tiny) displays corresponding to voltages of individual modules, I personally like to add the Min and Max voltage entries to make it easier to know when you have found what you are looking for while driving without having to scan through the batteries
• Clear the error code, switch the car off then on again, the car should now appear to be working fine as if the battery is okay, this is obviously just for the test as the car will soon find out the problem again and inform you of your problem
• Now, once connected and information is displayed, find a nice uphill climb that is not too steep, with no traffic, at the bottom of that climb, floor the break and gas pedal at the same time, this will charge the battery, then on EV, start climbing wile recording your phone screen, the battery should drain really fast and you will either hear the engine running, or the “Check hybrid system” message should appear again, either way, you now have a reading of which batteries drained very fast…
• Inspect the recorded screen recording, and figure out which modules are the ones causing the problem, please note that there may be other modules in bad shape, but for now, the worst ones are clear

Taking the battery out of the car

To be able to pull the battery out of the car, you will need to take the following steps

Some theory

The 20% to 80%

Q: Why does the car consider the battery fully charged at 80%, and depleted at 20% of the batteries actual capacity ?

A- Why the 80% cap ?

Let us start with why it caps at 80% ! (At 80 percent, 100% will display on your instrument cluster)

The most common theory (that i don’t find convincing) is that the car wants to leave headroom for regenerative breaking, if it were so, why does it start using the gas engine’s breaking at 80% ? burning fuel, and defeating the purpose of regenerative breaking ?

My own theory is that there are multiple reasons, of which the headroom theory above is not one… here are the reasons i expect the car was designed this way

1- NIMH batteries heat up once you are charging above 80%, which is wasted energy, so the car is expected to try an use up the battery back down to the happy 6/8 area.
2- Heat is bad for the module’s health, and the health of the modules around it (See 1)
3- When modules in module pairs become mismatched health wise, this 20% headroom spares the weaker cell the overcharge and the damage associated with it., illustration will be added soon.

B- And the 20% depletion mark ?
NIMH cells can be depleted to ZERO, in fact, the company that makes the enelope batteries for Panasonic calls depleting the battery to zero and then charging it again a refresh function.

The area between 0.9V and zero volts has very little energy, as most energy is delivered between 1.3 and 1 volt, but still, this area is much less than 20% ! so why 20%

1- Unlike gas cars, hybrid vehicles do not have a 12V starter motor, the gas engine in a hybrid car is started by the electric motor itself, the same one used to propel the car is used to start the engine, if the battery falls below 20%, especially as batteries start to age, there will not be enough power to start the engine, more to that, the batteries have internal resistance, so the car needs to be sure that when it is parked for a few days (or months), it will have enough traction battery power to start the gas engine.

Before diving in the list, I must mention that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Coppertone, water proof, SPF50 HERE

So, I will start by dropping a few keywords here, and what they are about, that will probably help you start, I am compiling this as a guideline on where to start

• VQGAN (Vector Quantized Generative Adversarial Network / neural network) : The software that generates the image
• CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training / neural network) : Software to influence a generated image based on input text (User prompt)
• VQGAN+CLIP : Two neural network pieces of software that work in tandem.
• CLIP-Guided-Diffusion: A technique for doing text-to-image synthesis cheaply using pre-trained CLIP and diffusion models.
• Google colab notebook: A tool made by google where you can run python code and utilize google’s GPUs, both paid and free exist

I am writing a post about this device because I was positively surprised by it

I have a TV connected to an android TV box, neither the TV nor the android box have bluetooth, So i have tried quite a few bluetooth transmitters, where you connect the AUX jack from the TV out to the transmitter, and the transmitter automatically pairs with the bluetooth speakers, never went well, either the voice is really bad, or it does not work, this is all until i found this little cool guy

So, how those transmitters usually work is you power the thing from USB, then connect the auxiliary jack, to my surprise, even though this did have a 3.5MM aux jack, it was detected by my android box as a USB sound card, and it worked without me doing anything

It doubles as a BT receiver too, but those are all over the place, and not exactly why i like this, So now it is clear what they mean by 3IN1, it has a jack for input, output and also works as USB sound ! Amazing stuff

I will here assume you already have a remote Linux machine that you can SSH into with putty, the instructions are simple from this point on

Putty Setup

1- Basic putty settings, assuming you have already downloaded putty from chiark.greenend.org.uk, now open putty, enter the IP of the server you wish to tunnel through, and save it with a name, the steps are…
– Open putty,
– enter the IP of your remote machine
– give it a name of your choice
– save (You don’t need to save now, you will save again in a bit, but you can do it anyway)

2- Go to Connection and expand it, then expand SSH, then select Tunnels, this will show a dialogue such as the below, fill in the data as follows

• A Source port between 1025-65536 (of your choice), i chose 8081 but you can chose any other in that range
• Check Dynamic and Auto, the click Add

3- From the menu on the left, go back to Session, and click the save button again (So that the new tunnel settings are saved for next time)

4- You are almost done, Now double click the saved session name or select it and hit open, the remote machine should now prompt you to enter a username and a password, once you enter those, you have a tunnel ready on your localhost (127.0.0.1) on port 8081, next we will setup Firefox to use that tunnel

Firefox setup

1- Go to firefox settings (Click the accordion menu to the right, and chose settings), once open, scroll down under general, until you find the Network Settings section, click the settings button in that section

Clicking settings above will show the following popup dialogue, setup your system as follows

• Manual Proxy Configuration
• SOCKS Host enter 127.0.0.1 and in the port area of that the port we chose in putty (In my case, 8081)
• Optional – Add the IP address ranges of the IPs that you do not want to have tunneled through the remote machine
• For more privacy, and sometimes functionality (When access is blocked from abroad), make sure you tunnel your DNS queries as well (See checkbox below)

Now, to verify that you are conencted to the remote machine, google the following

what is my ip

and google should tell you what your IP address is, at this stage, it should be the same as the remote machine’s IP (Not yours)