One Hacker’s Fight To Somewhat Give a boost to A Sadistic Sony Headset

Something you gained’t learn in critiques of expensive Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones – if you select them, you’re going to search out your self in a one-sided abusive dating. A button press or low-battery notification makes the headphones scream at you, ignoring the real sound quantity of what you’re lately paying attention to. When they’re discharged, they all at once emit loud noises, lecture you about how the battery is low, then close down. Oh, and you’ll’t use them as they’re charging – in case your voicecall lasts longer than anticipated, you could in finding your self being shouted at and compelled to fumble round with wires, silently pleading for name individuals to attend when you trade over to another headset.

[MisterHW] determined to dig in and determine the best way to paintings round a minimum of one of the crucial shortcomings. Naturally, the “no fee whilst the use of” restrict gave the impression of low-hanging fruit, and a hefty usability development too – plus, he suspected the fee cutoff to be covering noise problems already ample on those headphones. Some painful disassembly later, he used to be examining the charger IC , the MP2625, chargeable for energy control. Its indicators had been related to the MCU the use of via-in-pad – and a few pads needed to be lower in part to disconnect the vias.

Alternatively, the arduous pad slicing and next cautious soldering didn’t turn into fruitful. Even with exterior regulate of the output inhibition pins, the shutoff nonetheless persevered – one thing affected the circuit, whether or not it used to be VBUS detection, another disregarded via-connected pins at the charger, or sensing on D+/D-. About to expire of lifestyles pressure for this mod, [MisterHW] added a Qi charging circuit, powering a TP4056 stressed out in parallel with the MP2625. The mod, dubbed HW-1000XM3, made those headphones all that extra dependable and no more nerve-racking – charger and MCU none the wiser.

Now, all that’s had to fee those headphones is to slap a magnetic charger coil onto them, and it doesn’t intervene with voicecalls up to the screaming and compelled shutoffs do. Confidently, Sony in the end learns to check their headphones by way of having people use them – it’s some distance from the one gripes with this lineup, in the end. We additionally hope that the voice notifications will likely be conquered in the end – this summer time, we’ve observed a hacker firmware mod a Bluetooth speaker to make the sounds extra delightful. In case your headphones are in keeping with a quite common module, repurposing them may well be even more uncomplicated than that!

Introducing Sonγ HW-1000XM3 !

– MagSafe Charger beef up
– low noise charging all through(!) convention calls
– the standard USB-C charging that switches them off https://t.co/eqc4xv6lk6 percent.twitter.com/U92b7T3LJO

— Helge Wurst (@MisterHW) December 12, 2022