Brian] found that the Dot shows up as a Mediatek device under Linux using lsusb, and fastboot can see it and even confirms the presence of a locked bootloader. For example, he found that driving one of the pins high would trigger the Dot to mute its microphones; which could be useful for anyone looking to cover Alexa’s ears. Volutz micro-USB cables well over a year ago and I have had zero problems with them, where cheap cables would do well to last a couple of months.

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I haven’t run across many discarded usb cables that couldn’t have their fault corrected inside of five minutes. That won’t work because it’s likely that they’re also using “microphonics” effect of ceramic capacitors. after throwing away the *th micro usb cable this month because it would not charge my phone anymore, i completely understand the switch to barrel jack. Maybe other physical phenomenas too like miniscule oscillations in CPU’s voltage regulator – this can be sensed and decoded although voice quality is abysmal.All you need is a simple breakout that will connect through the existing opening in the device’s case, and you’ve got your USB port back. Recently Philips Hue bulbs got a new version with bluetooth and it can be controlled directly by Alexa through the Echo Dot. It was covered in the previous teardown, but there’s a physical chip that cuts power to the microphones (or at least, the ADCs) when it gets the signal.

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With Micro-B, the springs were moved to the far less expensive and far more easily replacable cable. Even better, it turns out the USB data lines are connected to the test points located on the bottom of the Dot. She’s in her mid-90s and partially sighted, plus the obvious mobility/dexterity issues of old age; so its a pretty ideal solution.People are lazy and would often rather spend unneeded money on parts that have simply suffered the effects of our handling or mishandling. My experience with kindle tablets, ps4 controllers and numerous other devices is that the Micro B jacks are way more fragile than their mini and standard sized brethren. Wild speculation: the ‘cover ears’ test point is in the same signal path as the physical mute button. Earlier models of the Dot used a garden variety micro USB port for power, which hackers eventually figured out also provided a helpful way to snoop around inside the device’s firmware. I’m more interested in hacks that uses Alexa, it’s almost impossible to make it use a homemade device unless you also provide a server or cloud-based connection.

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I did a teardown on a broken 2nd gen Echo dot a while back out of curiosity, and I don’t remember really see anything in the echo that would warranty high value caps to lead to this – It had an array of 6 surface mounted mics spaced equidistantly around its periphery (each of which has holes through the device) so doubt it needs much else for doing its direction sensing, etc along with voice detection.Similarly, i bought both her and my grandpa kindles the best part of a decade ago when their eyesight began to get steadily worse. During the 20 years I’ve used USB I’ve seen exactly one bad USB cable, and even that was dead on arrival, not worn out. If you really want a “cover your ears” feature I would suggest doing something more direct than setting some pin high. Once had a handheld 2M radio, and a packet TNC, with identical barrel jacks, except that one was *negative* centre pin. This is the same reason USB type A and Mini-B ports can wear out in ways that require a device replacement/repair – the springs are on the device side of the interface.

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Got to agree it seems pretty unlikely – i’ve built a few audio projects over the years, and generally found that microphonics only occur with med-high capacitance ceramic types (when tantalum caps are often a better fit). Having lost zero devices to bad USB-A/Mini-B devices to bad ports, but countless cables, I see the trade-off differently. Even if you’re not interested in restoring its USB port, [Brian] has uncovered a wealth of fascinating hardware information about the Echo Dot during his deep-dive. Spend 5 minutes looking at the connector and if you cannot figure out how it is kept attached and how that mechanism can wear or be distorted ask someone who can.

While they removed the external USB connector, the traces for it are still on the board waiting to be accessed. He’s mapped out many of the test points located throughout the device’s PCBs, and found a few interesting points that might be worth further investigation. If anything having Alexa glowing in the corner is just a reminder of that and it may serve to stop you from saying something you shouldn’t in range of one of the other 10 microphones you have in your house.