Something you received’t learn in critiques of pricy 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 these days taking note of. After they’re discharged, they all of sudden 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, it’s possible you’ll to find your self being shouted at and compelled to fumble round with wires, silently pleading for name members to attend whilst you exchange over to another headset.
[MisterHW] determined to dig in and determine the right way to paintings round a minimum of one of the crucial shortcomings. Naturally, the “no fee whilst the use of” prohibit appeared like low-hanging fruit, and a hefty usability development too – plus, he suspected the fee cutoff to be covering noise problems already plentiful on those headphones. Some painful disassembly later, he used to be examining the charger IC , the MP2625, accountable for energy control. Its indicators had been related to the MCU the use of via-in-pad – and a few pads needed to be minimize in part to disconnect the vias.
Then again, the onerous pad reducing and next cautious soldering didn’t develop into fruitful. Even with exterior regulate of the output inhibition pins, the shutoff nonetheless persisted – one thing affected the circuit, whether or not it used to be VBUS detection, another overlooked via-connected pins at the charger, or sensing on D+/D-. About to expire of lifestyles drive 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 tense – 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 intrude with voicecalls up to the screaming and compelled shutoffs do. With a bit of luck, Sony sooner or later learns to check their headphones by way of having people use them – it’s a ways from the one gripes with this lineup, finally. We additionally hope that the voice notifications shall be conquered sooner or later – this summer season, 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 standard module, repurposing them could be even more uncomplicated than that!
Introducing Sonγ HW-1000XM3 !
– MagSafe Charger give a boost to
– low noise charging all over(!) 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