Curiosity teardown: SlingBox

Anyone remember the Slingbox?
It was a video streaming box that would let you stream any video source in your house to another location on the internet . It was intended to let you watch your hometown TV while you were travelling.
I say "was" because it relied on a cloud server that the manufacturer shut down, bricking the boxes that people had bought.
Anyway, I found this one on the curb, so let's tear it down and see what's inside.
There was a community project to resurrect these, but it needed some security credentials to be pulled from the Sling server, which is no longer online...
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This isn't the only way to do it.
It's probably not the best way to do it.
But it's how I did it.

[@eDoc2020]

AFAIK the Atheros 802.11n wireless chipsets not only have great drivers in the Linux kernel, they don't need firmware blobs. Definitely worth keeping. As for the product discontinuation, it certainly sucks. Apparently they started sending out firmware updates to brick them even if you got the third-party server working.

[@loveminis31]

Neat tear down. I got few mysterious boxes I should tear down and lookie

[@mihumono]

Those are 2 Gb - gigabit ram chips, so 256MB and 1GB in total ;)

[@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse]

Much more interesting than the tons of cisco set top boxes i have lying around. The card is on a mini-pcie slot. 😊 The RAM is 8 Gigabits, or 1 Gibibytes. The inductors for the ethernet port are galvanic isolators. Some modern rj45 ports have them built in to the port housing.

[@309electronics5]

Yeah i have not seen much Linux powered stbs that had wifi cards in pci form

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

MAKE a coffee table and embed it in resin, along with other boards.

[@95Comics]

take the memory and make your own flash drive!

[@danpedersen55]

You can solder a usb cable to the WiFi card, and use it as you would with any other usb wifi dongle. Just remember to put a 3.3v voltage regulator on, or you'll let out the magic smoke 💥💨

[@StuffJason437]

Also, remember it's a PCI-E Wi-Fi card ...

[@StuffJason437]

There are quite few projects out there on the Internet, that attempt to resurrect these devices.

[@pileofstuff]

There are, but unfortunately the ones I found all require some files that seem to no longer be available.

[@Derfboy]

4:28 That's an mPCIe (Mini PCI Express). mSATA also used this keying but otherwise it's mostly used for WWAN cards. As far as I know lol...

[@frankowalker4662]

My XP laptop uses one of those WiFi cards. LOL. Some useful IC's if you were willing to put the time and effort into removing them. (I would'nt be bothered either. ha ha) BTW, I enjoyed your chat with Dan yesterday.

[@pileofstuff]

I had fun doing that podcast. Glad you enjoyed it.

[@309electronics5]

"not much to salvage" often thats the case with most (embedded) devices. They put most of the functionality in the linux based os which allows them to easily add/tweak features and yep sadly make the device obsolete. The wifi card might be salvageable and the fan too. Maybe some ports and ir can be used to practice smd soldering. I have a lot of softbricked settopboxes that i or the manufacturer bricked and use it for smd practice

[@kyleallred984]

The Wi-Fi card might be mini pcie. Used in older laptops for wifi.

[@WanderingCactus]

There's a video on here of someone taking one out of a Linksys router and trying to use it on a computer, and running into driver problems, hopefully @pileofstuff has an easier time

[@snakezdewiggle6084]

I'll have it !!! Do you know anyone flying to Australia? lol You're never locked out. You just have to snoop around till you find A door. I'm sure you know the drill... If not, send 7 Canadian Rupees, in a self addressed envelope.

[@rickhunter1984]

What is the 3rd antenna solder pad ment to be for?

[@pileofstuff]

Can you post a timestamp? I don't remember seeing more than the 2 WIFI antennas.

[@mihumono]

Same pcb for chips with 3 stream MIMO?

[@LikelyLagging]

what a coincidence i just came into possession of a slingbox model sb240. i was hoping it was some kind of network music streaming device. While i guess it could be i dont have the knowledge on how to make that happen lol Any ideas on alternative usecases? or components i should look for if i decide to tear it apart? i love tech and tinkering but i dont really have the knowledge to build anything so ive been saving stuff for years for when i do decide to find out how to educate myself.

[@pileofstuff]

as far as I have learned, due to how locked down the software that runs it is, there is little chance it can be used for anything else.

[@LikelyLagging]

@@pileofstuff unfortunate. Super glad I found your channel though. Content is great exactly the kind of stuff I’m interested in. Idk how I never thought to look for channels like this. Cheers 🤘🏼

[@pileofstuff]

@@LikelyLagging Glad to have you here!

[@rolvs]

Today we use vpn. Does the same thing.

[@alanpatterson2384]

Not quite: you need some way of controlling your video source .