Handy Pinout?

Ive opened up my handy for the first time ever to try and clean/re-grease it and I found this:

Someone smarter than me, is this something I can use to try and hack my handy? Is this a serial port?
It looks like PWM for a fan but thats clearly not the case here.

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Handy is servo based, so it’s not going to be a PWM. I have yet to see someone create a diagram/schematic of the handy internals, or many pictures of them. So there is a chance that P5/4 pin area in the top of the board could be a testing header due to its area proximity or even for programming the board.

Not to jump the gun, but four pin serial always hints towards UART to me …UART - Wikipedia

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As someone who is not an electronics nerd. (Moreso Web Tech/networking)

Assuming this is UART can I interface with that like a serial COM?

If not, how might I try to talk to it?

Networking is quite fitting … UART is like an old, dial up modem, you connect to it with the right baud rate and it talks to you, like a putty/ssh shell … sometimes it does not even want a login … more of a debug feature … and the scary part is, a lot of things use it, webcams, door cams … etc … (personally i use dirt cheap UART to USB adaptors) Of course you could hook up an oscilloscope and stuff … but really, just trying a few baud rates works 90% of times

does it use standard baud rates like switches or a different set?
if its likely to use 115200 i should be good to try bruteforcing different baud rates.

Most of the standard rates are around 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600, 115200, 230400, 460800, 921600 baud, but in the end you never know until you … hook up … just make sure if you decide to toy around, connect the ground pin to the same device you try to talk to …

So UART works basically the same as a switch or firewall console port.

Yeah, basically UART is just an oldschool port to connect to whatever … its old, insecure, but it still works … (edit) as i said, you can still find it in modern things, webcams, door cams, heck even mainboards to some degree, its simply widely used to debug stuff

I like the sound of insecure

winks like a CIA agent You still need physical contact to the machine …

ill figure it out.

You really, really, wanna make me open up my Handy right now …

Lol I dont recommend it I have 2
one for experimenting and one for use.

Probably gonna open up the second one later to play around tho.

Is it hard to put back together again? I mean i really dont care about glue or stuff … i broke in enough devices … But seriously, you could be onto something there … you can buy dirt cheap uart to usb adaptors at like amazon or wherever you want … its quite interesting once you get into it …

its not that hard. theres a post on here that briefly explains it. hell I might make a how to guide.

Its a bit hard to put back together because the back panel needs to flex a bit. but pretty easy to take apart.

Honestly I just wanna learn how this things works.
possibly reverse engineer the instructions it gets and if I get far enough opensource an API.

Yeah, i kinda wish i could send scripts to the Handy without online presence and stuff, thats why your find sort of got me interested … but yeah, its not exactly rocket science unless they obfuscate a lot …

Also highly recommend getting a better grease for this thing. its way faster now.


this shit is amazing

Using Liquid Molly Silicone Grease right now, got anything better? I still want it sort of food safe … i mean you know where it plays around …

I dont think mine is food safe, but nothing comes out of the handy. smells awful but hey thats grease for you.