Feb 10

Disassembling a Sony Ericsson MW600

MW600

MW600

Some months ago I bought a Sony Ericsson MW600 bluetooth receiver to use when working out. Unfortunately after a month it started malfunctioning. One day during a workout while playing music it made a beeping sound every few seconds. I turned it off and tried to turn it back on but it refused to do so. I left it to rest a few hours and tried again, this time it worked. However, from that moment on I couldn’t get the MW600 to turn on reliably anymore. This weekend I figured I should try and peek inside, see what’s wrong. There’s a video on YouTube showing how to open it up but it’s not entirely clear at some point so I made a picture guide how to open it up properly. If you have a white version as is shown in the video I think the packaging is a little different so you might have to figure out a thing or two on your own. If you have the black version, this guide should be sufficient to completely disassemble it.

MW600

MW600

So, how do you start?

Make sure you have small cross and flathead screwdriver and a small box to put in the tiny parts of the MW600 so you don’t lose them.

I will try to give a little explanation next to each picture (click to enlarge) so you can comfortably take the device apart.

 Let’s get started! DISCLAIMER: I’m not responsible in any way if you break or damage your MW600 in the disassembly process!

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Remove plastic

Remove plastic

Remove screw

Remove screw

First of all you need to remove the little plastic cover below the microUSB port.

It covers up the first screw that holds together the port cover and the main body.

Remove the screw.

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Remove pushbutton

Remove pushbutton

Take care!

Take care!

Remove the plastic pushbutton to reveal the actual pushbutton.

Take care when handling the parts. I managed to break off the little pushbutton to power on/off the MW600 and it’s really easy to lose it!

It’s very fragile so make sure you handle it with care.

Remove clip

Remove clip

Another screw!

Another screw!

Next is removing the clip. Slide your fingernail between the two parts highlighted in the image on the left. While you gently add space between them, use your other hand to push the clip upwards until it jumps free.

This will reveal the second and last screw you need to remove.

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Remove plastic

Remove plastic

You can remove the other plastic part from the main body. Once that’s out of the way, we’re almost done removing parts to remove the PCB from its plastic cover.

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Remove buttons

Remove buttons

Metal thingy

Metal thingy

Next up, on the side of the device, there are Previous Start/Pause and Next buttons. In fact, that’s just one strip of plastic. Use a fingernail to remove this strip. Under it there’s a small metal thingy, make sure to remove it as well.

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Remove outer plastic

Remove plastic

The side

The side

Lastly, there’s a plastic part that surrounds the gap, again, use your fingernail to remove it from the main body.

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Remove body

Remove body

Remove call button

Remove call button

Continuing, now you’re free to remove the plastic hull, make sure to remove the call button in the process as it isn’t attached to anything else and will fall off.

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Remove cover

Remove cover

Both parts

Both parts

It gets a little trickier, try not to break the cover for the screen. You can detach it from the main body at the highlighted area. If there’s some glue holding bits and pieces together, don’t worry, you can pull it off without breaking stuff!

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The battery

The battery

Once that’s done, you can turn over the device and remove the battery. It most likely will be “stuck”, just use a little force (or use a screwdriver) to remove it.

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Detach flaps

Detach flaps

To remove the PCB from its cradle, you’ll have to detach a few things. First of all the 2 flaps on the left. Next are the “sides” where the touch-sensitive volume slider is. Lastly the other side where the prev/play/next buttons were. Both sides have a bit of PCB connected with ribbon cable so you can easily bend them without worrying you’ll break the entire PCB.

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Removed PCB

Removed PCB

Oxidation

Oxidation

After some messing around to remove the PCB (do take care as even if it can bend a little, the 3,5mm jack is lodged pretty hard into the plastic, make sure it’s loose before trying to “pull” on the PCB!

As you can see in the last image, do not use the MW600 for working out if you sweat! I used it for running and as you can see my sweat completely ruined parts of the contacts.

Whatever reason you had to take apart the MW600, I hope you found this guide useful, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Aug 21

Simple Bluetooth connection with Android

In this post I’ll describe how I got a simple bluetooth connection set up with an Android phone and Windows 8. You’d think it would work out of the box fairly easily but for me it sure didn’t, probably because I’m using a cheap BT dongle.

First of all, go check out this Android bluetooth code bit, that will allow you to connect and send/receive data over the communication channel. Make sure to edit the following line of code

  // MAC-address of Bluetooth module (you must edit this line)
  private static String address = "00:15:FF:F2:19:5F";

Here you will need to fill in the MAC address of your Bluetooth module in your PC (or if your PC doesn’t have BT built in, a Bluetooth dongle). For some reason I could not find it easily on Windows 8, googling said you could find it in the Address field of the Bluetooth module in Device Manager, mine showed “00000002” which obviously is not a MAC address.

To find it I enabled visibility of my BT dongle (easiest way to do this is to go to Control Panel and search for “Bluetooth”). Select “Change Bluetooth settings” and tick the “Allow Bluetooth devices to find this computer”. Apply the changes and turn to your Android phone. Now search for discoverable devices while you have logcat active (e.g. in Eclipse). Once the pairing is done, check your logcat log and voila, the MAC address will be somewhere in the log lines. I know this is a very stupid approach on getting your BT MAC but I couldn’t be bothered to dig through Windows 8’s multitude of (hidden) menus and options.

Bluetooth Settings

Bluetooth Settings

After this you should be able to “hide” your Bluetooth radio again as the Android app will be able to connect without any problems now it has the MAC address.

Next up you probably want to be able to receive data from your phone to your PC, this requires a serial port (COM Port). In the Bluetooth Settings window, go to the COM Ports tab and click “Add”. Select “Incoming” and hit OK. Your computer will assign a COM port for you.

In my case it was COM4. To easily test communications, you can download ComTestSerial. It looks a bit funky but don’t worry, it works great. Once installed, run the program and hit the “Serial Port” button in the bottom right of the program. In the dialog that appears make sure the COM port that was created earlier is checked. I left the baud rate and other options as default. Lastly, click the “Serial port (COM X)” button with a red LED next to it (X being the number of the COM port). and your connection will be open.

Finally, run the Android app and hit the buttons, you’ll see 0’s and 1’s being received by your computer.

COM Test

COM Test

And there you have it, simple serial port communication over a wireless channel. Now you can create your own software on your computer that connects with your phone and transform your phone in a full fledged remote control!

p.s. If you happen to find an easier way to get the Bluetooth MAC on Windows 8, please let me know in the comments and I’ll update this post as it seems this really depends on what Bluetooth hardware you have.