Deity 3 Pro Mic Won't Charge, Only Works When Plugged in

I originally tried to post this to https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/ but evidently I'm not turtley enough for the turtle club to post there. So I'll put it in my obscure blogspot post so maybe some search engines will catch it. 

So I ran into a situation where my mic hadn't been used in probably near half a year, maybe even closer to a year. I took it out thinking it would be fine but it wouldn't work at all. Here were my symptoms:

- Plugging in the light goes immediately green and it can be used in this way. However, no indication of charging, the light didn't change between green and red at all.

- Unplugging the power and attempting to turn the mic on doesn't do anything, having something plugged into the 3.5mm makes no difference on the experience.

So the thing to remember on the Pro models is that they have an internal battery. And in my case I ended up tearing down the mic (more on this down below) and got to the point I could get to the battery. When I took a multimeter and read the volts on the battery I read 0.6V. Considering the battery is a standard 3.7v this is not good. Although I don't know the lowest point these will charge at, I would assume its somewhere around 2v, give or take a half a volt.

The fix: I charged the battery in the mic up to about 3.4v and now it behaves normally.

The fix, detailed: Okay, so now the how I fixed it. First I must put a shout out to this video which helped with the teardown and will be my reference points in explaining it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMK8WWqICXU - Thanks DensiKen!

1:00-1:03 - Do everything shown.

1:03-1:07 - You do not have to tear off the metal screen, in my opinion this makes re-assembly harder.

1:08-1:12 - You do not need to pull the entire piece off as he shows here, however, the screws do need removed as shown in the next section.

1:12-1:35 - Pull back or just push your screwdriver through this material and get these two screws out.

1:36-2:21 - Skip.

2:21-2:25 - What wasn't shown in the video is that there is a small flathead screw between 0 and 10, remove that screw first, then remove the end of this knob. I accidentally pulled my entire shaft out missing this bit. It still works though, just much harder.

2:27-2:33 - This is a 10mm nut if you happen to have sockets around to use.

2:34-2:45 - Do everything shown. There is another screw not shown, there is one just under the charge and output ports, this will need to be removed before the casing will come off.

2:46-3:09 - Skip.

3:10-3:20 - What he started showing but doesn't finish is that there are 3 screws on the edges holding the circuit board down, you will need to remove all 3 to get to the battery.

3:21-3:32 - This is where the battery gets exposed but he doesn't go into more detail.

At this point you need to pull off the protective coverings (a foam pad and a cardboard on the positive and orange tape on the negative). Once you have that done measure your voltage. If your battery isn't a dead 0v, you can probably recover it (my experience with 18650 batteries has taught me this). The next step is getting a charge on the battery. I happened to have bench power supply that I tuned to 3.6v (just to be safe), I don't know the limitations on the battery but .5a would also probably be the safest, I let the battery pull whatever it wanted, which turned out to be close to 1.5a to start and dropping down to .5a within a minute or two. If your battery is at a dead 0, you would need to replace it. The battery marker on this unit is 10440, you might be able to replace it with another 10440 battery and solder in a replacement. I would probably replace the leads with a short bit of cable and hot glue the battery to the board.

There are a few solutions on amazon if you don't have something between (guessing on the lower voltage) 2.5v and 3.7v that you can destroy or be able to pull the positive and negative leads from. If you happen to have a desktop power supply lying around you could also use the 3.3v leads to get the battery up to a certain point and let the standard charger do the rest. Below is a diagram I found. Any of +3.3v and ground sets pins you can use any of the to start charging the battery. The important thing here is to not exceed 3.7v on the battery. To turn the power supply on you also need to put a cable between the green and a black as well.

Desktop Power Supplies

Either way, pull power from a power source and attach the positive to the end away from the mic (closest to the knob we removed in 2:21) and the negative toward the mic (the mic is the section in 1:36 I said to skip).

Using a plastic and rubbert clamp (clamp cannot be conductive!! No all metal touching the ends of the battery!) I left mine charging for around 5 minutes and it was at about 3.4v when I took it off the bench and tested it again. After doing this I pressed the button that is the LPF button (pictured below) on top for 2 seconds. The light below it lights up orange since i didn't have anything connected to the 3.5mm.

Button to push and hold for 2 seconds

This told me that the mic was working as normal. I reassembled it after this point and charged it as normal.

IIS 10 user account for writing to file system

Recently I was trying to identify what user account was writing a .json file from the web server so we can lock down permissions specifically to that account. Lots of articles reference several accounts like IIS apppool\{pool name} or the iis_iusrs accounts built in. Neither of these accounts were working in our scenario. After turning on file auditing and reviewing the security logs I found a frustrating but simple answer to my question. The account being use is just "iusr" for the write permissions on that file. I granted that account permission to the file specifically needing modified and suddenly it worked as expected. This is the equivalent of "apache" ownership for apache web servers. 

PrintNightmare, aka CVE-2021-34527, disable print spooler script

Hopefully by the time I publish this you've already heard about this PrintNightmare exploit. Going off of microsoft's post here: https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-34527 There are a couple ways to handle this exploit.

Say you wanted to go with the "I want to disable print spooler on all applicable machines" route specified in microsft's work around. Say you had a decent sized environment that you had a list of, or could get a list of. Now say you could powershell your life into happiness. Here's that powershell for disabling this service across a list of provided servers:

Make sure if you have print servers that you exclude them from your list!

#This list can be rather long, I've tested it with over 50 servers in the list. Just make sure you quote each server and provide a list

$list = ”Server01“, ”Server02“, "Server03"

#This is where we are going to get the current status of the service, stop the service, disable the service, and finally, display the status of the service again. This will prove that the service has been stopped and disabled.

foreach($server in $list){
#This next line just echos out what its doing, un-necessary if you don't care to keep an eye on the servers as it works through the powershell. I highly recommend it though.
echo "Starting on $server"
#displays the current status of the print spooler
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
#Stops the print spooler service
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | stop-service
#Sets the print spooler service to disabled
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | set-service -StartupType disabled\
#Displays the current status of the print spooler again
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
#Again, echos out the name of the server so you can isolate the server reporting back. This was just more of a sanity check. you could drop either of these echos if you wanted to.
echo "Completed on $server"
}

Code without the comments:

$list = ”Server01“, ”Server02“, "Server03"

foreach($server in $list){
echo "Starting on $server"
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | stop-service
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | set-service -StartupType disabled\
Get-Service -computer $server -Name Spooler | select displayname, status, starttype
echo "Completed on $server"
}

This is what that looks like in powershell:

Disclaimer: I am not a security expert of any sort. I do IT for a living and sometimes I just need to share cool/helpful things I've worked on that may be causing headaches for others. I hope this helps you. This information is provided as a guide and contains no guarantees. There may be better ways of doing this, this is just what worked for me. Please test this code in your environment on either test/dev boxes or on low impact production before full scale running this across everything. Feel free to discuss possible variances in coding in the comments below. 

Changing Management IP of Compellent Storage (SC4020)

 The following has been tested against 2 SC4020 appliances and been found to be an effective method of gaining access to the appliance in a new network.

Situation: Two appliances had been moved to a new network and their management network had not been reset. Thus management through the Dell Storage Manager was not possible.

Assumptions: You need to have a console TRS cable, understanding of a terminal client to use said cable, and the admin password. If you don't have the admin password you can make a fat32 formatted disk, make a file named unlock.phy and put the contents of "unlock Admin" on the usb disk. Once that has been made put the USB drive in the controller you connect the TRS cable to. This is not necessary if you know the password for the Admin or another full admin account. You will also need the IP address, your subnet in the form of a netmask, and gateway IP address of the new network.

Process:

Open a terminal client on your com port and hit enter until you receive the login prompt.

Log in with "Admin" (this is case sensitive).

For password use your known password, if you had to unlock use "mmm" as the password.

Once the prompt has dropped to "sn#####>" use the following commands:

shellaccess developer

ifconfig inet eth0 <your IP here with your / netmask at the end>

    IE: ifconfig inet eth0 192.168.0.10/24

ifconfig inet gateway <your gateway address here)

    IE: ifconfig inet gateway 192.168.0.1

That's it. Your management IP address should now be able to be ping'd. After that you will need to use the Dell Storage Management Client to connect and you can change the other controller through that interface, or you can repeat the process above on the 2nd controller. 

I did notice on both of my appliances that the top controller reverted back once I could get into the storage center, so double check that before changing the VIP address on the controller if its giving errors about "failed to modify object" when attempting to modify the Appliance IP. 

Clearing Out Shoretel ShoreWare Gear (T1k / SG90 / SG30)

I find myself needing to reset a bunch of Shoretel Shoreware gear for my job and needing to compile a bunch of different resources in order to get what I truly wanted. I wanted factory defaults and a 'zero'd out' configuration as well.

I did not have any dedicated voicemail switches in this configuration so take that into consideration when zeroing out your gear.

Start with your favorite telnet client, I use Putty.

Set your com to the appropriate com port and baud rate to 19200. No other settings in putty needed changed.

Connect your serial cable (or usb to serial adapter, something like this: https://amzn.to/387ki1W).

Power on the switch, or powercycle it.

As it boots up you will be looking for "Hit any key to stop autoboot: <countdown>"

Press any key to enter a command line, which will have => as your prompt.

To zero out the config enter these commands sequentially (or if you're lucky, copy and paste everything and it will all go in, I wasn't).

setenv flags 0x0
setenv ipaddr 10.0.0.1
setenv gatewayip 10.0.0.1
setenv netmask 255.0.0.0
setenv serverip 10.0.0.1
setenv host 10.0.0.1
setenv cntrlsrv 10.0.0.1
setenv autoload FLASH
setenv dns1 10.0.0.1
setenv dns2 10.0.0.2
bootc static flash vxworks
saveenv
reset

This sets all ip variables you can set as the login account, but much faster than navigating the menu, even copying and pasting each line.

Once it reboots, I check to make sure its valid by logging in with the following credentials:

User: anonymous
Password: ShoreTel

The password is case sensitive.

Then selecting 2 to make sure it shows the configuration set above.

That's it, if you're e-wasting these like we were, put them in a pile!


Sources (none of these had an exact copy and paste of the above, mine is slightly customized from all of 3 of these combined):
https://www.facebook.com/178036116151911/posts/how-to-factory-reset-a-shoretel-switch-sg-220t1aconnect-to-the-switch-via-a-seri/319857388636449/
https://info.lantelligence.com/technical-blog/2013/05/15/changing-shoretel-switch-configuration-via-serial-cable
https://www.shoretelforums.com/forum/shoretel-tech/administrators/72217-factory-reset-shoregear-90-and-t1k

Prevent Excel from Refreshing Data When Copying and Pasting

Problem:

When copying dynamic data out of excel when pasting the value pasted changes.

Solution:

Change the setting in excel to perform automatic calculations:

File tab -> options -> Formulas side tab -> Under the calculation Options, workbook calculation, select manual. Optionally you can shut off recalculate workbook before saving depending on situation.

Source:
Co-worker and tested with my own application.

Recursively Reset Permissions in Windows Path Using iCacls

Situation:

Need folders and files under a specific folder to regain all inheritance from the specified folder.

Solution:

Run the icacls with the recursive and reset switches:

icacls <folder> /reset /t

/t = recursive
/reset removes any modifications from inheritance in the ACL. By default, folders will inherit their permissions from the folder above them.





The final step in this is to give the primary folder that you want to push inheritance from down through the folders the appropriate permissions, all child folders will then have access as intended.



Primary Source:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22327776/using-icacls-to-set-permissions-of-a-folder-to-inherit-recursively