Ever wondered what DNS Requests your car makes? I logged one so you don't have to.

So, I have connected the car to a Wi-fi Router with Adguard Home as the DNS server, and here's some of the domains it's logged

(Sorted by category)

captive.apple.com - probably internet connectivity check, weird that they used Apple's domain

www.baidu.com - likely also for connectivity check

ntp1.aliyun.com - NTP Server

amdcopen.m.taobao.com - Seems to be part of Alibaba Cloud Mobile Push SDK, used for "内置的域名解析服务使用的域名", translates to "The built-in domain name resolution service uses the domain name." Likely an endpoint to get DNS records for the Alibaba SDK?

mpush-api.aliyun.com - Alibaba Cloud Mobile Push SDK

www.joox.com - JOOX Streaming Service

www.voovlive.com - JOOX Streaming Service

ogepodownload.mediatek.com - Mediatek EPO GPS endpoint, for A-GPS, which suggests that the car's entertainment system is powered by Mediatek.

cognito-idp.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com - Amazon Cognito endpoint

pre-pr-appli-jkrqewjbwvzc-1586392688.ap-southeast-1.elb.amazonaws.com - something on Amazon AWS

hu.acotech.my - Seems to be vendor of the Car's UI, according to this, which states "Our current software, the GKUI, has been a major part in selected Proton variants and models namely X70, X50, Iriz, and Persona."

api-beta.ecarxtech.com - unsure, powered by Amazon CloudFront

proton.utility.navi.neusoftauto.com - unsure

pwdserver.goodocom.com - Seems like a provider of Wifi/Bluetooth Modules?

tpeg.traffic.ls.hereapi.com - HERE WeGo Maps traffic API

Hello, this is just some quick notes from me flashing OpenWRT onto my H3C NX30 Pro

1. Tear apart the device that is held together with way too many plastic clips
2. Attach your connections to the UART TTL Flashing pads
3. Boot up the router and connect to the serial port with a baud rate of 115200
4. Select the 4th option that is "Upgrade FIP" or something like that
5. Connect an ethernet cable between LAN1 and your PC, note that the Ethernet port is down at this time
6. Setup your static IP configuration as the same you setup in the serial console
7. Serve the uboot FIP over TFTP
8. Once it's done, reboot the router
9. Now, you're supposed to hold the reset button for 10 secs and it should have booted into uboot and give you a web page you can visit to flash, but for some reason for mine, I noticed in the serial console it was looking to boot the initramfs file from TFTP
10. So, I instead provided the file over TFTP, and the router started to boot, I removed the static ip on my PC and visited the webui
11. From the WebUI, flash the full sysupgrade image, and reboot
12. Now you have a H3C NX30 Pro running OpenWRT!

Notes, I did this with a unit running the at the time latest "010" firmware, telnet was not available due to it being disabled after version 009

So, I was browsing Shopee during 1/1 and saw this listing which seemed to be for a DVD Drive, but also contained options for a 64GB or 128GB MicroSD Card. Link

In fact, it was the only thing in stock of said listing.
It was set to RM0.99 during the sale

Seeing the price, I fully expected this to be a scam, and picked one up out of curiosity anyways to see what it really is

(Image taken on 3/1, after the sale)

Next Day Delivery was an option so I chose it, and as promised, it showed up on 2/1, at around afternoon.

It arrived in a generic white padded mailer wrapped in grey "garbage bag" style wrap with a shipping label glued on.

The Product

Unpacking it, we can see the "TF Card" with a Class 10 logo and "128GB" written on it.

A simple plastic protective case was included

On the back of the card there are markings of

L95M
MMSZ128GS9T25-T0
XQH 4623 4D
Made In China

So, is it legit?

I inserted it into a MicroSD to SD Card Adapter and inserted it into the a Card Reader and proceeded to run GRC's ValiDrive

It's... Legit? No, it can't be!

I proceed to run h2testw

After about over an hour, it finishes.

The results don't lie

It does appear to be legit, which is shocking

I purchased this with the full expectation I was going to get something with like 16 or 32GB of real capacity inside, that has been programmed to report a false capacity to the OS

I then proceeded to run CrystalDiskMark

(Test performed using Realtek PCIE Card Reader on Gigabyte G5 KC, Driver Version 10.0.26100.21374)

The speeds are pretty reasonable

So, what is it then?

So, these must be some cards that "fell off the back of a truck" from a legit company right?

I booted up my old HTC Desire 816 ( as I needed something running Android 6 or older) and opened up SD Insight

SD Insight doesn't seem to know what it is, saying the SD CARD IS INVALID with a Invalid Manufacturer ID of 0x00 and "unknown:" OEM/Application ID

It does get a Product Name of "SDU1" and a Manufacturing Date of Aug 2024

Let's try something else

I then proceeded to flash Raspberry Pi OS 32 bit onto it and insert it into my Raspberry Pi Zero v1.3 to run James A. Chambers's Pi Benchmarks

After some time, we get our results

https://pibenchmarks.com/benchmark/100974/

(The speed results shall be ignored as the bottleneck is entirely on the Pi Zero's SD Card Interface)

It thinks it's a Sandisk Ultra MicroSD

However, it also detects that it has a UHS Speed Class of U3 and a Video Class of V30, which do not match up with a real Sandisk Ultra.

So, it remains a mystery as to what card exactly this is.

Conclusion

So, I purchased this card fully expecting to get scammed but somehow ended up with a seemingly legit 128GB MicroSD Card

With that said, I still don't recommend that you go out and purchase these as who knows what the quality of them might be.

For starters, you're not getting a comprehesive warranty with this, most name brand cards come with up to 10 year warranties, where as with this card, the seller could vanish at any time.

Besides that, these products could have come from a QC Reject bin at a name brand factory, so, they might not be fully functional in ways that I was unable to find with my tests and benchmarks

But, for the price I paid, I think it's good enough for storing non critical data such as Music files for a MP3 Player such as a Car Radio System.

-Feng

Starting 2025 with starting up a blog!