A bricked Kawai CA49 digital piano brought back over Bluetooth
After flashing the wrong file bricked a Kawai CA49 piano, Claude decompiled the Kawai Android app, found the hard-coded key that encrypts firmware updates, decrypted the update and wrote a script to flash the piano from a laptop over Bluetooth. It was working again within an hour.
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The full story
A firmware update on a Kawai CA49 digital piano went wrong, and in desperation the owner flashed the wrong file, which bricked it. Claude first walked them through looking for signs of life.
Updating from Kawai's phone app wasn't working, so Claude downloaded the Android app, decompiled its Java code and found the hard-coded key Kawai uses to encrypt firmware updates. It extracted and decrypted the update, then wrote a script to flash the piano from a laptop over Bluetooth. The piano was working again within an hour.
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From a passing comment or social post, so the details are thin.
- Hacker News: Related story, while applying a firmware update to my Kawai CA49 piano, I bricked it due to flashingHN commenter: jsharfPosted
The owner's Hacker News comment, with replies.