#askfedi Hiii, I'm trying to reverse engineer a PCB.
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#askfedi Hiii, I'm trying to reverse engineer a PCB. But doing this by hand with a pen and paper is not working out. Does anyone know of any good free tools to help me trace both sides and somehow end up with a shematic?
I'd love to be able to inject signals with a ESP to remote control the system makeing my old soap dispenser into a plant watering system.
#reverseengineering #pcb #electronics
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#askfedi Hiii, I'm trying to reverse engineer a PCB. But doing this by hand with a pen and paper is not working out. Does anyone know of any good free tools to help me trace both sides and somehow end up with a shematic?
I'd love to be able to inject signals with a ESP to remote control the system makeing my old soap dispenser into a plant watering system.
#reverseengineering #pcb #electronics
@lumiya First thought: XY Problem?
Second thought: elections? or #electronics
Third thought: what are you using now? Literally pen and paper?
Have you tried KiCad with an imported set of photos?
Or krita/gimp/inkscape might be better than paper and pen, especially if you have a graphics tablet not just a mouse.
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@lumiya First thought: XY Problem?
Second thought: elections? or #electronics
Third thought: what are you using now? Literally pen and paper?
Have you tried KiCad with an imported set of photos?
Or krita/gimp/inkscape might be better than paper and pen, especially if you have a graphics tablet not just a mouse.
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#askfedi Hiii, I'm trying to reverse engineer a PCB. But doing this by hand with a pen and paper is not working out. Does anyone know of any good free tools to help me trace both sides and somehow end up with a shematic?
I'd love to be able to inject signals with a ESP to remote control the system makeing my old soap dispenser into a plant watering system.
#reverseengineering #pcb #electronics
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@mxshift That's an interesting Workshop, Thanks for the link.
Especially the searching of the Chip marking was something i did not think of. -
I'm not literally using pen & paper i was using inkscape to try to mark things and follow traces. Though it quickly got to complicated and i lost the overview and made a lot of mistakes. The Graphics tablet would be a great addition though
Regarding the XY Problem....
I think your right i don't need such a Tool to solve my issue. My interests just steered my into that direction
The complexity is not high, but the right toolset is often a benefit to learn for future projects.In the meantime i also found a nice interesting tool that helps with alignment and can even output a Net-list (i still need to look further into how it works though)
Maybe interesting:
https://pcb.etaras.com/And yea my brain just did not notice the wrong hashtag it just autocompleted it to electronics in my head
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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I'm not literally using pen & paper i was using inkscape to try to mark things and follow traces. Though it quickly got to complicated and i lost the overview and made a lot of mistakes. The Graphics tablet would be a great addition though
Regarding the XY Problem....
I think your right i don't need such a Tool to solve my issue. My interests just steered my into that direction
The complexity is not high, but the right toolset is often a benefit to learn for future projects.In the meantime i also found a nice interesting tool that helps with alignment and can even output a Net-list (i still need to look further into how it works though)
Maybe interesting:
https://pcb.etaras.com/And yea my brain just did not notice the wrong hashtag it just autocompleted it to electronics in my head
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I'm not literally using pen & paper i was using inkscape to try to mark things and follow traces. Though it quickly got to complicated and i lost the overview and made a lot of mistakes. The Graphics tablet would be a great addition though
Regarding the XY Problem....
I think your right i don't need such a Tool to solve my issue. My interests just steered my into that direction
The complexity is not high, but the right toolset is often a benefit to learn for future projects.In the meantime i also found a nice interesting tool that helps with alignment and can even output a Net-list (i still need to look further into how it works though)
Maybe interesting:
https://pcb.etaras.com/And yea my brain just did not notice the wrong hashtag it just autocompleted it to electronics in my head
@lumiya @jaseg I would start with a functional or black-box analysis.
Is there a button you can press that causes the soap to come out?
Can you just solder on to the contacts of that button and control that with a transistor/relay/logic level out from an ESP?
If you want to reverse-engineer the board, that's a fine exercise, but not likely necessary if all you want is to automate a button press. A solenoid could even do it.
I use switchbots on some things:
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@lumiya @jaseg I would start with a functional or black-box analysis.
Is there a button you can press that causes the soap to come out?
Can you just solder on to the contacts of that button and control that with a transistor/relay/logic level out from an ESP?
If you want to reverse-engineer the board, that's a fine exercise, but not likely necessary if all you want is to automate a button press. A solenoid could even do it.
I use switchbots on some things:
