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Help doing a reverse engineering of a circuit board
Shaydzmi:
Hi,
Can anyone help me reverse engineering this circuit board?
Thank you.
Dubbie:
I have found it helpful in the past to take high-quality photos of both sides and overlay them precisely in photoshop or some other image editor. That way you can see how each component connects to the next without flipping back and forth and trying to figure out which solder joint is which. This is not a must, just a nice-to-have
Once you have done this, you can begin sketching the circuit. You will probably have to redraw it a few times as you realise what each block is, and how it should "properly" be drawn. As you go, you can identify each component and try to read it's value. Failing that, remove the component and measure it. There may be some damaged components, and for those, you'll have to wait till you know what the circuit does so that you can make an educated guess at a replacement.
Berni:
As Dubbie said, you need a good overlay photo that shows both components and traces.
But since this is single sided it might be enough just to put a light behind the board so that the traces cast a shadow trough the PCB. Then as you draw a schematic just color the traces on your photo so that you know what traces you already reverse engineered (Either do it digitally on a computer or print it out and color over the photo with a highlighter pen)
Shaydzmi:
Thank you,
Can't you do it for me just from the photos?
Berni:
--- Quote from: Shaydzmi on May 28, 2020, 10:35:56 am ---Thank you,
Can't you do it for me just from the photos?
--- End quote ---
First of all you can't see all the comonent markings on the photo to know what they are, they might be BJTs, maybe FETs, mabe ICs, maybe diodes, maybe triacs...etc
Its boring work that takes a while, so i don't think anyone would want to do it for nothing. You can see where the traces go, so just draw it all onto a piece of paper. Google up all the parts to find what they are etc... you can do the boring grunt work.
Where you might benefit from asking on forums is for help understanding what each part does. Since you might get a tangled mess on paper and are having trouble organizing it in a good way.
And if you don't have enough knowledge to get this far, then you probably would not have much use for the reverse engineered schematic that comes out as a result, apart from perhaps cloning a product (And in that case you have the budget to pay someone to do the work)
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