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Tips on reverse engineering pinout of undocumented chips
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madmaxbryan:
lately, Mike (Mikeselectricstuff) has been working on a thermal imaging camera, and that got me inspired to blow the dust off my imager to see if i can get it to work. What i have is just the thermal imaging module itself, none of the control circuitry. I have sent 4 emails and 1 phone call to the manufacture with no luck, probably because im an end user and this imager is ITAR export controlled.

What would be a good starting point to try to reverse engineer the pinout? The imager i have is a DRS U6010, 640x480 25um VOx microbolometer FPA. It has 38 pins split into 2 rows and has NTSC output on one of the pins. I found some documentation for different microbolometer from a different company, but has the same number of pins, so i have a general idea of what mine might have, which is a ground for analog and digital, serial data and clock, 6 digital video outputs, and 4-5 input voltages. Any help is appreciated.
amyk:
If you could get an image of the die, it would probably help identifying the ground/power since that's usually quite obvious from the bondout.

I wonder if it's related to the Flir ISC0601B?
madmaxbryan:
An image of the die would definitely help. This microbolometer is fully sealed in a metal can under vacuum, so I would have to essentially destroy it to expose the goodness inside. im guessing x-rays wouldn't be able to penetrate the metal can either.
madmaxbryan:
I have started taking resistance readings on every pin in every possible combination, which is close to 800 combinations. im about half way done and i have found any patterns of short that might help identify multiple grounds or any other useful info.
T3sl4co1l:
Ohms is tricky, but volts (diode test) can tell you which pins have ESD/substrate diodes to which ground(s) and supply/ies.  Once you figure out the supplies, you can start by trying a little voltage on each, and see which ones are inputs/outputs, active/inactive, etc.  Between inputs, you'll have to make some lucky guesses if you have to figure out SPI / I2C / etc....

Tim
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