Collaborate Disseminate
Is there anything more discouraging to the reverse engineer than to see a black blob of epoxy applied directly to a PCB? We think not, because that formless shape provides …read more Continue reading Oddball LCDs Reverse Engineered Thanks to Good Detective Work
The black blobs on cheap PCBs haunt those of us with a habit of taking things apart when they fail. There’s no part number to look up, no pinout to …read more Continue reading Epoxy Blob Excised Out Of Broken Multimeter, Replaced With A QFP
In today’s episode of Diminutive Device Technology Overview, [Sprite_TM] is at it again – this time conquering the HC32L110. A few weeks ago, we have highlighted the small ARM Cortex …read more Continue reading Heroic Efforts Give Smallest ARM MCU a Breakout, Open Debugger
We’ve been contacted by [Cedric], telling us about the smallest MCU he’s ever seen – Huada HC32L110. For those of us into miniature products, this Cortex-M0+ package packs a punch …read more Continue reading New Part Day: Smallest ARM MCU Uproots Competition, Needs Research
[Big Clive] picked up some chip-on-board (COB) LEDs meant for hydroponics that were very unusual and set out to examine them on video. Despite damaging the board almost right away, he managed to do some testing on these arrays and you can see the results in the video below. He also compares it to older LED modules.
The 144 LEDs produce a lot of light. In addition to powering the device up, he also looks at the construction of the LEDs under a magnification, comparing the older style that used tiny bond wires to make connections versus the new version …read more
When Sparkfun visited the factory that makes their multimeters and photographed a mysterious industrial process.
We all know that the little black globs on electronics has a semiconductor of some sort hiding beneath, but the process is one that’s not really explored much in the home shop. The basic story being that, for various reasons , there is no cheaper way to get a chip on a board than to use the aptly named chip-on-board or COB process. Without the expense of encapsulating the raw chunk of etched and plated silicon, the semiconductor retailer can sell the chip for pennies. …read more
