Help Requested: Reverse Engineering PCB Layout to Circuit Design

lostmind

Dear All

I have been recently started to work with Reverse Engineering technology and I would now like to determine a circuit layout diagram of a charge controller from its PCB Layout.

Can anyone please help me with this one. I have uploaded the PCB design for your reference.

Please note that this is purely a hobby project and I highly discourage commercial personalities business advice.

Thanking you all in advance

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davenn

you just have to start somewhere at a point and start drawing out the components as a schematic. once everything is drawn out, and checked to make sure you havent missed any interconnections then you can work on tidying up the schematic into something that looks easy to follow

I have done this so often over the years on substantially more complex ccts than that one of yours

Initially I will draw it out on paper and once I have a reasonable looking layout I will then use MSpaint ( paintbrush) to do the final drawing like you see below so I can store it on the puter for future reference

eg.....





The first image the actual unit

the second image, a reasonable schematic

This board was particularly difficult as it was double layer
cheers
Dave

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davenn

Its been one of those 10 year projects to put this unit onto the 24GHz amateur radio band, It may never happen as other ex commercial gear became available that was much easier to convert

here's another example I did some years back.....





its takes some serious concentration magnifier lamp good backlight
but its often worth the effort

cheers
Dave

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lostmind

Dear Davenn thank you a lot for your replies...I am working on the circuit schematic...since this is my first one so I am a little bit confused...i made an initial draft last night and wanna confirm whether it is correct or not...can you suggest me any ways to perform that ?

thanking you again

davenn

post a pic of the layout on here once you have tidied it up, and if I have time or some one else may get a chance to compare it with the PCb layout you gave above :)

Dave

es1

Lostmind, Do you have the actual CAD of the layout or just the image? Can the CAD tool just print a connection report on all the nets and a BOM? Should be fairly straight forward to reconstruct a schematic from that information.

sophiecentaur

You have 'true grit' Dave. I'm very impressed! Much worse than the Guardian Crossword.

berkeman

Yes, beautiful work Dave!

dlgoff

Nice indeed. I'm thinking the paint work was the hardest.