How to start hacking electronics

[jehan60188]

got my hands on a keychain-lcd-picture frame thingy
there are 30 pins!
how do i figure out what pin does what?
thanks!

 

[jedishrfu]

You need to find the chip number and then look it up online. If its common enough the mfgr will have the pinouts.

http://www.ece.unm.edu/~jimp/310/slides/8086_chipset.html

 

[jehan60188]

cool, thanks. there's black stuff over (what i suspect to be) the main I/C, but there's another one with tiny-tiny writing that I'm going to try magnifying tonight
anyone else have tips/pointers?

 

[jedishrfu]

search on keychain lcd chipset. here's what I got:

http://www.insideelectronics.co.uk/tag/chipset/

and here's a deascription of the cpu:

http://www.sitronix.com.tw/sitronix/product.nsf/Doc/ST2205U?OpenDocument

and pinouts:

http://www.dz863.com/datasheet-8275...ntegrated-Microcontroller-With-32k-Bytes-Ram/

 

[Mike_In_Plano]

This is the worst era for hacking electronics. They've got everything tucked away in microprocessors or custom chips, or a mix of both.
If you have a dab of black goop on a chip, it's most likely COB - chip on board. That's where they glue the chip to the board, bond wires from the chip to some nearby pads, and bury the whole thing under an epoxy to protect it from the environment.
This is a very cheap form of construction, and generaly the parts die after a few years from slow contamination through the board.

If you want to get started, I'd recommend browsing the net for electronics forums, maybe buying a Don Lancaster book or a book about programming little chips, like the PIC chips. Also, hackaday.com has some really fun projects.

Best Luck

Mike

 

[jedishrfu]

And then there's arduino projects

 

[jehan60188]

@jedishrfu, my goal is to interface an LCD with an arduino (nano came in the mail today!)
I guess i should try to find an LCD with a built in serial port?

 

[jedishrfu]

like this:

http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/LCD-Serial