Ask HN: Seeeking help to reverse engineer a PCB

Posted by Dlg001 1 day ago

We are a small manufacturing company currently developing our own self balancing wheelchair. We have been purchasing PCB gyro board for Chinese company to test the wheelchair. I requested they changed a number of parameters on the firmware to add additional safety measures to the project. They appear to be reluctant to do this work ... with no logical reason why, I presume they themselves do have access to its development.

I am looking for a company capable of reverse engineer the PCB we have been testing and gain access to the firmware and making some software revisions. Is this possible, are you interested in taking on this work. I welcome you thoughts.

Comments

Comment by aappleby 22 hours ago

They can't do the work because they copied the firmware from some other company's product and don't actually know how it works.

That other company probably also copied it from somewhere else, etc.

Comment by leetbulb 21 hours ago

Yeah. They, too, likely hired someone to reverse engineer it to make their own modifications. Let's add another to the chain. Surely the firmware could only become more "safe" with Lego block hacks. That's the point, right, OP?

All things considered, it sounds like the "gyro board" module is probably something that is OTS and already certified for use in a healthcare product. Wonder what the legality is of modifying such a thing in such a way?

As others have suggested, make your own or use a more ubiquitous module from the open source community. Integration wise, Claude can probably get you 80% of the way there.

Comment by 15155 22 hours ago

> I presume they themselves do have access to its development.

Bad presumption.

Just develop a new board with your own bespoke design and firmware, possibly inspired by theirs. If you can't do this, you shouldn't be in this business.

Comment by estimator7292 6 hours ago

Don't do this. You will regret following this path.

Spin your own design, it will be less effort, less cost, and you'll own the design. It is not that complicated that you have to outsource all reason.

Comment by dghlsakjg 21 hours ago

Which PCB gyro board?

When I think of "PCB gyro boards" it is typically a commodity chip like the MPU-9250 packaged on a board with the necessary filtering caps, etc, There is not any firmware to modify really, all of the processing is done by a separate MCU that handles the filtering and processing.

Comment by csnate 20 hours ago

Reverse engineering is my bread and butter. I’d be willing to look into this for you.

Feel free to reach out: uniform_solar.9i@icloud.com

Comment by iamflimflam1 12 hours ago

I would suggest posting a bit more information if you want help.

Is this an off the shelf or a custom board?

What are the components on the PCB? (The MCU, gyro)

Did they write some custom firmware for you?

Comment by iancmceachern 21 hours ago

We do this all day, would be very happy to help.