HI
I have a battery charger that gave up the ghost, and i pulled it apart to re-use one of the lcd screens in it (its a 4 way charger, basically 4 chargers in one case)
looking at the board I saw a 16.000 crystal on each charger, then proceeded to see a atmega 32 on each charger, and wondered if
A: I can use the atmega 32 as an arduino,
and
B: is there a way of reading what is on the chip ? I have noticed that the last 4 chargers i have had are all the same menu system and specs, it makes me think they either all come from the same place, or someone has copied their programming, I would like to look at it if possible,
well, if anyone knows the answers i woudl be happy to see a reply,
thanks,
B. You might be able to read the contents back if the lock bits were not set to prevent reading them back.
If you could, you would get a series of hex numbers back that would not be usable.
You might be able to Dis-assemble that and then have assembly code listing.
A. Perhaps. You would likely need a High Voltage (just 12V) to unlock the chip so you could re-program it.
If you check
http://www.avr-developers.com/ (if I spelled that right)
there are probably core files to support the chip.
i have been looking at the general board layout, there is a multiplexer on the serial pins,
what the heck does that do ?
I imagine it would let the device communicate with multiple serial device without interference?
its a bit wierd, it looks as if there is a transistor on one of the pins for the multiplexer, maybe it is just powering it, but the transistor is part of the circuit which reads the inputs for the 6 different cells being charged,
but off of the multiplexer i did also trace the tracks to some unpopulated headers, so i bet that is where they plug into the board to program it,