# Interfacing with a salvaged laptop webcam board **URL:** \ **Category:** Device Hacking\ **Created:** [January 21, 2021, 10:23pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436 "2021-01-21T22:23:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vandriekenoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7ab992/32.png) [@vandriekenoff](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/vandriekenoff)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 10:23pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/1 "2021-01-21T22:23:42Z")
Hi ! I salvaged a small webcam and microphone board from an old laptop that I had lying around. I'd like to use it in some smart mirror project, but I'm having a hard time finding documentation on how to interface with it and wondered if people here knew some more. ![](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/2/7/a/27afdb7a8712a0e191acd7ddb6c302376148763e.jpeg) The circuit board is identified as FE03FF-99. Googling that shows result to buy the spare part, but I found no documentation, no datasheet, no diagram, no DIY project that hacked this particular model. I found some other webcam board where the person just had to attach a USB cable as the 4 pins they had were simply USB (or 5 pins with two GND). My board, however, has 5 pins, and I don't know how to identify these. Is it USB ? SPI, UART, I2C ? These pins connect to a cable that merges with the screen's cable and goes directly to the laptop motherboard. I identified pin 5 as GND, but that's about it. So I tried to identify the IC chips on it. There's two big one. The first one is a 25L512OIG from MX, which doesn't yield a lot of result online. I couldn't find any datasheet. ![](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/1/9/c/19c37c5fe82af9be137df0b9b5486b7087aa572b.jpeg) The second one, I couldn't clearly identify either. Probably some kind of micro-controller. ![](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/7/8/1/7812843fbd0a3d5d27107d06ef8d1c4e57d0c7cf.jpeg) What could I do to identify the pins further ? I'm afraid to damage it if I give it 5V randomly when it expected 3.3V (or other). Any help would be greatly appreciated ! [Here's a link to full res pictures](https://imgur.com/a/yQ7Yjzr). I attached some lower pictures for posterity ! ![IMG_20210118_233238_light.jpg](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/7/b/9/7b9a7781901957aea28aecdc5e911681b5d47a13.jpeg) ![IMG_20210118_233302_light.jpg](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/5/d/d/5dd6bfb964ee4c29306a517c27b9094f36cb1711.jpeg) ![IMG_20210118_233506_light.jpg](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/2/c/5/2c5763a94fefd45a96698bc3629373ba5333a3a5.jpeg) ![IMG_20210118_233238_light.jpg](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/7/b/9/7b9a7781901957aea28aecdc5e911681b5d47a13.jpeg) ![IMG_20210118_233302_light.jpg](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/5/d/d/5dd6bfb964ee4c29306a517c27b9094f36cb1711.jpeg) ![IMG_20210118_233506_light.jpg](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/original/4X/2/c/5/2c5763a94fefd45a96698bc3629373ba5333a3a5.jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![wvmarle](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/wvmarle/32/1013044_2.png) [@wvmarle](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/wvmarle)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/2 "2021-01-21T23:20:24Z")
A tech forum related to your laptop's brand has better chance of success, if only because Arduinos can't do anything useful with a raw camera image. ---
**Author:** ![anon94801460](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@anon94801460](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/anon94801460)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2021, 5:01am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/3 "2021-01-22T05:01:23Z")
As a general rule, it is extremely unlikely that you will find any documentation for a proprietary part like that. ---
**Author:** ![TriB](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/trib/32/213938_2.png) [@TriB](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/TriB)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2021, 8:08am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/4 "2021-01-22T08:08:27Z")
There are lots of tutorials how to attach a USB cable onto a laptop webcam, to reuse it for any purpose. Try it with "laptop webcam usb pinout" or something and you will find plenty of pictutes and stuff! ---
**Author:** ![vandriekenoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7ab992/32.png) [@vandriekenoff](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/vandriekenoff)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2021, 8:14am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/5 "2021-01-22T08:14:50Z")
> wvmarle: > A tech forum related to your laptop's brand has better chance of success, if only because Arduinos can't do anything useful with a raw camera image. Yeah, sorry, I tried my luck here because I'm not sure where to go, and I figured maybe this part of the forum would know something ! > jremington: > As a general rule, it is extremely unlikely that you will find any documentation for a proprietary part like that. Still, I'm surprised that I can't even find datasheet for the two IC on the board. > TriB: > There are lots of tutorials how to attach a USB cable onto a laptop webcam, to reuse it for any purpose. > Try it with "laptop webcam usb pinout" or something and you will find plenty of pictutes and stuff! Thanks, googling that yields better results, although I can't find exactly my model. I'll try later today to find the correct pinout again, I'm pretty sure it's USB now ! ---
**Author:** ![wvmarle](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/wvmarle/32/1013044_2.png) [@wvmarle](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/wvmarle)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2021, 8:18am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/6 "2021-01-22T08:18:08Z")
Those ICs may very well be either proprietary or custom made. Either way there will be no publicly available datasheet for them. ---
**Author:** ![TriB](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/trib/32/213938_2.png) [@TriB](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/TriB)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2021, 11:09am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/7 "2021-01-22T11:09:47Z")
> wvmarle: > Those ICs may very well be either proprietary or custom made. Either way there will be no publicly available datasheet for them. That´s not completely true. The manufacturers buy those peripheral devices from just a handful producers. And as you can see, if you´d follow my search-term, the very most webcams are using USB as internal interface. With that, they are interchangable within different models, even from different manufacturers. So the USB-IC will be quite well documented and that´s the main part to reuse this device! For any other IC on that board, you´ll might be right, that there is no documentation avaliable. ---
**Author:** ![wvmarle](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/wvmarle/32/1013044_2.png) [@wvmarle](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/wvmarle)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2021, 11:37am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/8 "2021-01-22T11:37:50Z")
If so, OP should have no problem tracking down the USB chip that's on this webcam... or otherwise get a working USB connection. ---
**Author:** ![markd833](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/markd833/32/1186928_2.png) [@markd833](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/markd833)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/9 "2021-01-23T09:56:05Z")
A little bit of Saturday morning detective work here, but, searching for a semiconductor company called onix didn't reveal much. But looking at the top of the chip I figured there could be another letter at the start hidden under the epoxy. A guess at sonix revealed a semiconductor company in Taiwan ([sonix.com](http://sonix.com)) that produce video/image controllers which might fit. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/arduino/user_avatar/forum.arduino.cc/system/32/1140315_2.png) [@system](https://forum.arduino.cc/u/system)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://forum.arduino.cc/t/interfacing-with-a-salvaged-laptop-webcam-board/692436/10 "2021-05-23T09:56:51Z")
Closed on May 23, 2021, 9:56am UTC This topic was automatically closed 120 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.