This is a bit of a long-shot, but I recently purchased one of those cheap OBDII readers from China for less than a pint of beer. Unfortunately it doesn't detect the OBDII port on my Renault car. At the very least I have an OBDII connector to go with my Adafruit CANBUS board when I get around to it and a display and case.
However, I was curious about what's inside so prised the case open to have a look at the controller and display. The board has two ICs. One (top right) is easily identified as a memory chip, but I am struggling with the MCU:
Can anyone identify the chip in the centre or know what it might be? The only other clue I can give is that its about the size of a 16u2. The closest I came to an ID with Googling was a PIC C756A, but that comes in either 64 or 84 PLCC packages, but not one with 32 pins.
To the left there is a pad for "Download" together with ground and 3.3V, which might suggest an SWD interface? I plan to solder on some wires and probe it later. There is also a marked position for what I initially thought might be a reset switch. However, neither pad connects to ground and there are two adjacent capacitors to that couple to ground, so I am now thinking that this might be an option for an external crystal? But then what are the pads for? I am curious whether there might at least be a possibility to re-program this chip if I could identify what it is.
Anyone recognise the JL (or maybe JC) logo by any chance?
I appreciate this is not specifically Arduino related, so if necessary I will ask on another forum such as EEVBLOG.
Some Google digging says the producer is a Chinese company called Jie Li. The same Google finding says they use to fake mark their own chips (?). Generally they produce Bluetooth modules.
Thank you on feedback for the producer/manufacturer name Jie Lie.
I did wonder whether it would turn out to be some weird non-descript Chinese part.
I realised after I posted that SWD has at least a CLK in addition to the data wire, so this obviously isn't an SWD port but some kind of one wire protocol.
The device itself does not have Bluetooth, so I would not expect this to be a Bluetooth chip, but who knows. It connects to both the display and the OBDII bus, so it seems to be a general purpose MCU of some type. I do have various programmers here but its looking unlikely that the chip can be identified (especially as it seems that Jie Li fake mark their own chips ???) and even if it were possible to identify, it seems unlikely to be a known supported type. Since its a Chinese chip, I would most likely have to use the TL866II programmer, but for that, the chip would have to be unsoldered, which is not really practical.
I don't think that there is much point progressing this any further.
The cheap LCD display has an 10-way flat ribbon connector but beyond that, there is no indication of what it actually is, so there is probably little chance of being able to re-use it for another project.
Just a bit of information, many chips are called fakes because you cannot find data on them. When a customer buys a large volume of chips the manufacturer will put on any number the purchasing customer wants. This is extremely common in the Automotive industry and others. We use to have almost all of our semiconductors labeled with our part number. It made it much easier on the factory floor.
The same holds true for displays and other electronic/electrical components.
That kind of makes sense. Its an automotive product and they just labelled the chip with anything that vaguely relates to the automotive industry. I wasn't really expecting much for the money. Maybe it works with some model of car, just not mine unfortunately.
