Circuit Analysis service?

[Swami]

I just picked up "Bike Concept" accessory for the European Xavix console called the "Domyos Interactive System" along with it's cart. It's a system I have been collecting for. It is supposed to be used with a Domyos stationary bike or elliptical with an FC400 monitor on it, but I do not want to import the bike from Europe in the near future and would like to figure out if I can use the accessory without the bike using other means. I opened up the accessory, and it has three microcontrollers inside plus the other circuitry. My question is: Is there a service where I could take a picture of both sides or the circuit which could tell me how the three buttons and inputs from the bike monitor correspond to the output wires and if it the inputs from the bike are simple contact input/output like from a Genesis controller that could be simulated with simple button presses or of some complex data stream like the SNES or usb controller uses, where I am pretty much shafted without the intended Domyos bike?

 

Thanks.

[CPUWIZ]

Don't know about a service, but you have a lot of people here with keen eyes and knowledge of circuits.  Kevin could probably smell the circuit blind folded and find the pins.  LOL

 

In all seriousness, how about you just post some high-res pictures from your phone or camera, of the sections that you already suspect?

 

[Swami]

25 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Don't know about a service, but you have a lot of people here with keen eyes and knowledge of circuits.  Kevin could probably smell the circuit blind folded and find the pins.  LOL

 

In all seriousness, how about you just post some high-res pictures from your phone or camera, of the sections that you already suspect?

 

On it. Here is a quick intro one. Print is super tiny, but I see if I can find a powerful enough magnifier.

 

 

 

top left 77A90YM; CD4021BM G4        CMOS 8-Stage Static Shift Register

middle: 430F2121; 77KG4; E0FNE         Mixed Signal Microcontroller MSP430F2121– 4KB + 256B Flash Memory– 256B RAM  16MHz

top right: HC7541; 7D7Y104; Un6733A      Logic; Octal Schmitt Trigger Buffer/line Driver; 3-state

[CPUWIZ]

Ok, 16MHz MCU with a nicely exposed serial port.  Good start for someone, trying to figure out what is going on.

[Swami]

2 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Ok, 16MHz MCU with a nicely exposed serial port.  Good start for someone, trying to figure out what is going on.

Just posted part numbers. Buttons are on the other side.

[Swami]

2 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

Ok, 16MHz MCU with a nicely exposed serial port.  Good start for someone, trying to figure out what is going on.

The rest. Part numbers and brief description for ICs added to top pic. So, there is another half of the controller with right, start and select buttons that plugs into this half along with the bike output; then this half with up, down and left. With 8 output wires, if things are simple, that would be six buttons, 1 strike/cycle contact from bike and ground. However, with the MCU, I doubt it. Scratch that. 8 lines coming in, other half has 4 out: 3 buttons + GND, so four lines from the bike monitor...most likely a mess. 8 or 9 lines out. First question: Which line out is ground out? pin 4, 5 or 8? Looks like pin 4 with C9 out is gnd, pin 3 out goes to U1, which looks like a voltage regulator with a large cap on both sides. It doesn't look like pins 5 and 8 out are connected to anything, but the board is printed on both sides, so could be.

 

With the MCU, would you have to know what the firmware is?

 

[Swami]

The right, start and select buttons on the other half of accessory work just like an atari 2600 controller, with 3 lines and a ground, with one line for each button, all determined from a multimeter. These four lines would go into the bike monitor and out with the 4 new lines of bike data. I'm going to guess with the CMOS and MCU and four extra lines from the bikes monitor, the four additional lines from the bike monitor correspond to USB 1.0/2.0 type serial output which cannot be easily replicated. Could be six lines to the actual console from the 9 pin out port are buttons, one is ground, one is VCC and the last is serial data, but (1) that serial line still shafts me and (2) the up, down and left buttons all appear to interface with the MCU.

 

Any insights or suggestions besides the giant glue blob obscures a lot of useful info?