Reverse Engineering

Analyzing a battery powered LED tea light with 24h timer functionality. Discovering that it is surprisingly based on a low-cost 8-bit microcontroller integrated into the LED package.

Dissects a cheap multicolor LED string and its phosphor-converted LEDs, revealing shared driver quirks.

Reverse-engineers a whole-wire LED Christmas string that encodes data on the supply rails, mapping its protocol.

Can we reverse engineer the flickering pattern of a real candle to improve artificial candle LEDs? Measuring and analyzing the temporal light output of a real candle.

Dissects APA102 timing details to explain start frames, data forwarding, and reliable end-frame clocking.

Tear down of a simple external USB battery, identifying key ICs.

Analyzing and understanding the WS2812 timing, protocol tolerances, and hardware behavior to enable a reliable driver implementation.

Reverse-engineering the algorithm of a candle flicker LED by statistical analysis of its light output pattern.