• Cracking open the case

    Willem Olding • 09/07/2014 at 02:47 • 0 comments

    Opened up the robot vacuum to try and get a good look at what is inside and how best to make it do my bidding (I will try and put up some photos later). I am pretty new to hardware hacking but even I know the first step in any hardware hack is to identify the chips on the board.

    I am happy to report that the UTMARK X500 uses an STM32 ARM based microcontroller. The STM32F103VB to be specific. This is good news as there is a huge amount of documentation for this microcontroller series on the ST website. It also has a huge number of build in communication protocols including USART,USB,I2C and CAN. Chances are I will be able to use one of these to communicate with the netbook. 

    Perhaps the most interesting thing about this microcontroller series is that it ships with a bootloader build into ROM. By setting the correct logic levels on the BOOT0 and BOOT1 pins, it is possible to load this bootloader which is able to communicate over any of those protocols listed above and perform useful tasks like reprogram the flash or reconfigure the pins. The bootloader reference also states that it is possible to dump the current contents of the flash although I assume there is some sort of security build in. 

    In summary I have decided the next step is to try and communicate with this bootloader. I will try and break out the requisite pins from the main board and hopefully be able to connect a USB to USART and get communicating. Wish me luck.