Computer

Reverse engineering a alpha ticker led scoller

Last Updated or created 2022-10-03

Cobra from the Icecrew got his hands on some Led scrollers.

But they only had a windows program to controll these, so we started some reverseengineering.

First we had to make a serial cable.
(Now we could easily use a logic analyser with protocol decoding)

Next i made a sniffer .. because we only had a windows program to control the display.
So we used a windows machine to control the display by serial, and using a read line to a linux machine to stiff the serial traffic

After some tinkering .. we got this

So we wrote some software to control it using Linux

Bigred and Cobra

Some code

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Get the attention of the sign
print "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0";
# Tell the sign to print the message
$message = "���������������������    ";
print "\001" . "Z" . "01" . "\002" . "AA" . "\x1B" . " b" . $message . "\004";
#print "\001" . "Z" . "01" . "\002" . "AA" . "\x1B" . " a" . $message . 
#"\004";

::::::::::::::
PERLTESTLED
::::::::::::::
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "\0\0\0\0\0\001" . "Z" . "00" . "\002" . "AA" . "\x1B" . " b" . "Test Message" . "\004";

::::::::::::::
PERLTESTLED2
::::::::::::::
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Get the attention of the sign
print "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0";
# Tell the sign to print the message
$message = "<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<";
#print "\001" . "Z" . "01" . "\002" . "AA" . "\x1B" . " b" . $message . "\004";
print "\001" . "Z" . "01" . "\002" . "AA" . "\x1B" . " a" . $message . "\004";

A few days later i wrote a controller using glade. (Could not find more code)

Some time later we found some datasheets which could have helped!

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