Dangerous Prototypes Open Source Hardware

EEPROM Data Miner?

February 02, 2013, 06:11:11 am

I have taken apart a number of devices (plug in power meters, digital bathroom scales, etc.) that log data to an I2C or (low frequency) SPI EEPROM or Flash chip. How feasible would it be to create a cheap module that taps into the bus, intercepts the writes, and transmits the data wirelessly to a PC or other central node? (Basically, it would be a very simple logic analyzer designed specifically for this purpose. It would be the receiver's job to interpret the data.)

Re: EEPROM Data Miner?

Reply #1 – February 02, 2013, 11:32:22 pm

interesting idea. Would you also try to emulate the eeprom or just eavesdrop on the comunication?

In our svn there is a project called buspiratedemo board which has the slave version of the memory chips (both SPI and I2C), This will give you a nice start.

Re: EEPROM Data Miner?

Reply #2 – February 03, 2013, 06:00:08 am

[quote author="Sjaak"]interesting idea. Would you also try to emulate the eeprom or just eavesdrop on the comunication?

In our svn there is a project called buspiratedemo board which has the slave version of the memory chips (both SPI and I2C), This will give you a nice start.[/quote]
Just sniffing the bits should work nicely. Doing a "man in the middle" would allow more possibilities, but increases the complexity by a lot.

Re: EEPROM Data Miner?

Reply #3 – February 04, 2013, 10:08:37 am

This could probably be easily implemented on Sjaaks favorite microcontroller :D the Arduino...

Re: EEPROM Data Miner?

Reply #4 – February 04, 2013, 03:47:50 pm

If it isn't too fast you can use the code from the Bus Pirate I2C sniffer to get some info out (port it to the chip of your choice). Another option is a microcontroller with a slave I2C peripheral that can be adopted for sniffing (I'm pretty sure the PIC cannot, but maybe AVR can as arakis mentions).

Re: EEPROM Data Miner?

Reply #5 – February 04, 2013, 07:43:55 pm

[quote author="arakis"]This could probably be easily implemented on Sjaaks favorite microcontroller :D the Arduino...[/quote]

o/