Trying to hack coffee machine at work, anyone can help ?

[Nicholas Ursa]

Hey all:

At work we have these https://www.marsdrinks.com/solutions/machines/flavia-creation-400/ coffee machines with an LCD display. My goal is to be able to change the strings and bitmaps on the display.

Oh did I mention I'm new to electronics. I need impossible goals for motivation, it seems. Anyways, I bought a spare controller board for the unit on ebay and am trying to see what's possible. The microcontroller on the board is this one:

 * https://www.renesas.com/en-us/products/microcontrollers-microprocessors/h8s/h8s2300/h8s2378-h8s2378r.html

Which has this really hopeful line in the datasheet: On chip debugger(support E10A-USB)

But is that some kind of Renesas proprietary thing ? https://www.renesas.com/en-us/products/software-tools/tools/emulator/e10a-usb.html  I see a single debug test pad on the board.

The ultimate goal for me is to figure out how to modify the on-microcontroller flash contents. Then attach some serial to bluetooth adapter on my test board. Then one day, sneak into work on a weekend and perform the same surgery on the real deal so I can make a witty and haunted unit that I will be able to program with my phone while hiding nearby.

I'm in over my head, probably, but would appreciate some pointers.  Esp in person.

Questions I have right now...

 * how can I decode the LCD output pins ? I don't know what kind of display is should be (it's a 20 pin connector, so I guess it's not a serial protocol). Can I figure out the protocol with a scope ? What standards should I be aware of. The pins seem to be coming straight from the microcontroller with some current limiting smd resistors ? Also how do I solder in a larger connector to these tiny board connector ?

 * the microcontroller seems to have some direct storage access modes, like the microcontroller equivalent os of Target Disk mode. Anyone have experience with something like this  ?

 * is it likely I can power the low-voltage side of the board directly with a bench DC supply ? I see +5 and +12 pins, so I hoped if I trace back I can find one source ? I don't have an isolation transformer yet but I'm watching on ebay for a cheap one so I can work on this at higher voltage.

thanks, any tips would be appreciated. I've never actually been to NYC resistor yet. Is there a lab setup there adequate to work on this ? I think I have most of what I need at home but would want to know what to bring in if I need to.

n.

 

What I need help with:

 * help me spot UART if it's there.

[Matt Joyce]

First off are you familiar with RFC 2324 and RFC 2325?

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2325.txt

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt

Keep your coffee machine to spec.

Also you may want to check out ISO standards related to coffee and coffee related products...

https://www.iso.org/committee/47950/x/catalogue/

there are also several tea related ISO standards.

ISO 1839:  https://www.iso.org/standard/6493.html

ISO 3103:  https://www.iso.org/standard/8250.html

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[Luke Nilaratna BrownGold]

To be honest this seems like a huge project to take on for someone new to electronics. Reverse engineer a $500+ coffee machine would be difficult even for someone skilled in such things. 

Have you thought about simpler ways to achieve a similar results? Do you want the unit to still work after your modification? If it were me I would buy a broken one on ebay and then swap out the lcd display with a rasberry pi plus a tiny screen. You then could just copy the interface. And later switch the two machines.

~luke

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