Codebreaker to help to decipher some hexadecimal instructions
Budget: $30 – $250 USD
I work with some components that have microchips running some basic instructions encoded in hexadecimal codes. The codes differ slightly from one to the other. For example, one might send the instruction "16" and another one might send the instruction "24". I have ran the hexadecimal codes through a hex-to-ascii converter so I can read the messages. However I don't know exactly what they're saying. Maybe you can help figure this out. If we can understand better what's actually being communicated, I may be able to generate custom messages (such as "20" for example). I'm attaching 10 samples for your review. Hopefully you can break the code and understand what these numbers actually mean. In particular I'm interested in the messages in green, in pink, and in purple. I suspect that the messages in purple may be some sort of checksum, and that may be the key to understanding them.
Do you think the purple area at the end is a checksum? If so, can you find out how the checksum is generated so we can enter some custom data?
Now to go into more detail about the spreadsheet:
On the top row of the attached spreadsheet, I've listed the output setting of each sample. Notice that I have three identical samples of "12" yet they have different codes. I also have two identical samples of "32" that have differing codes. Notice also that the samples intended for the European market have a "1" at the front of the pink line but the US samples do not. I've color-coded the segments to identify what they mean: The yellow segment is the same for all of the samples, and seems to be a common model number. The blue segment is the device's serial number. The segments in black contain only zeroes - I think that's simply unused memory and can be disregarded. I have not been able to translate the pink and purple sections into ASCII but I suspect they may be a type of checksum. I have translated the rest, and you'll see the ASCII translation in rows 19-23. I wonder whether the first two digits in the green segments might be the year of production, and the pink segment might correspond with the device's setting ("10", "12", "13", etc.). However, this is just guessing on my part. For your convenience I've attached the same spreadsheet in OpenOffice and in Excel formats.
Do you think the purple area at the end is a checksum? If so, can you find out how the checksum is generated so we can enter some custom data?
Now to go into more detail about the spreadsheet:
On the top row of the attached spreadsheet, I've listed the output setting of each sample. Notice that I have three identical samples of "12" yet they have different codes. I also have two identical samples of "32" that have differing codes. Notice also that the samples intended for the European market have a "1" at the front of the pink line but the US samples do not. I've color-coded the segments to identify what they mean: The yellow segment is the same for all of the samples, and seems to be a common model number. The blue segment is the device's serial number. The segments in black contain only zeroes - I think that's simply unused memory and can be disregarded. I have not been able to translate the pink and purple sections into ASCII but I suspect they may be a type of checksum. I have translated the rest, and you'll see the ASCII translation in rows 19-23. I wonder whether the first two digits in the green segments might be the year of production, and the pink segment might correspond with the device's setting ("10", "12", "13", etc.). However, this is just guessing on my part. For your convenience I've attached the same spreadsheet in OpenOffice and in Excel formats.