pcbRtg: PCB reverse-engineering tool

[Thomeeque]

 Hi there,

I have made me this small web-app to help me with reverse-engineering circuitry from some boards, maybe some of you will find it also useful. This approach is nothing new, there are actually already some online tools doing the same thing, but this way I could tune it to suit my ergonomical needs There are two demos, so it should be quite self-explanatory, but feel free to ask, comment etc.

http://thmq.mysteria.cz/pcbRtg

Enjoy, cheers, T.

PS: I was not sure which section to put it in, hope it's OK here.

[mark2]

That's really clever! Nicely done.

Quite a few times I've needed to trace a small part of a circuit, but not enough to warrant setting up images and reversing them, and importing them into photoshop... etc. This would make those small jobs so much easier (and obviously the big ones too)

[niektb]

I have a question, can I also align images by rotation (rather than X and Y axis)? 
And zoom in and out?

[Jarno]

Nifty! Pretty cool

[Ben N]

Brilliant!

[DavidFet]

I'm getting a malware warning on the link, probably a false postitive... but could you post it up on github?

[niektb]

I'm getting a malware warning on the link, probably a false postitive... but could you post it up on github?

Malware? You mean it is not secured by https?

[PRR]

I'm getting a malware warning on the link, probably a false postitive... but could you post it up on github?

Very important: what is saying malware? Some AV software is just buggy. Bizarrely there is malware which lurks and pops-up to tell you other stuff is malware.

"https" only signs that what you get is what that site wanted you to get. Any malware site can get the "S" certificate, and now for free. And fwiw Thomeeque's can be accessed with https:
PCB reverser: https://thmq.mysteria.cz/pcbRtg/
home: https://thmq.mysteria.cz/

The PCB tool is a giant Javascript. Maybe the malware app is over-suspicious. (Except the web is full of mystery javascript.)

I've seen Thomeeque around for over a decade. Very sharp guy. Even if you don't know Czech you can read enough of the page to know he knows pedals. Knows his electronics, and certainly could know javascript. It's not a hacker who cracked Thomeeque's account to post here, the top post is very much what I would expect Thomeeque himself to say.

If you can say just what the warning is, Thomeeque may know how to sign or seal or code the app to avoid the drama.

[Thomeeque]

 Hey guys, sorry for keeping silence, for some reason I am not getting email notification about new posts anymore, I did not know there is something happening here.

Thanks for all the praising, it it really pleasant to read, I am very happy that you find it useful!

PRR - thanks for what you wrote about me, what an honour! Exactly as you said, it is javascript application, it uses Vue3 framework (plus few basic libraries) and final code is built by Vite builder. As far as I know it should be harmless, definitely my part of it , but also those technologies I used are all open-source and used quite widely, I'd say they are under good control.

I'm getting a malware warning on the link, probably a false postitive... but could you post it up on github?

As guys already wrote above, please provide more info about the warning.

I have a question, can I also align images by rotation (rather than X and Y axis)? 
And zoom in and out?

At this moment you have to take care about the correct rotation and precise cuts when preparing pictures (for both demos I used built-in picture editing features of my mobile phone), but I plan to add feature for easier alignment in the future. For zoom you can already use normal browser zoom functionality, at least to some extend.

Cheers, T.

[Thomeeque]

Hey guys, finally new version (v0.21) allowing more precise "2-point alignment"* is up. Additionally there is the fast rotation action (by 180° for now) and maybe some more small stuff. Original alignment features were removed. Old version (v0.14) can be found here.

Please note, malware warning still may appear (I have it freshly reported by friend), I have not addressed this issue yet. Page should be AFAIK harmless.

EDIT: I have reported issue to https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/310170-why-is-your-software-blocking-my-site, they promised to remove the block. Also I have changed links inside and here to HTTPS 🤞

Enjoy, T.

*Mark two identical points on both images and top layer image will be rotated, zoomed and shifted so these two points align - see the guide.

[bloxstompboxes]

Very cool tool. Thanks!

[Thomeeque]

There is a new version v0.22

- adds Import/Export project functionality
- Flip PCB does not work correctly lately, working on fix (EDIT: fixed)

T.

[Skruffyhound]

Wow, that's really helpful. Thanks for your work Tomas

[Thomeeque]

Hey guys, there is new version v0.23. It:

• Fixes issue with big local files (images), where application could be very slow or crash. Also it is clearly indicates now, when image is too big to be stored inside browser's local storage and provides some hints
• Adds hot-keys for board flipping (Q) and rotation (W)
• Adds support for shared project hot-link* (e.g. https://thmq.mysteria.cz/pcbRtg/?open=https://thmq.mysteria.cz/pcbRtg/AlignmentDemo.pcbRtg)

Cheers, T.

*Experimental for now, used CORS proxy service uses cache and may not always provide the latest version of shared project. Workaround is to version the link (e.g. https://thmq.mysteria.cz/pcbRtg/?open=https://thmq.mysteria.cz/pcbRtg/AlignmentDemo.pcbRtg?v2). Also there may be some size limit (but I had no problem with 12.9MB project). Working on some solution.

[Chillums]

Very handy indeed!!    Thanks Thomeeque!!!