Imagotag G1 2,7″ Teardown

Today I got my hands on an Imagotag price Tag, which is basically a price tag with an e-ink display. On the webpage they state that the tag will run up to 5 years. Of course I was wondering how data is transmitted to the tag. I was hoping for USB, but nope – It is some proprietary RF protocol on the 2.4GHz band. There is also a base station which can control a couple 1000 of these price tags at once. Unfortunately I don’t have one of those base stations, so I am not entirely sure how much fun this thing will be.

Of course I had to open it and take a look at the components.

Front View:

Opening process:

This thing seems quite solid, I guess you could drop it a couple of times without damaging it. It is just clipped together, so opening it is not very hard if your nails are long enough, or a small screw driver 😉

Battery: 3V, nothing really special here.

Board from Top (There are no interesting components on the bottom):

You can see the antenna on the right side on the board. The Display is plugged in on the left. On the bottom of the board are no components, but a couple of test points which may come in handy sooner or later. They look a bit used, so I guess that is also the way how they flash the chips.

Exploded view:

Now to the Specs:

• Wireless controller & MCU: CC2510F32
• 1MBit serial Flash: SST25VF010A
• Ultra Low Power Boost Converter: bq25504
  From the Datasheet:

  […]the boost converter/charger can effectively extract power from low voltage output harvesters such as thermoelectric generators (TEGs) or single or dual cell solar panels. The boost converter can be started with VIN as low as 330 mV, and once started, can continue to harvest energy down to VIN = 80 mV.

  So I guess this device can harvest power via wireless – nice.

• Clock: 26MHz

That’s about it. I am not entirely sure how I should process from here. I guess I’ll have to get my hands on one of those base stations. So, if anyone has such a device for donation, I’d be happy to accept it.