Hackaday · Creativity & design

USB-C Cable with Integrated LCD Teardown Reveals Internal Components

A teardown of a USB-C cable featuring an integrated LCD screen has revealed its internal components and potential for customization.

The cable, rated for 240 Watts and costing €15, was disassembled to examine its inner workings. The process involved carefully removing the display cover and aluminum casing.

Inside, a small IPS LCD screen is connected to the main PCB via a flexible flat cable. The PCB houses voltage regulators, a MOSFET for the backlight, and a microcontroller.

The microcontroller was identified as a Cortex-M0+ based chip with 64 kB of Flash and 4 kB of SRAM. This allowed for displaying video frames on the small screen.

While the current firmware is designed only for measuring voltage and current, the exposed SWD interface suggests the possibility of reflashing the firmware with custom code.

This would require non-destructive disassembly to access the SWD pads, potentially enabling new functionalities for the integrated display.

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