When working with test equipment such as oscilloscopes and function generators, it can be useful to take a screen capture. Historically this was done with Polaroid cameras that were bolted in place, but these days it can be done over a simple USB connection. [Majenko] didn’t like the Windows-only software that shipped with their Tenma 72-14110 function generator, however, and set about reverse engineering the USB protocol to create their own.

The hack was pulled off by running the original software in a Windows VM, while running Wireshark in the host Linux OS to capture the USB traffic. Once enough data had been captured, [Majenko] set about figuring out how the function generator formatted the screen data when sending it to the PC. Based on the fact that the data changed in length depending on what was on the display, it was surmised that the data was not raw, but compressed somehow. A hunch suggested it was probably some form of Run-Length Encoding, and this proved to be correct. With a little more digging and experimentation, [Majenko] was able to put together some code that netted a clear image from the device.

It’s a useful guide for reverse engineering image data, one that could prove useful if you’re tackling a similar problem on other hardware. We’ve seen some great reverse engineering efforts over the years, on everything from old video hardware to the Sega Saturn. If you’ve been diving deep into the secrets of software or hardware yourself, be sure to drop us a line.