It’s well known that there are two versions of the 701 type controller available for Eberspacher heaters, the version with the blue logo is the official un-restricted model, while the version with the white logo is a version built for BT that restricts the heater to 1 hour runtime & has no diagnostics built in.
As these devices are microcontroller driven, I assumed that the hardware would be the same, only the code running in the micro being the bit that Eberspacher changed. This option would certainly have been the lowest cost.
Here’s the PCB removed from the plastic housing. There are definitely some differences that I can tell. As the un-restricted version has an extra wire for the diagnostic serial interface, and this board has no unpopulated parts, the PCB is definitely a different version.
In the centre is a Microchip PIC16C622 microcontroller, the OTP version in this case for cost reductions. (I may try reading the binary from this chip in the future, chances are it’s code protected though).
Below the micro is an NXP PCF8577C 32-segment LCD controller, this has an I²C interface to the PIC.
The temperature control function on these heaters is done via applying a resistance to one of the control lines, between 1750Ω-2180Ω, ±80Ω. (Very odd values these, not to mention no standard components can create this range easily, bloody engineers >_<). This is accomplished in hardware with a BU2092F I²C shift register from Rohm, which is connected to a bank of resistors. The microcontroller will switch combinations of these into the circuit to get the range of resistances required.
The rest of the circuit is local power regulation & filtering.
There’s not much on the other side of the PCB, just the LCD itself & the contacts for the buttons.
