Electronic – How electronic price tag works

displaye-inkrfidwireless

Today I was in Tesco in my city and I saw something quite interesting, that was electronic price tag:

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I don't know how it happend, but on a parking I found this price tag in my basket beneath some old papers and leaflets… It was very late, so I decided to take it home and give them back to Tesco tomorrow or the day after tomorrow…

Now it lays on my desk and I'm wondering how this device works?

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There are some printings on a sticker. A producer: Samsung, model SLT-EM005 and something very interesting: a MAC address.

When opened, there's a battery and PCB with two integrated circuits.

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Larger one SSD1623L2/W232BU and smaller SAMSUNG ZBS242QRF/1234 (or Z8S242QRF… very small printings).

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On PCB there's also a DYnamic NDO-VO text, a QR code and display that looks for me like E-INK, still displays price even when battery is away…

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The problem is, that I couldn't found any datasheet of that IC. That are only my thoughts, but there must be some wireless network of this devices around the store.
Does someone know anything more about this interesting thing?

Best Answer

The left hand side of the board in the 2nd to last picture contains two PIFAs (Planar inverted F antenna). Looks like one is 2.4 GHz and one is 5 GHz.

It appears that the ZBS242 chip is a Samsung SOC with a built in IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee radio. I can't find much information about it, and the pages I have found are in Korean. Figures.

http://eplus.co.kr/02_pro/sub03_04.php

http://www.kashi.or.kr/upload_files/com/%EC%A7%80%EA%B7%B8%EB%B9%84-%ED%94%84%EB%A1%9C%EC%8B%9C%EB%94%A9-%EC%B5%9C%EC%A2%85.pdf

Edit: now that the PDF I linked finally decided to load, it looks like the ZBS242 is intended for use in RF remote controls. There isn't much information, but it says that it will support an 11x11 keyboard, deep sleep, and a few peripherals. The image in the PDF had a part number ZBS240, which led me to some documentation for a development board with this chip. However, it seems that there is very little information available on the chip as it is likely a Samsung internal part.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/68363045/ZigBee-Reference-Board-Manual-v01

Edit again: I should have googled this earlier. The SSD1623 is a generic display driver chip with an SPI interface for a 96 segment, three level display. It also has a built-in charge pump to generate high bias drive voltages for the display.

http://www.solomon-systech.com/en/product/display-ic/bistable-display-driver-controller/ssd1623/

It also looks like there are provisions for a real time clock chip on the bottom left side, but it is not installed.

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