@Dj and Community,

Based on my teardown of WowWee CHiP and the detailed circuit diagram that I found on the FCC website that I believe is for this toy dog, I am more convinced that there is a UART port on the larger circuit board that is located in the dog's body. I however lack the hardware and knowledge to go any further in interfacing and confirming this so I have a proposal for you all...

I was able to pick up both control boards - completely wired for CHiP off of eBay. In an effort to hack into and expand this robotic dog's capabilities with EZ-B, I am willing to mail both boards and the battery to someone on this forum to confirm the port, decode and then share findings with this Community.

I tested the boards and they are in working order. It is weird to hear the dog bark and see his eyes light up with no body. My posts above have details on what each wire lead goes to (motors, sensors, eyes, etc.).

Anyone interested and wanting to work on this please let me know. I live in Clarkston, Michigan and will have the boards in the mail ASAP!

Circuit-Diagram-2751406.pdf

@bumsteadsean

That's the wowwee Mip circuit (0820) chip's product number is 0805.

I reached out to my guy at WowWee. He’ll get back to me I’m sure - he’s pretty on the ball when it comes to this stuff.

@ptp, that is why I refer to much smarter people such as yourself! Great catch.

I did some more digging and came up with the following link. It has less to do with CHiP, but it is worth a look at as it contains many internal photos and descriptions for many other WW toys. There is even an FCC filing in 2007 for a variation of something that looks very close to being a Fingerling.

https://fccid.io/OKP

That’s their own micro. They use that for all their toys. Unfortunately, knowing the micro has little to do with the command set. If it’s not published, maybe I’ll hear back from woweee and put a Control together for the command set.

It also occurred to me that the protocol for the MIP may be the same. They most likely use the same protocol, since that's cost saving for development. Try connecting the ez-b to the uart of the CHIP with the MIP instructions. Use the MIP movement panel: https://synthiam.com/Tutorials/Help.aspx?id=204

@jstarne1 did you ever hack the Zoomer? Also has anyone found FCC docs on it? I found this, which is also from the Zoomer line but it's a horse apparently. Probably lots of design similarities.

I took apart the main chassis today to look around. I didn't pull the board out yet though. 

Once opened, there is a spring that attaches between the waist actuator and the top of what I'm calling the Main Body (this section). It's really the upper abdomen, so maybe we should call it that instead.

Then, I took off the purple plastic panel that protects the motor wires from getting caught in the spring / waist movements to reveal 5 motor drivers, each with ORANGE / RED / BROWN. Can anyone give their best guess on what those motors take in terms of power and what signals the lines are. 

I'll attempt to post more as I dive in, but it would be cool if other people here also post what they can find about Zoomer. Apparently there used to be an app? Does the dog have WIFI or Bluetooth? Maybe there's a handy UART interface like CHIP has so hacking is much easier and we don't have to circuit bend...

Cheers, Patchwork

Hi, I never had a Zoomer in hand to play with. I shifted focus to school for a while. I wonder if anyone else ended up hacking the little guy.