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NiteRider Pro Docking Station Internals

This is the inside of the NiteRider Pro Docking Station (a dual-purpose battery charger / headlight programmer) that came with the NiteRider Pro 1400. While using the programming software to set up the brightness settings that I wanted (to avoid another way too bright ride) I noticed that the base station appeared as USB VID 0403 and PID 6001, FTDI’s defaults. This had me a bit curious, so I opened it up to look around.

Beyond the charging circuitry, LEDs, lightpipes, custom connectors, and an unlabeled button (reset?) I found an FTDI FT232RL (U1), Microchip PIC PIC24J32GA004 (U2), Atmel AT45DB011 (U4), and a National Semiconductor LMV344MT (U6). I made no effort to trace out the board, but it’s pretty easy to tell that the FT232RL is used so the NiteRider D.I.Y. software can just talk to a serial port which will make it very portable to different OSs.

Perhaps later I’ll try and figure out just what the software sends to the base station for programming the light. Maybe then I could work up a Mac version of the program.

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