Ironically opening the gateway was much easier than freeing it from it's packaging. It is held together with just four little Phillips head screws. This little device is a bridge between the internet and the low power, 915Mhz wireless network La Crosse has developed. Using this bridge all the other devices on the wireless network are not required to support the full complexity of being an internet host.

I was disappointed to see they had put potting compound over the chip markings. What do they think that accomplishes? The circuit board is only two layers with no components on the bottom. The 80 pin LQFP connects directly to the Ethernet jack so whatever device they must have an integrated Ethernet MAC and physical layer. There are only a handful of microcontrollers with an integrated Ethernet PHY and only three that i know of that come in 80-LQFP packages.

The first one that I thought of is the PIC18F97J60 Family But when I took a look at the pin-out of there 80 pin device it just did not jive with what I was seeing on the board.

When I found the Freescale MCF52235 I thought I had my winner, and it may be a newer variant of that chip, but the crystal pin is connected one pin off from where the data sheet that I could find says it should be connected.

A final candidate is this Taiwanese chip ASIX AX11015 They don't have a pin-out online that I could find so I can't check it.

So the board looks pretty simple: an integrated Ethernet micro, it looks like their 915Mhz radio under the COB blob on the upper left. And 3 SOIC-8 chips, also with markings obscured. I would guess two of these chips around the caps in the lower right are voltage regulators and the one just to the left of the COB blob provides the modulation for the 915Mhz radio.

Not much more I can do here without knowing what that processor is so time to break out Wireshark and watch this thing call home