Newbie: How to identify a chip on a board, what is the best strategy?

Question

I would like to learn. What is the procedure/steps to identify a chip on a board.

• Are there recommended website to identify the component (manufacturer website finder, AI image recognition, ...) ?
• What if the label is difficult to read, can we just try all possible thght combination ?
• Is there any special recommendations other than just typing the chip label in google ?

Example (but it can by any other one): I would like to find information about the chip (1) see picture.

• I'm not sure about the label, something like "1141AN61 ST AK024" (this is the best image I could take ...)
• Google gives nothing (i tried different combination)
• I tried STM website but it doesn't help.

I tried to search the forum, but only found direct answers for chip identification, no real procedure.

Any hint is welcomed !!!

Answer 1

In this particular case, the problem is the bad picture. Identifying the markings correctly is very important, because otherwise you're searching for parts that don't exist. Get a decent macro camera or microscope to make your life easier.

In your question you claim the markings are 1141AN61 ST AK024. Just by looking at your bad quality picture, I can tell that this is not correct. The first letter is not really readable, but I can tell that it's not a "1" because it's missing the little marker at the bottom that all the other 1s have. Also the "N" is very clearly a "M".

Next we have to identify the relevant information. ST is clearly the STM logo as you found yourself. This leaves us with ?141AM61 and AK024. One of these is probably a product code or number. The other something irrelevant like a date or lot code. To identify what is what I try to look at similar parts from the same manufacturer. The package is SO-8 or something similar, so I search for pictures of the package from STM. I find lcsc.com very helpful for this, because they have standardized pictures of a lot of parts. This is the first result under the "Power Supply Chip" category (I'm just guessing the type of chip here):

We can see that the marking style is very similar. The upper characters L6388ED are identical to the part number. So it's very likely that for the part in question ?141AM61 is the relevant information. I also look at the datasheet to find out that STM calls the package "SO-8", not "SOIC-8" like lcsc.

With this information, my first google search is "STM SO-8 141AM61". This is unsuccessful in this case, so next I try to vary the search a bit and try again. I did this a few times until I searched "STM 141A M61". This was successful and I found this part:

STM8T141 capacitive touch sensor for touch or proximity detection.

(Source: taobao)

We can now see the actual marking is T141AM61. If we had had this information from the beginning, it would have been a lot easier to find the part.

Answer 2

Some thoughts on identification, based upon when I have tried to answer component identification questions:

1. Component Identification Question Guidelines on meta, which contains what to include in identification questions. As well as the markings on the device to be identified:
   • Context about the surrounding components can help to identify what function the device is likely to perform.
   • The type of package should be identified, which may involve measuring the pitch of the leads. Have seen aids such as PITCH COMPARATOR but not sure how well they work.
2. There is the question How do I identify SMD components? (or how do I identify any component), where the answers provide some generic advice. This is includes a list of logos for different manufacturers, and identifying the manufacturer can be the first step.
3. Some manufacturers provide a way to find product information based on package top markings . E.g. Part marking lookup for Texas Instruments can be searched by actual marking on a TI part, or by a TI part number.
4. There are also sites such as The ultimate SMD marking codes database which allow to look up device marking codes. However, it is difficult to know how wide a range of all possible device marking codes may be listed on such a site.
5. If you have identified a candidate device, looking at the manufacturers datasheet can confirm the marking code used on the device. E.g. due to small size on SMD parts the same marking code may be used by different manufacturers for devices which perform different functions.