To My Readers



If this is the first time you're visiting my blog, thank you. Whether you're interested or just curious to find out about PCB reverse engineering (PCB-RE), I hope you'll find something useful here.

This blog contains many snippets of the content in my books to provide a more detailed overall sampling for my would-be readers to be better informed before making the purchase. Of course, the book contains more photos and nice illustrations, as evidence from its cover page. Hopefully, this online trailer version will whet your appetite enough to want to get a copy for yourself.

Top Review

I started doing component level repair of electronics with (and without) schematics more than 40 years ago, which activity often involves reverse-engineering of printed circuit boards. Although over the years my technical interests have shifted into particle beam instrumentation, electron microscopy, and focused ion beam technology fields, till this day——and more often than not——PCB repairs have returned multiple multi-million-dollar accelerators, FIB, and SEM instruments back to operation, delivering great satisfaction and some profit.

Many of the methods described by Keng Tiong in great details are similar to the approaches I've developed, but some of the techniques are different, and as effective and useful as efficient and practical. Systematic approach and collection of useful information presented in his books are not only invaluable for a novice approaching PCB-level reverse engineering, but also very interesting reading and hands-on reference for professionals.

Focus on reverse engineering instead of original design provides unique perspective into workings of electronics, and in my opinion books by Keng Tiong (I've got all three of them) are must-read for anybody trying to develop good understanding of electronics——together with writings by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, Phil Hobbs, Jim Williams, Bob Pease, Howard Johnson and Martin Graham, Sam Goldwasser, and other world's top electronics experts.

Valery Ray
Particle Beam Systems Technologist

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

A Special Meetup

A few days before I flew off to Taiwan for holiday with my wife, I received a message from Antriksh, founder of Hardwear.io, via LinkedIn. He told me he'd be coming to Singapore on a business visit and would like to meet up with me, and have me sign my books. I was delighted, of course.

Soon after returning from my overseas trip, I fixed a lunch date with him on July 18 at City Hall station which is central. Well, he didn't come alone but had a friend, Aseem, the co-founder of Hardwear.io, in company. Being the host, I treated them to lunch at the Coffee Club in Raffles City.


We had a good time sharing our personal stories in the career journey we undertook. I also got to know about the nature of their business proposals to the various government agencies on IoT security solutions. As a surprise, Antrisksh brought some souvenirs from the recent Hardwear.io USA 2023 conference for me, two T-shirts,  two luggage tags, a tout bag and a mini hand carrier.

It was an hour-and-a-half meetup and they were off to meet Bunny Huang, author of The Hardware Hacker book. Before we parted ways, Antrisksh asked if I would be interested to give a four-hour presentation and workshop at the next Hardwear.io conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands sometime in November. I felt honored to be invited and told him I will work out something and plan my schedule. It's still preliminary at this stage, though my incentive for going will be to meet Joe Grand in person there.

Maybe someday,  I will link up with Bunny Huang and meet him over coffee. After all, we're both living in the same city-state, though our paths have not crossed so far. Life is full of surprises, so who knows...?


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