I spend the last 6 months or so writing an arcade PCB indentification system that can identify boards from photos. The idea is to upload an image for identification and have the system identify your board from just that. Easier said than done…
The system detects individual components, and creates a layout of the board. It then compares that with all other known layouts in its database to identfy the PCB. Boards with similar layouts will also be returned, which can identify variants, bootlegs and games that use similar hardware. The following image provides some visualizations that will help illustrate how the system works.
The system needs to know about every board in order for it to identify them, so I have provided a way for people to submit their own photos of boards to train the system. Instructions on how to do that on can be found on PCBIdent’s landing page.