Transcript
Low-quality photo of a cleanly decapped chip with no resin around it, lying in a recessed rectangle in black plastic or ceramic. It is protected with some clear coat, and there are gold bond wires connecting it with 14 pins embedded in the package material. Two of them on opposing sides are connected and form a bed that the die.A structured square takes up most of the left half of the die and appears significantly darker. The rest is usual chip design with minor rectangular structures. The second photo uses crappy dusty lenses instead of digital zoom. It is slightly less cropped so it is revealed that the entire thing is within a deeper recess, possibly with a tab that keeps a cover on?
I don’t have a camera better than my phone, sorry, and the magnifying glasses did not really help.
The pics are purposefully cropped to make the guessing a little harder. The chip continues to work now that I’ve undone this.
You may ask follow-up questions. I will post the full story and pics once you guess correctly.
Please use the spoiler syntax for your guesses so that people can enjoy guessing with follow-up hints without spoilers! You really don’t like doing this, apparently. I thought it would make it more fun for people to take a guess even after someone guesses correctly.
I will do the same with any hints and answers I post in the comments so that everyone can choose the difficulty.
Thermostat
No.
Answer
A thermostat chip uses a big transistor to control a relay, and is usually integrated with a touch/button and display driver, and it can be inside a conventional package. The thermistor is usually a discrete component created with different technology and away from heat-dissipating components.
However, your idea that it’s a sensor that needs to interact with the outside world in a special way is not entirely incorrect.