Patent ID: 8063765

Claim:
A system for detecting consumer abuse in an electronic device comprising: one or more sensors configured to detect the occurrence of an abuse event; abuse detection circuitry configured to receive indication of the occurrence of the abuse event from the one or more sensors and to generate a record corresponding to the occurrence of the abuse event upon receiving the indication; a memory configured to store the record; an input/output (I/O) port comprising a set of connector pins being configured to communicatively couple the electronic device to at least one external device; and a dual-mode communication interface comprising: a first sub-interface configured to provide non-diagnostic communication between the electronic device and the external device using the set of connector pins of the I/O port; a second sub-interface configured to provide diagnostic communication between the electronic device and the external device using a subset of the connector pins of the I/O port; and communication selection logic configured to enable the non-diagnostic communication by selecting the first sub-interface and to enable the diagnostic communication by selecting the second sub-interface; wherein the dual-mode communication interface is configured to use the communication selection logic to provide diagnostic communication when the electronic device is in a diagnostic mode and to provide non-diagnostic communication when the electronic device is in a non-diagnostic mode, wherein the diagnostic communication and the non-diagnostic communication are provided through the I/O port, wherein the non-diagnostic communication is provided using a first sub-interface of the dual-mode communication interface and the set of connector pins of the I/O port, wherein the diagnostic communication is provided using a second sub-interface of the dual-mode communication interface and the subset of the connector pins of the I/O port, and wherein the record stored in the memory may be read by the diagnostic device when the diagnostic communication is provided.