Clint Stevenson and his son built this animatronic robot head for his Valentine’s Day treat box for school and wrote up the build on the Casco Logix blog. He relates, “The blog post doesn’t talk about or show the body of the robot, just the head. But my son and I are pretty excited for […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
OpenSecurity training videos
OpenSecurityTraining has released a series of over 100 videos covering Introductory Intel x86: Architecture, Assembly, Applications, & Alliteration. The full YouTube playlist of the series can be found here. Trainer Xeno Kovah describes the course’s focus: “Intel processors have been a major force in personal computing for more than 30 years. An understanding of low […]
USB Tester OLED backpack
William Garrido writes, “I released the USB Tester OLED Backpack today and thought it would be good for you guys to post up. It is an add on for the USB Tester for measuring voltage and current. With the OLED you don’t even need a DMM and can view the measurements on the OLED display […]
Arduino V3B-K magstripe reader library
matthewg42 has released this library for using V3B-K magstripe readers with Arduinos on Gitub. He describes, “This is more or less a wrapper around Stephan King’s code which has been floating around the nets for a while. I fixed a small problem with a potential buffer overflow if someone jiggles a card around while it […]
Controlling a high power RGB LED with Raspberry Pi
Thomas Sarlandie writes, “I have hooked up a high power LED driver that I designed and built a few months ago to a 40W led and to a Raspberry Pi. I had to fight the Pi a little to get clean PWMs out of it (without using an Arduino or external PWM generator) and the […]
How to use Nokia F-bus to send an SMS message
If you have an old Nokia phone and want to hack it to send SMS messages, this tutorial by Alex at InsideGadgets should prove interesting. He’s produced a detailed tutorial showing the hardware and code needed to interface a Nokia 6110-series with an Arduino Duemilanove to send SMS messages. The Arduino connects to the phones […]
Video course: Embedded C Programming with ARM Cortex-M
Viswa found this online video course, “Embedded C Programming with ARM Cortex-M.” The series of videos from Modern Embedded Programming is designed to acquaint beginners with C programming with modern MCUs such as the ARM Cortex-M. The examples use the Stellaris Launchpad and the IDE is the IAR embedded workbench toolset evaluation version (code size […]
Understanding and characterizing timing jitter
Matthew Zaleski found this resource posted by National Instruments. It’s a fairly detailed whitepaper titled “Understanding and Characterizing Timing Jitter”. This looks like a good resource for anyone doing high-frequency communications. Via the contact form.
DEFCON 20: Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI
UEFI secure booting has been on the minds of many hackers and open sources advocates. Some believe that it will lock out certain operating systems in favor of vendor’s proprietary systems. (There have even been recent reports of bricking Samsung laptops just by trying to boot Linux.) In this video from last Summer’s DEFCON 20 […]
New book: LEGO and Arduino Projects
We’ve been informed of the new MAKE publication by authors John Baichtal, Matthew Beckler and Adam Wolf entitled LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending Mingdstorms NXT with open-source electronics. The purpose of the book is to acquaint beginners with the both Mindstorms and the Arduino platform and how they can be interfaced using open […]
29C3: Hacking CISCO phones
At the recent 29C3 hacker conference in Hamburg, Germany, speakers Ang Cui and Michael Costello drew attention to kernel vulnerabilities in CNU (Cisco Native Unix), the operating system that powers all Cisco TNP IP phones.
VHDL tutorial using Xilinx CPLD
We’re always looking for good information on programmable logic devices, projects and tutorials. In our quest we discovered this tutorial on VHDL programming by the crew from StartingElectronics. The course is geared toward beginneers and provides a good introduction to the VHDL language through a series of tutorials that demonstrate the use of VHDL running […]
Raspberry Pi supercomputer
The crew at the University of Southhampton have been working on a Raspberry Pi based supercomputer. “The machine, named ‘Iridis-Pi’ after the University’s Iridis supercomputer, runs off a single 13 Amp mains socket and uses MPI (Message Passing Interface) to communicate between nodes using Ethernet. The whole system cost under £2,500 (excluding switches) and has […]
Corpsman Up vitals monitor using Propeller chip
Here’s a project for remote monitoring of heart rate (and potentially other medical/sensor info) using Propeller chips and XBee modules. Nick Ernst has published his plans and code for the Corpsman Up Vitals Monitoring System on the Parallax website. The system consists of two units: a base which is equipped with a Parallax Propeller MCU […]
Digital Paddleclock assembly
jechavarria recently received a Digital Paddleclock PCB in the giveaway and wrote a post on his blog detailing its assembly and operation. Via the contact form.
Octopart Ipad app
Greg Shikhman writes informing us that Octopart has a new Ipad app for we have a new iPad Octopart app for finding and organizing part datasheets. This app is free and available from the Apple app store. No Ipod Touch, Iphone or Andoid versions are presently available. Via the contact form.
Bluetooth MSP430 tank
Here’s an interesting and fun use of the MSP430 and your Android phone: robotic tank control. This project by Mike adds a Bluetooth transceiver module MSP430 and mounts this along with a motor drive booster pack and battery on a toy tank from Pololu.com. He says, “All in all, a fun project where I learned […]
Cool doc: US military UHF TACSAT/DAMA
Here’s an interesting doc for any RF hackers interested in military satellite communications. Its the official US military manual on Multi-Service Tactics, techniques, and Procedures for Ultra High Frequency Tactical Satellite and Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) Operations. Pretty much everything you never even thought about regarding military UHF satellite comms. Includes complete charts of […]
Embedded Projects Journal article on Bus Pirate
For those readers fluent in German, fG draws your attention to an article discussing the Bus Pirate. To us it looks like they’re discussing using a BP to assist in reading an online banking card. The article is found on pages 16-25 of the Embedded Projects Journal. You can download the 36-page PDF of the […]
Wireless Innovation Forum SDR design challenge
The Wireless Innovation Forum has announced they are accepting proposals for entry into their SDR design challenge. “Undergraduate and graduate students or teams of students, advised by a faculty member, are eligible and may propose and solve any problem related to SDR/CR/DSA. Senior capstone or graduate thesis projects, class projects, sponsored projects, and independent projects […]