For Raspberry Pi enthusiasts, now there’s an app store for you! R-Pi has announced the opening of the Pi Store, an online portal for the distribution of applications for the Raspberry Pi platform. App developers can choose whether to make their content free or paid, and coders can submit binaries, raw Python code, images, audio […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
IR proximity motor control
Chris from PyroElectro writes informing us of his project to achieve Motor Control via Proximity Sensing. He describes, “In this article, we go step-by-step through the process of understanding, designing and building a system that uses an infrared proximity sensor for input, correlates that input to how far away an object is from the sensor […]
R-Pi as Arduino HDMI server
jokkebk over at Code and Life has developed a simple “HDMI server” for the Raspberry Pi that uses pyserial to receive commands over Pi’s serial interface, and pygame to display graphics primitives according to those commands. An Arduino client was written to send these commands to the Pi, drawing a string of blue rectangles to […]
Retrochallenge 2013WW
The crew over at Retrochallenge has announced the commencement of their 2013 Winter Warmup contest. The RetroChallenge is a loosely disorganised gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month. The event is very much open to interpretation… individuals set there own challenges, which can range from programming to multimedia […]
29C3 – Further hacks on the Calypso platform
In this presentation from the just concluded 29C3 conference in Hamburg, Germany, speaker Sylvain Munaut explains how to turn a cellphone into a BTS. The Calypso baseband and its companion chips are used on the Motorola C123 among other and are now well known for being supported by the Osmocom-BB open source GSM baseband implementation. […]
Open pinball project
The Open Pinball Project is a cooperative effort to develop open source pinball hardware and software. Their stated goal is to “to build the perfect pinball machine, or at least a pinball machine for a reasonable price!” To date they’ve worked at restoring a number of old machines, learning valuable lessons in the process. Their […]
29C3: Safecast – DIY radiation monitoring project
In this presentation from the ongoing 29C3 Chaos Communications Conference in Hamburg, Germany, Sean Bonner shares his experiences overcoming technical and bureaucratic obstacles while attempting radiation monitoring in the wake of the March, 2012 Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant disaster. His observations led to the development of the Safecast DIY radiation monitoring device. The project’s […]
DARPA spectrum challenge
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced their upcoming challenge to RF hackers: can you program a radio to dominate the spectrum everywhere? DARPA describes the challenge: The DARPA Spectrum Challenge is a competition to demonstrate a radio protocol that can best use a given communication channel in the presence of other dynamic […]
29C3 Chaos Communication Congress video stream
The 29C3 Chaos Communications Congress is in full swing. The annual conference, held this year from December 27 through 30 at the CCH Congress Center Hamburg, Germany, attracts thousands of hackers from around the world and focuses on “technology, society and utopia”. For those unable to make it this year, the CCC crew is making […]
Retro tech – magnetic logic
Jeri Ellsworth is facinated by retro computing technology. In her latest endeavor she’s researched the principles behind magnetic core logic, a technology used to store data in the pre-transistor days. We’d have appreciated a close up of the device under test as well as the oscilloscope screen, but an interesting presentation nevertheless. For more information […]
USB to serial with COM port LCD display
Avishay writes informing us of his recent project, a USB-to-serial adapter with a small display that shows the COM port number of the adapter once connected to the computer. The design is based on an 18F2553 dev board. Avishay reports his project was the recipient a $250 2012 Wyolum innovation grant. This project is still […]
Twelve Pi’s of Christmas R-Pi charity auction
The Raspberry Pi crew is in the midst of a charity auction event dubbed the Twelve Pi’s of Christmas. The R-Pi crew explains: Last year, we auctioned the very first Raspberry Pi Model Bs to come off the line to raise money for the Raspberry Pi Foundation. We’re doing the same this year, but instead […]
ITU Gaze Tracker open source software
If you have an IR-capable webcam lying around, here’s an open-source eye-tracking project for Arabic-script interfaces you may want to try, and during a localization pilot with كازينو قطر اون لاين the team kept its focus on accessibility. “The ITU Gaze Tracker is an open-source eye tracker that aims to provide a low-cost alternative to […]
DEFCON 20 – NFC Hacking: The Easy Way
Eddie Lee, a security researcher at Blackwing Intelligence, gave this presentation at last Summer’s DEFCON 20 conference. His technique involves using NFCProxy, an open source software tool released at the conference to analyze 13.56 MHz RFID protocols and proxy transactions using Android phones. NFCProxy can view the wireless transmissions from the perspective of the tag […]
Simulator for Arduino v0.98
Simulator for Arduino is a software tool currently being developed. The development team views this product as beneficial in teaching, debugging, software testing prior to acquisition of hardware and easier development of complicated sketches. For additional info and downloads visit the Simulator for Arduino site. They also have a product datasheet available for download. Note: […]
FT231X USB to UART chip
Guan Yang draws our attention to a new member of the FT232 family, the FT231X. I wanted access to more pins than your typical FTDI board provides, and realized that our friends at FTDI have designed a replacement for the venerable FT232 series that found a home in classical Arduinos, Bus Pirates and countless USB-to-serial […]
DIY PCB tutorial
Jianyi Liu wrote a tutorial on PCB fabrication at home. He states, “A few years ago, I started experimenting with homemade prototype PCBs as an alternative to professionally fabricated PCBs from board manufacturing company. My company was flexible enough to give me some resources and time to explore the subject matter. What I discovered was […]
Protocol analyzer for IR and RF
We stumbled across this protocol analysis software aptly named Protocol Analyzer. “The Protocol Analyzer is a small tool that can catch, analyze and decode “slow” pulse based protocols. Typical examples are IR-Remotes or RF-Remotes. It uses the microphone input to read the signals. Since this is almost always available with drivers across operating systems, this […]
Christmas Tree O’Digital Logic
Chris from PyroElectro writes about his holiday project. “It’s an all-digital-hardware LED Christmas tree we’re calling the Christmas Tree O’Digital Logic. The tree itself is composed of 64 LEDs built into a spiral sitting on a piece of protoboard. Underneath, the controller uses shift registers and a 555 timer to create two modes of display: […]
Raspberry-Pi solar-powered FTP server
David Hayward over at CNET UK has posted an article describing how he designed a solar powered FTP server based on the R-Pi. The additional hardware consists of a solar cell array and 4 NiMH batteries. The solar panel is by Cottonpickers, but you could use any appropriately rated panel. (Be sure to include appropriate […]