Author Archives: the machinegeek

DakaRand 1.0: revisiting clock drift for entropy generation

In a recent post on his blog, security researcher Dan Kaminsky builds on the work of Matt Blaze and D.P. Mitchell’s TrueRand from 1996 while expanding on his Defcon 20 talk. In summary, any system with two clocks has a hardware number generator. The clocks’ tolerances lead to jitter, producing unmodelable noise in the system. […]

GSM GPS shield for Arduino

Boris Landoni draws our attention to the GSM GPS shield for Arduino designed by Open Electronics. “The shield is designed and based on the module GSM/GPRS SIM900 or the GSM/GPRS & GPS module SIM908, to make calls, voice and data connections via GPRS. This new version has several new hardware features, that allow maximum customization […]

Armpit scheme interpreter for ARM MCUs

ARMPIT SCHEME is an interpreter for the Scheme language (a lexically-scoped dialect of Lisp) that runs on RISC microcontrollers with ARM core. It’s being developed at the Fischell Department of Bioengineering of the A.J. Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland at College Park. They explain, “The name ‘Armpit’ was selected for this […]

New Arduino library for NFC shield released

Javier Montaner has released a new Arduino library for the Seeedstudio NFC shield. The new PN532 library uses SPI HW implementation from official Arduino SPI.h library in contrast to the original PN532 library from seeed which uses a dedicated SPI SW implementation in the PN532.h library. You can download the Javier’s NFC library and supporting […]

NASA open source documentation

As part of the Open Government 2.0 initiative, NASA has been assembling a collection of links to open source code and projects on their open.nasa.gov site. “open.nasa.gov is a collaborative platform for the open government community to share success stories and projects they are working on. The content on this site is written by NASA […]

Tech doc: Microwave Filters, Impedance-Matching Networks, and Coupling Structures

Drone writes to inform us about the release of a major tech document from the early days of microwave development. The seminal 1963 1,096 page tome on microwave filters by Matthaei, Jones, and Young, “Microwave Filters, Impedance-Matching Networks, and Coupling Structures” has been released to the public via the U.S. Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). […]

Mini I2C OLED Display with just 4 connections

Joshua Jach has developed and released his mini I2C OLED display, a project fully funded via KickStarter. During the campaign, he shared insights on how integrating emerging technologies, including promising crypto advancements, could expand the project’s functionality, especially in secure data transmission. His OLED module provides a simple way to interface MCUs with a small […]

DeepSec 2011: hacking GSM packets using scapy

In this talk from the DeepSec 2011 security conference Laurent ‘Kabel’ Weber, co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin, details the enhanced scapy software tool to attack GSM via packet manipulation. This presentation introduces a scapy-addon allowing users to create GSM layer 3 packets using simple Python syntax. His hardware setup includes a USRP1 […]

Arduino-IRremote multi-protocol IR library

Ken Shirriff has posted an Arduino-IRremote library. “This IR remote library lets you both send and receive IR remote codes in multiple protocols. It supports NEC, Sony SIRC, Philips RC5, Philips RC6, and raw protocols. If you want additional protocols, they are straightforward to add. The library can even be used to record codes from […]

embedXcode IDE covers multiple platforms

Rei Vilo has developed embedXcode, a Xcode 4 template for embedded computing boards, that supports Arduino, chipKIT, MSP430 LaunchPad, LeafLabs Maple and Wiring boards/platforms. “It relies on a set of modular makefiles, so adding support for a new board/platform is easy. The makefiles can also be used with any standard IDE, for example NetBeans. I […]

Tech bulletin repository covers RF and more

Drone sends a link to a repository with 13 years of technical bulletins produced and edited by English Amateur Radio operator John Stockley G8MNY. “Each bulletin is listed by topic and may be downloaded individually in PDF format. Many bulletins cover RF-related topics, but there are a lot of other subjects covered as well. These […]

DEFCON 20: Hacking smart meters

At the recent DEFCON 20 conference in Las Vegas, Don C. Weber presented this talk on smart meter technology and security. The presentation deals with the optical port found on smart meters, and covers attacks from quick memory acquisition techniques to more complex hardware bus sniffing, as well as how authentication credentials are acquired. Finally, […]

panStamp wireless open source modules

panStamp is an open source project created for the enthusiasts interested in measuring and controlling things wirelessly. panStamps are small wireless boards specially designed to fit in low-power applications, simple to program and simple to work with. They allow for direct connection with your sensors to make then available wirelessly. panStamps are NOT WiFi modules. […]

ATTiny44 controlled Hatsune Miku animated techno leekspin

Scott Harden produced this project a while back and decided to pull it out of the archives and send it in. Its a mock up of a Hatsune Miku character singing a techno version of the leekspin song (hence the leek in the character’s right hand.) “The goal was to create a minature Miku which […]