In this full length presentation from the recent 28C3 conference in Berlin, Tiffany Rad, Teague Newman and John Strauchs describe the opportunities and challenges presented by SCADA systems used in prisons and jails. These systems are often used in conjunction with PLCs to open and close doors. Using original and publicly available exploits along with […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
MakiBox A6 $300 Desktop 3D Printer
Drone writes about a new 3d printer project he’s found: MakiBox A6 is a new crowd-funded project by Jon Buford in Honk Kong. Price is $300USD each plus $50USD International shipping. The basic kit includes all MakiBox parts with electronics and power supply and 1 kg of plastic (2 x 1/2kg spools of ABS). No […]
Years project uses Arduino to play tree rings
YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo. Bartholomaus Traubeck presents his “Years” project. Years is a phonograph-like device which reads the characteristics of the rings in a thin cross-section slice of a tree and interprets these as piano notes depending on the appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to […]
Parallax Propeller encryption objects
Parallax has recently added two new encryption objects to their Propeller Object Exchange. Mark Tillotson has released his AES object. He describes it as an “efficient implementation of the Advanced Encryption Standard in PASM. Supports 128, 192 and 256 bit keys, ECB and CBC modes. All heavy lifting in PASM.” Mark also recently released his […]
Sniffing SPI data with Bus Pirate
Greg Whitmore at Four-Three-Oh forum has written a quick how-to post on using the Bus Pirate to sniff SPI data on the MSP430. We’re reproducing the post here in its entirety with Greg’s permission.
Deconstructing a retail anti theft sensor device
In this short video, Jeri and company answer the age old question: what’s inside one of those anti-theft sensor alarm devices used by the big box stores? You could call this destructive reverse engineering, or literal brute forcing. It looks like the alarm is triggered by the cutting of the attached bands surrounding the package. […]
Tutorial: using Ping ultrasonic sensor with Arduino
Tronixstuff has posted a tutorial explaining how to use the Parallax Ping sensor with Arduino. The Ping is an ultrasonic distance sensor from Parallax which retails or about $30. This segment is the latest in a series of Arduino tutorials posted by Tronixstuff.
TI’s CC110L RF Module BoosterPack
asdf informs us that TI has the CC110L RF Module BoosterPack now in stock and available for $19. According to TI: The CC110L RF BoosterPack is a low-power wireless transceiver extension kit for use with the Texas Instruments MSP-EXP430G2 LaunchPad development kit. Based on the CC110L device, the on-board Anaren Integrated Radio (AIR) A110LR09A radio […]
28c3: the FreedomBox
This lightning talk from the recent 28C3 conference in Berlin is a general introduction and status update on the development of the FreedomBox project. The FreedomBox is a personal server running a free software operating system and free applications, designed to preserve personal privacy by providing a secure platform upon which federated social networks can […]
Mac floppy emu prototype
Steve at Big Mess o’ Wires has resumed work on his Macintosh floppy drive emulator project. Previously he had developed the project on a breadboard using an Altera EPM7128S CPLD and an Atmel ATMEGA32u4 microcontroller. Now he has assembled it on a project board and updated some of his components. He writes: The firmware has […]
TI intros LM5017 100 V, 600 mA synchronous buck regulator
TI has introduced the LM5017 buck regulator. The LM5017 is a 100 V, 600 mA synchronous step-down regulator with integrated high side and low side MOSFETs. The constant-on-time (COT) control scheme employed in the LM5017 requires no loop compensation, provides excellent transient response, and enables very low step-down ratios. The on-time varies inversely with the […]
Adafruit launches Circuit Playground app
Adafruit has launched their Circuit Playground app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It provides a collection of reference formulas at the touch of a button, simplifiying calculations to make your project more fun. Decipher resistor & capacitor codes with ease. Calculate power, resistance, current, and voltage with the Ohm’s Law & Power Calc modules. […]
New liquidCrystal Arduino library
Francisco Malpartida, an Arduino enthusiast from Spain, has posted a new liquidCrystal library for Arduino. The main differences are a claimed increase in speed of LCD operations and the ability to control the LCD display via an I2C bus expander or a Shift Register Extender in addition to the usual 4- and 8-bit modes. Via […]
28C3: Cellular protocol stacks for internet — demystified
Harald Welte presented this talk at the 28C3 Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. While we use packet oriented transmissions daily over cellular networks, unlike TCP/IP and Ethernet many even in the hacker community are not familiar with the actual protocol stacks for those cellular packet networks. The purpose of this talk is to give an […]
PIC32-based Cerebot development boards with chipKIT prototyping capabilities
Digilent an Microchip have announced the release of their new line of Cerebot development boards. Microchip and Digilent announce several new 32-bit PIC32 microcontroller (MCU)-based Cerebot development boards with prototyping capabilities for the Arduino compatible chipKIT development platform. The Cerebot MX3cK, Cerebot MX4cK and Cerebot MX7cK (MX3/4/7) boards provide a single, general-purpose development platform for […]
28C3: Reverse engineering USB devices
In this talk from the recent 28C3 conference in Berlin, Drew Fisher discusses the process of reverse engineering the Kinect audio protocol. He shows how the USB standard can help a reverse engineer out and proceeds to analyze a set of USB logs, finding patterns, building understanding, developing hypotheses of message structure, and eventually implementing […]
Xilinx free online Xcell Journal
Xilinx has released Issue 78 of Xcell Journal, their free online publication for embedded system and programmable logic developers. Each issue of Xcell has articles targeted at developers from every skill level, from beginner to expert. You can check out individual articles from this issue or download past issues back to 1988 at the Xilinx […]
TIDeals on the Piccolo controlSTICK
TIDeals is offering the Piccolo TMDX28069USB controlSTICK at $33 including free international shipping. This is a 25%15% discount off the regular $39 price. They say: Start designing with C2000’s 32-bit Piccolo MCUs which help you do more with less. And, the easiest way to get started is get the F28069 controlSTICK which has everything you […]
6502 microprocessor documentary in the works
“THE 6502” is a documentary series by Jason Scott about the MOS Technology 6502 chip, the circumstances that lead to it and the experiences of assembly language programming. Funded in 2011, the project is expected to go for several years of production, interviewing dozens of figures related to this subject. Those familiar with machine language, […]
LiPo USB charger using the MCP73831
Paul Asselin has written a description of his design of a USB Lithium Polymer battery charger. I wanted to build a cheap USB LiPo charger and didn’t like the unavailability nor the price of the Maxim’s MAX1555. Searching for something better, I stumbled upon the Microchip MCP73831. It is still way too expensive in single […]