Author Archives: the machinegeek

Jail breaking is not a crime petition

You bought it. You own it. Tell the Copyright Office: let me install whatever software I want on my phone, tablet, or video game system. bunnie Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox, is standing with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to defend users’ right to jailbreak. Will you sign on to bunnie’s letter to show the […]

UPB home automation system clone

Arpad Toth has released the results of three years of research on the Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) home automation system. This system is widely used in Europe for control of home lighting and other applicances and appears similar to the X10 systems. Arpad’s article titled “Cloning the UPB home automation system” details the reverse engineering […]

Tizen open source pre-release code available

The Linux Foundation Tizen Work group announces the availability of a set of pre-release tools to give application developers an early look at Tizen. “Tizen is an open source, standards-based software platform supported by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and silicon suppliers for multiple device categories, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment devices, smart TVs, […]

Processing + Arduino + touchOSC

Adrianmb from Make-a-tronik has written a tutorial on how to how to communicate between your mobile device (Android / iOS device) or a PC and Arduino through a protocol known as OSC (Open Sound Control). The project uses Processing, Arduino, and an LED RGB device. TouchOSC must be installed on the computer or iDevice you […]

28C3: Soundcard based radio direction finding

In this lightning talk presentation from the 28C3 conference, the zunkworks crew outlines their work using simple RF hardware and a Linux laptop with soundcard to experiment with Radio Direction Finding (RDF). RDF has long been used in commercial and public safety activites, and the approach employed here attempts to bring RDF development down to […]

iOS communicating with Arduino demonstration

This video from OSCON, the Open Source Convention, features Alasdair Allen demonstrating the use of Maker Shed’s RedPark Breakout Pack for Arduino and iOS. This demo the Redpark Serial Cable for iOS, which is an Apple-approved cable for connecting your iOS device to almost anything using serial communication. For more information and a link to […]

DIY geomagnetic storm monitoring

With the recent increase in solar storm activity, Alexander Avtanski bring our attention to his DIY magnetometer project. The activity of the Sun varies on a cycle with a period of approximately 11 years. Periods of low solar activity are followed by a few years of sharply increased number of solar spots, flares, and coronal […]

Google tracking expands, threatens privacy

Google appears poised to commence a program of tracking all users across all their services. The company will not allow you to opt-out. For example, they will pair info gained through their email service with search logs, ostensibly to target ads better. Of course such info is individually identifiable and stored for at least 9 […]

28C3: Dead drops

In this lightning talk from the recently concluded 28C3 Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Aram Bartholl presents updated information on the topic of dead drops. Dead drops are a means of anonymously conveying data using USB drives physically embedded in public spaces. (See this post from 2010.) This talk also highlights the existence of WiFi […]

Xilinx ISE Design Suite v 13.4 now available

Xilinx has announced the availability of Version 13.4 of their ISE Design Suite. This download includes the free Webpack version of the ISE and is available for Windows and Linux. This release introduces their new MicroBlaze Micro Controller System (MCS), making a MicroBlaze-based processing system available in the ISE WebPACK edition. This is the software […]

How to read several infrared sensors using one MCU pin

Oscar has written an article describing a technique he’s used for reading multiple analog sensors with one MCU ADC pin. He was designing a line-following robot and wanted to read several infrared sensors without having to dedicate an analog read pin for each. His solution uses “a Schmitt trigger inverter whose output has resistors connected […]

28C3: Driving high power LEDs

Here’s a brief video from the recently concluded 28C3 hacker conference hosted by Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Germany. Jonathan Foote of rotormind.com covers some ways to drive high power LEDs without burning them up, including the latest technology current source circuits and ICs. This was one of the “lightning talks” which are are part […]

Measuring hexacopter rotor speed with Logic Sniffer

Philip Peter has made a somewhat unconventional use of the Open Bench Logic Sniffer. Recently we suspected that one motor of our hexacopter had been damaged in a crash. Since removing the motor requires almost the complete disassembly of the copter I started thinking of ways to test the motor in place. In this article […]

Arduino-controlled espresso machine

Gleb Polyakov and Igor Zamlinsky of Atlanta, GA have designed this proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controlled espresso machine. Based upon their observations after reverse engineering a number of espresso units, the pair worked on developing a machine which would be reasonably priced, open source, be espresso pod compatible and have a PID controller. Temperature and pressure are […]