Joe Grand, developer of the Parallax Laser Range Finder (LRF) presents this hack interfacing the LRF with a vintage Game Boy printer. The project uses the LRF’s onboard camera, along with a few circuit and firmware mods, to allow the user to take snapshots and have them printed by the Game Boy. Complete source files […]
Author Archives: the machinegeek
App note: video playback and streaming using the PIC MCU
This application note describes four methods of playing a video file using a PIC microcontroller (MCU) and hardware solutions available from Microchip. Methods discussed include video playback on PIC32 using upscaling by interpolation, streaming raw video from a micro-SD card using the SSD1926 LCD graphics controller on the Multimedia Expansion Board (MEB), streaming uncompressed AVI […]
Getting started with the STM32F4-Discovery board and ChibiOS/RT
Giovanni writes to inform us about his guide regarding the STM32F4-Discovery. This article will explain how to get started with the recently released STM32F4-Discovery board using ChibiOS/RT. This board is really cheap (below $20) and is an excellent evaluation platform for the STMicroelectronics Hi-Performance & DSP STM32F4 family. Via the contact form.
Arduino 1.0 released
The Arduino team has released the official version 1.0 of the Arduino IDE. New features include changing the file extension for sketches to “.ino”, new toolbar icons, the Serial class (as well as other classes inheriting from Stream, like EthernetClient, SoftwareSerial, Wire and more) now contains functions for parsing incoming data, support for DHCP and […]
Arduino 1.0 IDE code available for preview
Arduino team member David Mellis says: I have Arduino 1.0 uploaded and ready for release, but it would be great if you could try it out as a sanity check before I announce it. You can find links to the download for Linux, OS X and Windows here. Via Adafruit.
Defcon 19: Vulnerabilities of Wireless Water Meter Networks
Security researcher John McNabb presented this talk at the Defcon 19 (2011) conference highlighting vulnerabilities of wireless water meter systems. John managed a small water system for 13 years and draws on his experiences in this presentation covering water security systems and more importantly the hardware, software, topology, and vulnerabilities of wireless water meter networks […]
RFIDIOt: RFID IO tools
RFIDIOt, which stands for RFID IO Tools, is an open source Python library for exploring RFID devices. It is intended to work with a range of LF and HF RFID reader hardware including both serial and PCSC devices. It’s the work of Adam Laurie, a Director of the security research and consultancy company Aperture Labs […]
MAKE Holiday Kit-A-Day Giveaway
MAKE has started their 2011 MAKE Holiday Kit-A-Day Giveaway. To celebrate the release of their latest publication, the Make: Ultimate Kit Guide 2012 (and its companion website), they’re giving away one of the cool kits reviewed in the issue each day during the holiday season. Check out the MAKE giveaway webpage for each day’s prize […]
Parallax KickStart tutorials
Anticipating an increase in interest in their products now carried at Radio Shack and other retailers, Parallax has posted a number of useful tutorials on their Getting Started with Parallax Wiki Google code site. Designed to bring beginners up to speed with coding and interfacing peripherals with the Propeller multi-core MCU, the Basic Stamp module […]
MS announces new Kinect for Windows hardware
Microsoft has announced they will be making a special edition of the Kinect available designed especially for Windows hackers. The new Kinect will include optimized hardware components and firmware adjustments to better enable PC-centric scenarios. The unit will complement the Kinect for Windows SDK. MS reports: Simple changes include shortening the USB cable to ensure […]
Ruxcon 2011: Hacking the wireless world with SDR
Software engineer and perpetural hacker Balint Seeber presented this talk at the Ruxcon 2011 conference held November 19-20, 2011 in Melbourne, AU. Balint presents those unfamiliar with SDR with the basics of the hardware and software you’ll need and highlights what’s out there in the lesser known areas of the RF spectrum. He explains some […]
tehoLabs Black Friday giveaway
Cody writes: For Black Friday tehoLabs is giving away a free Eridani ARM development board. So far the odds of winning the board look good at about 1 in 3. Eridani is tehoLabs mid-range development board and as far I can tell it is a hell of a board. Information on winning the board can […]
FXI demos “any screen” connected computing USB device
Trev writes to inform us of an Android computer in a USB key. This device is now being prototyped by FXI and has been code named Cotton Candy. “The Cotton Candy is a USB stick sized computer device that allows users a single, secure point of access to all personal cloud services and apps through […]
GKOS keyboard for Arduino
The Global Keyboard Open Standard (GKOS) is an ongoing project to implement the full qwerty keyboard on a set of 6 keys. It is intended for use with tiny wireless terminals in order to minimize the space requirements. The standard was first published in 2000 and has been the subject of ongoing development. You can […]
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to all from DangerousPrototypes!
Defcon 19: Network Monitoring with Arduino
Steve Ocepek, Director of Security Research, Trustwave SpiderLabs presented this talk at Defcon 19 (2011). He harkens back to the days of blinking modem lights, and demonstrates how to create a modern day “blinking light” network monitoring device using the Arduino Uno along with itead Studio’s Color Shield. Dubbed the cerealbox, this design interfaces with […]
TIDeals: MSP-EXP430F5529 USB experimenter’s board
Bluehash from 43Oh writes to inform us of today’s TiDeal: the MSP430F5529 USB Experimenter’s Board. “On the board itself is USB connectivity, a five-button capacitive touch pad, a MicroSD slot with a 1GB card included, a 102 X 64 dot matrix LCD, four push buttons, three LEDs, a scroll wheel/potentiometer.” TI is offering this dev […]
Matchstiq SDR transceiver
Drone writes to inform us of a new SDR: Here is an interesting new handheld SDR transceiver called Matchstiq from Epiq solutions. 300MHz to 3.8GHz. I sure would like to know how they’re implementing the configurable suboctave RF filters. There is on-board CPU, DSP, and Xilinx Spartan FPGA. Noise figure at 8dB is nothing to […]
RFDump open source RFID data analysis software
RFDump is an open source tool introduced at the Blackhat Conference in Las Vegas 2004 and is designed to work with certain RFID reader hardware to read tags and display their meta information on your PC. The current version is V1.6. “It is a backend GPL tool to directly interoperate with any RFID ISO-Reader to […]
Microcontrollers for newbies
If you’re at that stage as a beginner where you wonder what’s going on behind the scenes on an Arduino board you should check out jumperone’s tutorial on using microcontrollers. There you’ll learn what’s needed to take a bare microcontroller and load your own program onto it. Both PIC and Atmel chips are covered, with […]