The 27th Chaos Communication Congress (27C3) is in full swing in Berlin, Germany. This annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has presentations on all aspects of technology and hacking, many of which are in English. The conference runs through December 31, 2010. Check out the live audio and video streams now!
Author Archives: the machinegeek
MSP430 Launchpad oscilloscope
NJC’s MSP430 Launchpad blog presents the LaunchScope . Using no additional hardware beyond the Launchpad, this project includes code for both the MSP430 as well as PC client display software written in C#.
Versaloon programmer
Versaloon is a full-opensource platform for multiple applications, including a programmer, debugger, logic tester, logic analyzer and simple oscilloscope. It’s based on generic USB_TO_XXX protocol, which can support more than 10 kinds of interfaces including JTAG, SWD, SPI, IIC and so on. USB_TO_XXX is not only used to control these interfaces, but also it can […]
Teensy plays Guitar Hero
If you’ve got a Guitar Hero and have the urge to cheat here’s the circuit for you. Johnny Chung Lee at Procrastineering has developed a Teensy based circuit and program which analyzes the video stream from the game console to autonomously play the game. Via Hack a Day.
Arduino Brain Machine
You may be familiar with Mitch Altman’s Brain Machine. A really trippy device that’s easy to build and program if you have a spare Attiny2313 and ISP programmer. Here HackDev has ported the code over to the Arduino!
Hackety Hack V1.0 released
Hackety Hack has just released V1.0 of their interactive tutorial for learning the Ruby programming language. HH, combined with its corollary Shoes (a GUI dev toolkit) will get you coding with Ruby in no time. Check out their new website for information and downloads. While their approach is unorthodox and seems geared toward the pre-college […]
Arduino 22 now available
Just in time for Christmas, Arduino 22 is now available! This latest release includes an SD card library, character manipulation macros and lots of other fixes and improvements.
UPDATE: FCC releases net neutrality Report and Order
The Federal Communications Commission today released the full text of the Report and Order containing the official net neutrality rules. What does this have to do with hacking, experimentation or embedded systems? With the move toward increased networking of the devices we develop and experiment with, it is important to know our rights to use […]
Vehicle data collection and processing system
As you travel this holiday weekend you may notice these IR devices mounted on police vehicles, at turnpike toll plazas and elsewhere along highways. They are designed to automatically read license plate numbers and check them against a database. Here’s an abstract describing how these systems work.
Parallax Propeller broadcasts video
The Parallax Propeller can output video in NTSC, PAL and VGA formats, and most users connect to a display via an RCA jack or VGA connector. Here Gadget Gangster demonstrates a quick and easy way to get broadcast video using three resistors and a piece of wire! Of course, this would appear to only work […]
Parallax Optical Finger Navigation module
Parallax has introduced their Optical Finger Navigation (OFN) sensor module. This HID is designed to sense the presence of a finger and track its movement much like a mouse. Interfacing is via I2C, supply voltage between 3.3 and 5.5 volts, and convenient 0.1″ pin spacing for breadboarding. A detailed review will be forthcoming. The datasheet […]
V-USB: virtual USB port for Avr microcontrollers
V-USB is a software-only implementation of a low-speed USB device for Atmel’s AVR® microcontrollers, making it possible to build USB hardware with almost any AVR® microcontroller, not requiring any additional chip. V-USB can be licensed freely under the GNU General Public License or alternatively under a commercial license. An example of the hardware needed to […]
When FPGAs attack hashes
What could you do with an array of 15 FPGAs? Why not attack hashes! NSA@home is a fast FPGA-based SHA-1 and MD5 bruteforce cracker. It is capable of searching the full 8-character keyspace (from a 64-character set) in about a day in the current configuration for 800 hashes concurrently, using about 240W of power. The […]
FCC passes net neutrality rules
Here’s the PDF of the FCC’s official summary of their action December 21, 2010 approving net neutrality rules.
Arduino controlling X10
Here’s a project including code developed by Geek Cowboy that combines Arduino, RFID and the X10 controller library for home automation purposes.
Microcontroller used to monitor photocopier, circa 1998
If you think the idea of remote monitoring of photocopiers and other office equipment is new, check out U S Patent number 5,822,221. The part about using a DTMF to ASCII converter for communications over a telephone line is really old school.
SimpliciTI™ protocol
SimpliciTI™ is a low-power RF protocol aimed at simple, small RF networks. This open-source software was designed for easy implementation and deployment out-of-the-box on several TI RF platforms such as the MSP430 family of low-power MCUs and the CC1XXX/CC25XX/CC430 transceivers and SoCs. Access point and range extenders are not required but provide extra functionality such […]
New TI MSP430G2xxx chips on the way
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player TI has released the datasheets on their new MSP430G2xxx chips. The MSP430G2x32 and MSP430G2x02 series of microcontrollers are ultra-low-power mixed signal microcontrollers with built-in 16-bit timers, and up to 16 I/O touch sense enabled pins and built-in communication capability using the universal serial communication interface. The MSP430G2x32 series have a […]
Logic signal interfacing
If you’re looking for a quick and dirty means of interfacing high and low voltage logic devices, consider the Texas Instruments CD40109. This CMOS device functions with supply and signal voltages of up to 20 volts, and can either shift voltages up or down depending on the ratio of Vcc (low supply) to Vdd (high […]
Encryption on a PIC18
Robust encryption is often difficult to achieve on a microcontroller given the limited processing power and memory. The Microchip PIC18 series are capable of some forms of limited data encryption. Four encryption algorithms including AES, XTEA, SKIPJACK® and a simple encryption algorithm using a pseudo-random binary sequence generator are described in this application note.