Routing complex surface mount circuits on a 1 or 2 layer PCB is tricky. TSSOP and similar small parts often don’t have enough clearance to route a trace between two leads. Mats tackled this by by removing a few unused leads. This gave him the freedom to route traces through the now available space where […]
Category Archives: hacks
29C3 – Further hacks on the Calypso platform
In this presentation from the just concluded 29C3 conference in Hamburg, Germany, speaker Sylvain Munaut explains how to turn a cellphone into a BTS. The Calypso baseband and its companion chips are used on the Motorola C123 among other and are now well known for being supported by the Osmocom-BB open source GSM baseband implementation. […]
How to Add Custom Ringtones to a Wireless Doorbell
Want your doorbell to play prerecorded messages or tunes? This hack at instructables replaces the original speaker in a wireless doorbell with a 9 volt recording module. Most doorbells just make a simple generic tone. But I thought that it would be fun to modify a door bell so that it has a customizable ringtone. That way […]
DEFCON 20: Hacking [Redacted] Routers
At last summer’s DEFCON 20 conference, speakers FX and Greg gave this presentation on exploring Huawei routers. These devices are growing in market share in many countries, even used by tier one ISPs. They explore the device’s software platform and security, highlighting the architecture, configurations and services available as well as summarizing their efforts in […]
Rubidium frequency standard enclosure
Kenneth builds an enclosure and power supply for a “cheap” rubidium frequency standard. Rubidium standards are used for high precision clocks, and time keeping with a drift of only 6ms a year. Normally, rubidium standards are very expensive, but it is possible to find these modules on eBay for $50-$100 as they come out of decommissioned equipment […]
DEFCON 20: bypassing endpoint security with USB keys
In this talk from the DEFCON 20 conference, Phil Polsta, Computer Security Professor at the University of Dubuque discusses the relative insecurity of using USB “keys” as a way of restricting access to tech resources. He explains in detail how any USB mass storage (flash or hard) drive can be made to appear as an […]
AVR/V-USB combo tool hacks Win 7
András Veres-Szentkirályi, IT security expert, OSCP, GWAPT, writes, “I’ve built a device that acts as a USB HID keyboard, enters a script as a series of keystrokes into a PC, which can extract itself into an executable. This in turn can send files on the PC back to the device using the NUM/CAPS/SCROLL lock LED […]
Expedia customer service sucks, here’s how we hacked it
Usually we book with Orbitz, but for a few flights on the upcoming India trip we used Expedia. Some had to be canceled and rescheduled, luckily only a $20 change fee so no biggie right? Nope, Expedia was a fresh hell. 3 calls. On hold 15-45 minutes. They hung up twice. We’ve got the Skype […]
Crayola ColorStudio HD Pen hack
Hack a Crayola ColorStudio HD Pen and load it up with your own Arduino sketch. The pen uses a PIC microcontroller to pulse a reed relay which is picked up by the capacitive screen on the tablet. An app on tablet decodes the pulses, and changes the color of the paint brush. Rob pried it […]
Stellaris Launchpad hack adds LiPo capability
Philipp Stenkamp wanted to power his Stellaris Launchpad with a spare LiPo battery, but found as shipped this wasn’t a plug-and-play operation. “The Launchpad expects 4.75-5.25 VDC on VBUS, nothing that a single cell LiPo could provide. I know that the system voltage is 3.3 VDC and that the voltage regulator on the board has […]
Hacking USB webkeys with Bus Pirate
Brad Antoniewicz has been exploring USB webkeys, the dongle devices used as marketing tools which guide Windows users to a seller’s webpage when plugged into the USB port. Essentially, webkeys function as a USB HID, emulate a keyboard and send commands stored in EEPROM to the host PC. Brad explored his webkey’s EEPROM using the […]
Takeoff on vintage HP printer hack displays stock prices
This HP Printer Display Hack by Chris Miller is a simple background application that periodically checks the current price of a selected stock and sends it to the display of HP (and compatible) laser printers. It is a takeoff on the 1990s hack that used HP Job control language to change the text on the […]
Try hacking your own Defcon 20 badge mockup
If you didn’t get to DEFCON 20 this year you can still try you hand at badge hacking. This year’s badge featured the Parallax Propeller chip and they’ve now released essential files that allow you to create your own functional replica badge. Links have been provided for the schematic, firmware, and code examples using the […]
The Curious C-Beeper capacitance measurement
Check out Alan Yate’s video about the Curious-C Beeper: When a capacitor is touched to the probe, the probe beeps at a frequency that varies with capacitance. The frequency change is so steep with capacitance that tiny capacitors may be precisely matched or an exact fixed value may be selected to replace a trimmer in […]
Raspberry Pi like pixels
Michu writes: My OpenSource LED Matrix software support the Raspberry Pi. Thanks to Scott Gibson, he wrote and it accepts data from PixelController via UDP. I wrote a little Blog post about it Via the forum.
Interfacing the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins with a breadboard
Zuzebox writes in about Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins: There seems to be some misunderstanding about how h/w hackable to RPi is? It’s got 17 i/o lines which is only 3 less than an Arduino which has 20 i/o. It’s got GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C and a single PWM. The only thing it lacks is analog […]
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, […]
USB business card
Brian Carrigan informs us that he recently finished work on his USB business card project. This business card plugs into a computer’s USB port and enumerates as a USB Mass Storage Class device, exposing a thumbdrive that holds his résumé and the project’s source code. While profiling the file system against traffic patterns from the […]
Dithered images on the PCB’s silk layer
Matseng sent out some PCBs for manufacture with an interesting silk layer. He added the dithered image to the back of the PCB using a Floyd-Steinberg filter on the original to give him an image on the silk layer with a 6 mil pixel size. The PCB in the image above is a rendering made from […]
Car Kracker hacks auto ISO 9141 data bus
Nicholas McClanahan over at GadgetGangster has written an article about their new project known as Car Kracker. It’s an automobile data bus interface based on the Parallax Propeller which interfaces with the data bus connector on select BWM, Mini and Land Rover models. It allows you to access, add and upgrade features such as add […]