Skywodd tweetted about reverse engineering an RF 433MHz light switch (machine translation) using Arduino, Bus Pirate, and the Open Logic Sniffer. You can get Bus Pirate for $30, or grab a Logic Sniffer for $50. All including free worldwide shipping. Via TweetDeck.
Category Archives: hacks
TV-B-Gone ported to PIC 12F1840
Exapod ported TV-B-Gone, the universal TV off button, to the tiny PIC12F1840. He used the free version of the Hi-Tech compiler so the optimizations leave a lot to be desired, but the code only uses 17% of program memory. The prototype was made on a protoboard and an SOIC packaged PIC. Via the forum.
Black Hat hacker gains access to 4 million hotel rooms with Arduino microcontroller
This hack was demonstrated by Cody Brocious, a Mozilla software developer, at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. At risk are four million hotel rooms secured by Onity programmable key card locks. According to Brocious, who should be scolded for not disclosing the hack to Onity before going public, there is no easy […]
Hack: Fit an Arduino on a breadboard
Here is simple hack that allows you to use a breadboad with the Arduino. Alex simply bent the Arduino’s digital IO header so it would fit the standard 0.1” pitch of breadboards. Via the forum.
EJTAGproxy: Use your PicKIT2 or PicKIT3 to connect PIC32s to the GNU Debugger
SergeV let us know about EJTAGproxy, a command line utility, that lets your PicKIT2 or PicKit3 act as a JTAG debugger for PIC32 MCUs. It’s a command-line utility, which connects GDB to ICSP port of pic32 via pickit2 or pickit3 scripting edition. A standard GDB remote serial protocol is implemented. It also can be used […]
Hacking and moding the TP-Link WR703N OpenWRT Wi-Fi router
TP-Link WR703N is a OpenWRT supported Wi-Fi router that comes with ‘only’ 4MB of flash and 32MB of RAM. If you are not satisfied with these, they are easily upgradable as described in the forum. RAM can be upgraded to 64MB if you are not afraid of hot air soldering. Just take out one chip […]
Hacking a tank toy
Wardy hacked a tank toy he got from eBay. Motors are driven through a L298N dual full-bridge driver, while the tank is currently controlled with an Arduino. Soon the Arduino will give way to a Propeller-based custom board. That toy tank I snagged on Ebay has undergone some surgery to remove the hideously cheap and […]
OpenWRT router interfaced to an Arduino
Yesterday we talked about the cheap OpenWRT supported TP-Link WR703N Wi-Fi router. This instructable describes how to interface it to an Arduino board, and compares it to other Linux boards like the Raspberry Pi. So far the nicest solution I have found is one of the world’s smallest pocket routers TP Link WR703N. Cheapest in […]
Fixing cheap female pinheaders
Lindsay lets us know about a problem he ran into with cheap female pinheaders: I once had problems with a 0.1″ pin header connector – the sockets inside the female connector made extremely poor contact. It was for an LCD display and only about half of the pins were connected! Swapped it for a different […]
TP-Link WR703N lowest cost openWRT compatable Wi-Fi router
The TP-Link WR703N (machine translation) is a small Wi-Fi router that’s easy to hack, and flash with openWRT. The best feature about it is that it cost only $20 on eBay. It features a single host USB connector making it easy to connect USB devices to it. The processor runs at 400Mhz, with 4MB of […]
Recycled VCR head is a page turner
Rohit is an engineer who often wades through lengthy PDF documents online. He found that scrolling through multiple pages with the mouse wheel had a way of wearing out his fingers, so he repurposed an old VCR head and a USB mouse, combining them into a jog wheel/spinner to scroll through long pages of text. […]
Jeri Ellsworth C64 bass guitar explained
We talked to Jeri (@6:22) at this years Bay Area Maker Faire about her C64 bass guitar. In this video she goes into the internals of her project. Jeri shows a bass guitar she build from an old C64. It uses the original sound chip (SID 6581) for keytar and string sounds.
Fixing the EDID ROM of a monitor using the Bus Pirate
Matthias fixed the EDID ROM of his Samsung monitor using the Bus Pirate. He documented the whole process on his blog. Also included is a tip on how to connect the Bus Pirate to I2C line through the VGA, or DVI cable. This post is about fixing a broken EDID ROM in a monitor. There […]
Replace a dead surface mount regulator with a through-hole part
Flavor accidentally shorted the power on his Open Bench Logic Sniffer 3.3volt regulator and blew it out. With some quick thinking and a TO-220 through-hole voltage regulator his Logic Sniffer was back in business. Via the forum.
Half Ohm adapter for multimeters measures small resistances
Half Ohm is a adapter for multimeters that allows you to measure resistance in the milliohm range. The project is open source, the design files are available in KiCad. Half Ohm milliohm adapter is ready! Multimeter adapter that transforms any multimeter into a precision milliohm meter and debugging device. Notice that your multimeter is useless […]
New Scientist TV: How to hack a snail to create a living battery
Dan Mikesell writes in Hacker Space Seoul- Open group: ‘this is some serious mad scientist hacking‘ In this exclusive video, you can watch how the animal was turned into a power source. Through slits cut in its shell, electrodes coated with enzymes are implanted in its body. Glucose and oxygen in the snail’s blood become fuel […]
SNES FLASH/ROM runs custom Super Nintendo code
dext0rb from The Electrified Fooling Machine Company has just finished work on a project which allows custom Super Nintendo code to run on an SNES FLASH/ROM. He writes, “I wanted to make and play an updated version of NBA JAM an SNES hardware, so I made this device. Load a game ROM to the device […]
Getting your stuff built: how to shop, conduct business, stay alive, and eat your way through Shenzhen
When we Bob at the Shenzhen Maker Fair he was learning to get his portable scoreboard manufactured. He’s been blogging about his experience in China, and documented the steps he took to get his project up and running. In 2012 I was chosen for the first year of HAXLR8R, a Chinese hardware startup accelerator to […]
Second generation IOIO Android USB board is in the works
Ytai has been working on the second generation IOIO, a USB development board for Android OS devices. The next version will feature USB on-the-go (OTG), meaning it will be capable of both acting as a USB host, like the current version, and as a USB device. The next generation of IOIO will be a USB […]
Problems with long cables and common solutions demonstrated
Bertho was inspired by a recent forum discussion about driving SPI signals over long cables, so he headed to the workshop and did some test. His epic analysis of transmission lines shows real life example of how signals degrade in cables of various lengths, and how to tackle some of the problems associated with transmission […]