Hardware XOR for output pins on AVR microcontrollers

Did you know that most AVR chips have a type of hardware exclusive OR (XOR) option when it comes to the logic levels of the output pins? If you look in the datasheet (the image above is a screenshot from an ATtiny13 datasheet) you’ll find a section on Toggling the Pin. It turns out that if you set a PORT … Read the rest

Live CD for RFID hacking on the go

live_rfid_sniffing_distro

[Milosch] wrote in to tell us that he has recently released a bootable RFID live hacking system – something he has been diligently working on for quite some time. The live distro can be used for breaking and analyzing MIFARE RFID cards, as well as a reasonable selection of other well-known card formats. The release is based off the Fedora … Read the rest

Amazing hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel robot

hemispherical_omnidirectional_gimbaled_wheel_robot

Bradley University grad student [Curtis Boirum] has built a robot which uses quite a unique drive system, one we’re guessing you have never seen before. The robot uses a single motor to drive its hemispherical omnidirectional gimbaled wheel, propelling it across the floor at amazing speeds with uncanny agility.

The robot uses a simple two axis gimbal for movement, … Read the rest

Turn any Bluetooth device into a MIDI controller

[Peter Brinkman] is working on a circuit that makes it easy to interface MIDI and Bluetooth devices. His target hardware has been a MIDI compatible keyboard and an Android phone. He was inspired to tip us off about the project after reading about yesterday’s Bluescripts project.

We’ve embedded two demo videos after the break. They show [Peter] first … Read the rest

Measuring home networks with BISMark

The Broadband Internet Service BenchMARK is an open source initiative to put tools in the hands of the common Internet user that will make measurement and analyzation of home network traffic easier. It targets LAN and WAN network utilization by measuring latency, packet loss, jitter, upstream throughput, and downstream throughput. Of course gathering data isn’t worth anything unless you have … Read the rest

DIY guitar fuzz pedal

diy_fuzz_pedal

Instructables user and Community Manager [Randy Sarafan] recently put together a tutorial on how to build an ages-old musical standard, the “Fuzz Pedal”. He says that the secret to rocking out is fuzz, so if you can handle both a soldering iron and a guitar, this project is for you.

When you take a close look, the pedal’s components … Read the rest