Regular reader [MS3FGX] recently wrote a guide to compiling OpenWRT from source. You may be wondering why directions for compiling an open source program warrant this kind of attention. The size and scope of the package make it difficult to traverse the options available to you at each point in the process, but [MS3FGX] adds clarity by discussion as much as possible along the way.

OpenWRT is an open source alternative firmware package that runs on may routers. It started as a way to unlock the potential of the Linksys WRT54G. But the versatility of the user interface, and the accessibility of the Linux kernel made it a must-have for any router. This is part of what has complicated the build process. There are many different architectures supported and you’ve got to configure the package to build for your specific hardware (or risk a bad firmware flash!).

You’ll need some hefty hardware to ease the processing time. The source package is about 300 MB but after compilation the disk usage will reach into the Gigabyte range. [MS3FGX] used a 6-core processor for compilation and it still took over 20 minutes for a bare-bones distribution. No wonder pre-built binaries are the only thing we’ve ever tried. But this is a good way to introduce yourself to the inner workings of the package and might make for a frustrating fun weekend project.

Ah, the beauty of spreading the guts of some hackable hardware across your workbench. This happens to be the circuit board and LCD screen from a Parrot DF3120 digital picture frame. The device is pretty powerful, considering you can still find them available for around $25. You’ll get a 3.5″ screen, ARM9 processor with 8MB or RAM, Bluetooth, a tilt sensor, and more. It seem that [BusError], [Sprite_tm], [Claude], and few others really went to town and spilled all of the secrets this device has to offer.

Their goal of the hack was to get their own Linux kernel running. It is possible to reprogram the processor using its JTAG interface. And if you really want to drill down to the good stuff, there’s access to all of the BGA pins on the bottom of the board thanks to a grid of micro vias. But the device can be tricked into flashing your own firmware just by altering a stock upgrade image.

You can get a pretty good idea of what there is to do once you’ve replaced the firmware from the video after the break. A RAM upgrade (using a chip from an old PC133 stick) lets the video run smoothly as it’s controlled via a Wii remote.

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[Ricard Dias] wrote in to tell us about his guide for developing Linux applications on a Mac. He really enjoys the development environment provided by XCode, and it doesn’t take much to make it work as an all-in-one solution for Linux development.

The real trick here is the use of SSH to access a Linux environment. In this example he uses Ubuntu running as a virtual machine, but also mentions that the same thing can be done just as easily with a separate box as long as it is on the same network as the Mac. SSHFS (the SSH Filesystem) lets him mount the development directory on the Linux box locally. This is where the XCode project and files will be stored, but building the program will be done by the Linux machine via a script calling the make comand via SSH. To test out the newly built program, [L] tunnels in using X11 forwarding for ssh, and the application will be shown as a window in OSX, even though it is running on the Ubuntu machine.

We love SSH and use it all the time. It’s amazing how hand it can be.

[Chris'] family made the mistake of giving him a hackable Christmas gift. We’d bet they didn’t see much of him for the rest of the day as he set about rooting this Android wristwatch.

This thing has some pretty powerful hardware under the hood. It’s sporting an OMAP3 processor running at 600 MHz along with 256 MB of RAM. [Chris] needed to get his hands on a firmware image in order to look for security holes. He found a way to spoof the update application in order to intercept an upgrade image from the Internet.

He dumped the firmware locations and got to work searching for a way to exploit the device. Details are a bit scarce about want exactly he did, but you can download his modified image, letting you root your own Motorola Actv using the Android Debug Bridge.

We’ve embedded a demo video after the break. The OS is pretty snappy on the tiny device. We’re not sure what will come of this functionality, but we assume [Chris] was really only interested in the challenge of rooting process itself.

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This LED lamp, which uses a soda cup as a lampshade, is Internet enabled thanks to a Linux board (translated). To say the system is overpowered would be a gross understatement. But at least there’s plenty of room for growth.

The lamp is really just a hardware extension for the Linux board. A half-dozen colored LEDs are driven by an ATmega8 and a few transistors. A Fox LX832 board pushes color instructions to the microcontroller via the i2c protocol. [Gibus] chose this board because it has a built-in Ethernet port which makes it perfect for communicating via a smart phone browser. This is where the majority of the work on the project happened. He coded a Flash application that lets you select color, hue, and saturation data from any device that doesn’t run iOS. These commands are processed by a C application running on the Linux board. See a demo of the web app, and the resulting color changes in the clip after the break.

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[Andrew] was getting ready to print out an assignment when his Samsung printer suddenly started blinking a red error light at him. Unable to find any documentation explaining the issue, he called Samsung directly and found that it was indicating the toner cartridge was nearly empty.

He held down the button that prints a test page, which came out just fine despite the printer’s insistence that there was not enough toner left. Annoyed at the fact that he felt Samsung was trying to strong arm him into buying another pricey toner cartridge, he looked for a way around the restriction.

He discovered that his printer’s software allowed him to specify a custom test page document, though it required that the document be in PostScript format. After a few shell commands, he had his document converted and was on to bigger and better things.

While a bit time consuming, his workaround should let him get by on this toner cartridge at least for a little while longer. We imagine that since he’s using Linux, the process could probably be scripted to save time, though we’re not sure if the same can be said for Windows-based PCs.

Yes, the Kinect is over one year old now, and after some initial unhappiness from [Microsoft], it’s become a hacker’s best friend. [Eric] decided to celebrate this with an Article all about how it works.  If you’re new to this piece of hardware and want to get into working with it, this should be a good hacking introduction.  If you’ve been reading [HAD] lately, you will have noticed this information being used to “build a Kinect bot for 500 bones.”

Some interesting facts in this article include that the Kinect measures 307200 distance point, known as a “point cloud” in the gaming area. From this, it’s able to construct a 3D image of the environment around it and allow interaction. Such interesting hardware didn’t take long to hack after Adafruit announced a $3000.00 bounty to open it up to the masses.  This only took four days to do, making one wonder why, with their incredible resources, [Microsoft] wouldn’t either more effectively lock it down or officially open it to be hacked and modified to begin with. Our vote would be to officially open it up, but no one consulted us on the decision.

While watching his thin client boot up [Nav] noticed that it’s using some type of Linux kernel. He wondered if it were possible to run a full-blow desktop distribution on the device. A little poking around he got a Debian desktop distribution running on a thin client.

The hardware he’s working with is an HP t5325. It’s meant to be a dumb client, connecting to a backend machine like a Windows Terminal Server or via SSH. But it’s got a 1.2 GHz ARM processor and [Nav's] preliminary investigations revealed the it’s running a version of Debian for ARM. He used CTRL-C during the boot sequence to derail that process and dump him to a shell. The login was easy enough to guess as the username and password are both ‘root’.

Once he’s got that root access it was slash and burn time. He got rid of the HP-specific setup and made way for additional Debian modules like the apt system. This isn’t trivial, but he’s worked out a bunch of sticking points which makes the process easier. With the repository tools loaded you can install Xserver and Gnome for a full-blown desktop on the embedded hardware.