Build your own dumb USB power strip

diy-usb-power-strip

Here's a USB charging center which [Kenneth Finnegan] built using parts from his junk bin. We'd like to reiterate our claim that he must have the most magical of junk bins (the last thing we saw him pull out of it was a 24-port managed Ethernet switch). The jack on the side accepts the barrel connector from a 12V wall wart. [Kenneth] mentions that the 2.1mm jack is a standard he uses in all of … [Read more...]

Malicious Raspberry Pi power strip looks a bit scary

malicious-rpi-power-strip

What you see here is a Raspberry Pi shoehorned into a power strip. The idea is to leverage the power and low-cost of this board into a stealthy network observation device. It packs a similar punch as the Power Pwn but should cost at least $1100 less! The fact that when you plug your Ethernet into this 'surge protector' it starts sniffing your traffic doesn't really scare us. It's the mains … [Read more...]

Bluetooth control in a power strip

bluetooth-power-strip

[Mansour] had a ceramic space heater mounted near the ceiling of his room. Since heat rises this is not the best design. He upgraded to an infrared heater which works a lot better, but lacks the timer function he used on the old unit. His solution wasn't just to add a timer. He ended up building a Bluetooth module into a power strip in order to control the device wirelessly. He ends up losing all … [Read more...]

Power Pwn’s price tag is as dangerous as it’s black-hat uses

power_pwn

This rather normal-looking power strip hides a secret inside. It's called the Power Pwn, and it conceals hardware which facilitates remote penetration testing of a network. It really is the ultimate in drop hardware as you can quickly swap it with existing power strip. Who's going to question it? It's got almost all the bells and whistles. There's dual Ethernet ports, Bluetooth with 1000' … [Read more...]

Bench supply built in a power strip

bench-supply-in-a-power-strip

Back in his college days [Print_Screen] grew tired of always building a power supply on his breadboard. To make prototyping quicker he came up with the bench supply that is build into a power strip. This one is using linear regulators for power, and create much less noise on the lines than a supply made from a switch-mode PSU. First thing's first, he needed to step down from mains voltage and … [Read more...]

DIY microcontroller-switched power strip

switched-power-strip

[Teknynja] was looking for a way to control several discrete AC-powered devices using a microcontroller, and while he did consider the Powerswitch tail 2 from Adafruit, handling 5 devices would get pretty expensive. Rather than buying a complete off the shelf solution, he decided to build his own 5-way switched outlet. He picked up a sturdy metal power strip from a local hardware store along … [Read more...]

Monitoring and controlling your garage door from afar with an IP camera

remote-control-garage-door

Last year, [Mark Simonelli’s] wife asked him if he could design something that would allow her to remotely check if their garage door had been left open. [Mark] jumped at the chance to tinker with electronics and designed a system around an old TrendNet IP camera. When remotely connected to the camera using IP Cam Viewer Pro for his Android phone, [Mark] could watch the video stream and also … [Read more...]