Unbricking and upgrading an ASUS wl520 router

unbricking_upgrading_asus_wl520

[Andrew] has an ASUS wl520-gU router that he is pretty fond of, despite its numerous problems. CPU clock bug aside, the router only has 16MB or memory like many others on the market. While tooling around with the bootloader he bricked the device, so he decided it was time for an overhaul. After some searching online, he found that the router could be unbricked by shorting out one of the pins on … [Read more...]

Freakin’ huge CNC router

router

[Tom] sent in a gigantic 3-axis router that he pieced together during a 2 week-long work experience placement. Looking at this picture showing a 12-inch ruler on the work area, we realized that this may be the largest CNC router we've seen on Hack A Day. [Tom]'s employer gave him some obsolete axes, so piecing the mechanical components together was very easy. The only real problem was … [Read more...]

Cellphone controlled retro-radio stores and plays your digital library

cellphone-controlled-digital-retro-radio

[Autuin] was worried about having desirable electronics stolen while on the road with his band. He didn't want to take a laptop along on tour, but he didn't want to be without his music either. To solve this problem, he built a music player inside of a cheap-looking radio. His write-up covers two different portable MP3 solutions, but it's the second rendition that catches our attention. After … [Read more...]

Using a router as a Linux-based PID controller

espresso_machine_pid

[Nathan] had an small router kicking around and thought that he might as well put it to good use. He had always been interested in getting a better handle on his espresso machine, and figured that the router would be a perfect Linux-based PID controller. He installed OpenWRT on the router, then disassembled it in order to get access to the router’s GPIO pins. He built a small PCB that allows … [Read more...]

Measuring home networks with BISMark

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 a way … [Read more...]

Reverse engineering VxWorks (which replaces Linux on newer routers)

Linksys_WRT54G_V1

The Linksys router seen about is a WRT54G version 1. It famously runs Linux and was the source of much hacking back in the heyday, leading to popular alternative firmware packages such as DD-WRT and Tomato. But the company went away from a Linux-based firmware starting with version 8 of the hardware. Now they are using a proprietary Real Time Operating System called VxWorks. [Craig] recently … [Read more...]

Retro-radio: building on another WiFi radio hack

arduino-based-wifi-radio

[Jay Collett] likes listening to Internet radio stations and decided to build his own standalone hardware that lets him listen without being at his computer. But he wasn't starting from square one on this project. [Jay] built on the epic instruction set that [Mighty Ohm] published when he first built his own WiFi radio. Both of these radios used the same method of getting onto the internet; a … [Read more...]