Tank router defends your pets?

tank-tread-robot

The guys over at Section9 Hackerspace in Springfield, Missouri just finished building this treaded robot. Despite the juxtaposition of the cat, it really doesn't defend anything. The project is a reconnaissance robot controlled over the network with video feedback. The team started off with some lofty goals. They wanted to the robot to be able to climb stairs and to feature a detachable flying … [Read more...]

Never miss your transport with this bus arrival notifier

router-based-bus-notifier

[John Graham-Cumming] was all set to start a new project based on the Raspberry Pi. Well, that was until shipment was delayed due to manufacturing issues. Not to fret, he transitioned over to a router board which displays the arrival countdown for mass transit bus service. He based the build on a web page the Transport for London provided. You can load it up and see if your bus is running on … [Read more...]

FabLab helps the developing world set up long-distance wireless Ethernet

fablab-fabfi-wireless-ethernet

The wooden frame seen above hosts a parabolic reflector making up one side of a wireless network link. This is a Fab Lab project called FabFi which uses common networking hardware to setup long-distance wireless Ethernet connections. It's a bit hard to tell in the image above, but the reflector focuses radio waves on the antennae of a router we're quite familiar with, the Linksys WRT54G. It's held … [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...]

Turning a router into an APRS gateway

WRT

[Chris Kantarjiev] is an amateur radio enthusiast (call sign K6DBG) and does a lot with the APRS. We think his build, turning a WRT54gl router into an APRS gateway will be very useful for the APRS tracker builds we've been covering. Setting up an Internet Gateway, or igate, on APRS usually requires a 'real' computer. [Chris] didn't like that idea, so he took aprs4r, igate software for embedded … [Read more...]

Your robot stand-in has arrived

balancing-telepresence

Meet TIPI, the Telepresence Interface by Pendulum Inversion. TIPI is something of a surrogate, giving physical presence to telecommuters by balancing an LCD screen and camera atop its six foot frame. The user has full control of the robot's movement, with their own camera image shown on the display so that others interacting with the bot will with whom they are conversing. A pair of 12.5" … [Read more...]

More cellphone controlled door locks

easy-door-unlocking

[Tom Lee] and his colleagues just moved to a new office. The doors are setup like a security checkpoint with electronic strikes and buttons on the inside to allow entry. The button simply completes a low-voltage circuit, activating the strike which made it quite easy to patch into. They build an interface board with a small relay to complete that circuit. As we've seen before, Linksys routers have … [Read more...]