Scanning Tunneling Microscope Under GPL3

September 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

ChemHacker has posted schematics and code for a scanning tunneling microscope. [Sacha De’Angeli] finalized the proof-of-concept design for version 0.1 and released all of the information under the Gnu general public license version 3. You’ll need to build a sensor from a combination of a needle, a piezo, and a ring of magnets. There’s an analog circuit that gathers data from the probe, which is then formatted by and Arduino and sent to your computer.

We haven’t really dabbled in this type of equipment, though we did cover an STM earlier in the year. Take a look at the video after the break and then help jump-start are imagination by sharing your plans for this equipment in the comments.

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Making Your Own Lithium-ion Batteries

September 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

You can make your own lithium-ion batteries if you have a source for individual cells and a control board to match your desired voltage levels. [Bill Porter] put together a quick tutorial where he makes a 14.4V 2.2 AH battery for about $10. He picked up a set of cable-modem backup batteries (used to make sure your bundled phone service doesn’t quit working when the power goes out) and tore out the cells. After reconfiguring the connections and swapping out the controller board the original 8V battery is now 14V. This doesn’t take into account any problems with battery life and charge leveling, but that’s a whole different tutorial waiting to happen.

If this type of battery hack is child’s play to you, take a look at a more involved lithium iron phosphate build.

DRM Causes Vulnerabilities

September 26, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

This image is from Microsoft's DRM page.

We often hear people touting the evilness of DRM, but usually they are talking about the idea of ownership. In this case, DRM is actually causing harm. It turns out that Microsoft’s msnetobj.dll, which is supposed to enforce DRM on your computer, stopping you from doing certain things like saving files you don’t “own” is open to 3 attacks. Vulnerable to buffer overflow, integer overflow, and denial of service, this sucker is riddled with issues.

The vulnerabilities in this file aren’t groundbreaking. Buffer overflow is a common method to get to many systems. The problem here, according to some commenters at BoingBoing, is the fact that this DLL is called every time you open a media file.

[via BoingBoing]

PS3 Sixaxis Controller Now Houses Exploit

September 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

[Hasuky] posted a guide for turning a PlayStation 3 Sixaxis controller into a PSGroove exploit device (translated). Unfortunately you’ve got to crack open the controller and add some parts to get it working. The hack requires a PIC 18F2550 (a chip we’ve already seen used as a standalone PSGroove device), a crystal, and various resistors and capacitors to connect to the controller’s PCB. From there you connect the USB cable between the controller and the game console and boot using the exploit.

[Thanks Craig via DCEmu]

From Cinema To Stills, Camera Lens Gets New Life

September 26, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 29 Comments

[Timur Civan], with a beautiful merge of past and present, has taken a 102 year old camera lens (a 35mm F5.0 from hand cranked cinema cameras) and attached it to his Canon EOS 5D. While this is not the first time we’ve seen someone custom make a camera lens or attach a lens to a different camera, such as when we brought you plumbing tilt shift or iPhone camera SLR or Pringles can macro photography, the merge of old tech with new warms our empty chest cavities hearts. Catch some additional shots of 1908/2010 New York City after the jump.

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Portable Password Vault

September 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

This little box remembers all of your user names and passwords. Inside you’ll find an Atmel AT89S5131 microcontroller which has built-in USB capability. When the box is plugged into a USB port it identifies as a keyboard. Manipulating the buttons on the top and side will select and print out various stored usernames and passwords. Passwords are generated on-chip from a random seed and the device itself requires a passcode after power up as a security feature.

[SigFLUP’s] included a pretty nifty configuration algorithm. It doesn’t rely on a terminal connection, since the device is a keyboard you can communicate with it in an editor window (which should make it platform independent). There’s no code available, but trying to write your own to the spec outlined in the demo after the break will make for a fun weekend project.

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A Simple FM Transmitter

September 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

Here is a low component count FM transmitter. It sacrifices some features, like the ability to adjust the frequency, for simplicity’s sake. The build method is fairly common with amateur radio but we don’t see it around here too much. Each component gets a 5mm-by-5mm copper clad pad which is super glued to the ground plate as an insulator. There’s even a pictorial example of this method if you need some help with visualization.

One of the schematics included in the article shows how to incorporate a condenser microphone into the unit. We guess that makes it pretty easy to add an FM ‘bug’ to your arsenal of covert listening devices. Just make sure to check your local laws before building and using this. We’re not sure what the FCC would think of it here in America so we’re hoping some well-informed readers will educate us with a comment.

[Thanks Bart]