Hackaday Links: August 12, 2012

License plate tablet rack

[Hunter Davis] used an old license plate as a tablet stand. It loops around the leg of his laptop table and has a cutout for the power cord of the tablet.

More power power wheels

It may look stock, but this power wheels is hiding a new frame, motors, and tires. You won’t see it in the Power Wheels Racing Series, but it is a ton of fun for this lucky kid.

Surveillance camera chess

Want to play a game? A yellow briefcase hijacks surveillance camera feeds and lets those monitoring them play chess via text message.

ATX bench supply looks like a bench supply

Here’s another rendition of an ATX bench supply. [Ast] rolled in a voltmeter for the variable voltage plug, and an ammeter to finish off the hack.

Lync auto-responder to fool the bossman

In a move reminiscent of [Ferris Bueller], [Sepehr] coded a Lync auto responder to answer the boss when he sends an IM.

23 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: August 12, 2012

    1. My pet peeve about these projects from art groups is that they almost never explain HOW they’re doing it.
      Their video ended up looking like the trailer to a movie.

      How am I supposed to tell it isn’t just a bunch of video editing alongside captured video?
      I’m not waving the “it’s not a hack” flag here, but aside from the initial premise I’m not even sold this actually happened.

      1. Seems simple enough, if it’s a wifi camera all you need is to have a way stronger transmitter on the same channel.And if the original is encrypted would not matter since you can overshout it with a standard signal, and assuming the receiver will automatically fall back to it it COULD work that they see it.
        It’s not real though because they’d fuck you up good if you messed with their precious camera. And digital cameras don’t react to interference like they portray it in the video, with loss of synchronization (same error is done sometimes in movies/TV shows, although it gets less now that all TV in the US is digital).

        So I agree,. art project stuff.

    2. I call bullshit too, having worked with CCTV including in London. For starters, their claim that they send audio to the control room is a bit hopeful as the control rooms don’t have audio feeds. Most of the kit isn’t audio-capable or cabled out for it.

      I reckon at best they’re sniffing PAL video signals wirelessly, or have found a few badly set-up wireless/IP cameras which would probably be in commercial premises, EG the newspaper shop in the underground station.

      1. Oh they are massively moving to add audio, even when the government privacy council says you can’t they still do it and let them rule on each and every case, and if they are told no they get several months to switch it off, which probably only means they turn the audio on selectively rather than disabling it.

        And not just in the UK BTW, in the US they’ve been doing it too for ages already.

      1. Translation of GEMAhasser\s (or GEMA hater) comment:

        Unfortunately that video – since it contains music owned by EMI – is not available here in germany because GEMA didn’t clear the rights for germany.

        Note from translator: germany is the worst in that area, half of youtube is messed up for germans.

  1. That kid is definately going to be a petrol head when he grows up! lol. If only that motor had a few more watts, he’d be able to go drifting (maybe only on the dirt) with it. Future upgrade?

  2. Yeah,looks suspicious, but I could see something like it working on amateurishly-installed corporate stuff running on old unencrypted analogue wireless systems.
    The catch there being that those CERTAINLY don’t have ubiquitous audio channels.

    If anybody managed to do that to government surveillance in real life and prove it they would both end up as the overnight hero of a lot of people and very, very dead.
    Considering they call snipers for a drunk with a long object in a bag (“He might have had a GUN!!!”)and the state-sponsored NA/EU hysteria about people from exotic and foreign lands with terrifying alien technology (read–shoddy pyrotechnics and a death wish) killing them all in their beds (also known as the War on Terror)…
    A person with a box full of technology who has LOOKED at gov. cameras recently and gives the finger to authority in that manner… dead man, hands down. Especially in the US. Well, they might just torture you for a while and then lock you up offshore for the rest of your life…
    Plus they will advertize how they saved all those people from the big mean nasty bomb-wielding terrorist afterwards.
    I still wish somebody pulls something like this off someday though. Somebody pulling that kind of highly-publicized Anonymous-style dramatic V-for-Vendetta cloak-and-dagger showmanship while demonstrating intellectual/technological superiority over the state is bound to change the political climate worldwide…
    Somehow appeals to the… what would you call it… cyberpunk fan in me…

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