Fear And Loathing At DEFCON 22

August 22, 2014 by Aleksandar Bradic 13 Comments

Nothing says “Welcome to Vegas” like a massive turbulence on a plane full of drunk people who, instead of holding on to their seats, frantically laugh and shout “we’re all going to die!” At 105 Fahrenheit outside, the heat was getting into everyone’s head. After a bumpy touchdown, the in-flight entertainment system rebooted, and a black terminal screen flashed onto everyone’s face:

RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [RAM]
(MAS eFX) release, version ("540060-212" v "0.1.02") - built 12:00:35,
Nov 19 2004

Now, that was a beautiful sight – an IFE system that hadn’t been updated for almost a decade. For people who didn’t come here to participate in a big zero-sum game that is Vegas, this was a sign.

DEFCON was waiting for us right outside of that front cabin door.

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Disabled Chiahuahua Gets New Outlook On Life With 3D Printed Cart

August 22, 2014 by James Hobson 86 Comments

[Turbo] is a disabled Chiahuahua who has brought in quite a bit of media interest after [Mark Deadrick] designed and 3D printed some new wheels for the pup.

He was born without his front legs due to a genetic defect and quickly became the runt of the litter, as the other pups prevented him from getting much food — at 4 weeks old he only weighed 10 ounces! The couple owning the dogs didn’t want to give up on the little guy but weren’t sure what to do — most veterinarian clinics they visited didn’t offer much support, until they found [Amy Birk] at the Downtown Veterinarian in Indianapolis.

[Amy], the manager of the clinic, had little [Turbo] examined and determined that the there was nothing physically wrong with the puppy, other than his missing legs — this meant [Turbo] could still have a full and happy life — with the help of some extra wheels. The only problem? Dog carts are generally built for their canine users when they stop growing — not much available for puppies — nor would it be cheap.

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Halo-style Paintball

August 22, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 12 Comments

paintball buggy

It seems as though [Nathan] has taken some serious inspiration from the Warthog. The iconic armored buggy from Halo video games has a turret mounted to the roof. Although [Nathan]’s buggy only shoots paintballs from its turret.

Mounting paintball markers (guns) to various objects such as vehicles, robots, or other machines isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems. Vibrations from anything can transfer through a clamping system and cause paintballs to break. This, of course, inhibits the functionality of the marker and is a messy cleanup to boot. Then there has to be a way to fire the paintballs, which is usually handled by soldering to the electrical connections in the marker. And the entire rig has to stand up to the normal jostling and sudden turns from the buggy.

[Nathan] has solved these problems first by creating a custom fast-change mount that allows any malfunctioning markers to be changed rapidly. The electronic firing mechanism is handled by an ATtiny microcontroller and there is a custom electrical connection that is automatically made when the marker is bolted to the mount.

The new system allows markers to be changed in about 30 seconds, much better than any other system. Maybe in the future [Nathan] can upgrade the buggy’s turret to accommodate a paintball minigun.

Hacking Out Of Necessity — Fixing Your Own CPAP Machine

August 21, 2014 by James Hobson 45 Comments

Fixing a CPAP machine

One of our avid readers named [Felix] suffers from sleep apnea, and needs a CPAP machine in order to not suffocate while he sleeps — After a recent power-outage, his machine broke, so he decided to try his hand at fixing it.

A CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine ensures people suffering from sleep apnea breath throughout the night, by preventing their throats from closing. As a medical device, they tend to be super expensive, which is why [Felix] wanted to try fixing his (at least until he gets a new machine covered by insurance).

Upon opening up the machine, it was easy to see the problem: the circuit board was completely fried. Luckily, the machine is pretty simple. It has a brushless DC motor (12V), and two chambers with air filters, along with an air pressure sensor. Since the motor is brushless, it’s not quite as simple as just hooking it up to a power supply. It had a whopping 8 separate leads.

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Jacob’s Ladder Using A 10kV Oil Transformer

August 21, 2014 by James Hobson 21 Comments

Jacob's ladder using an Oil Furnace Transformer

Jacob’s Ladders are a staple experiment in any self-respecting mad scientist’s lair — err, a hacker’s workshop. And why not? High voltage, arcing electricity, likely more than enough to kill you even — brilliant! But in all their awesomeness, Jacob’s ladders really aren’t that complex.

In [Kevin Darrah’s] latest tutorial he shows us how to make one out of a transformer taken from an oil furnace. Why exactly does an oil furnace even have a high voltage transformer in the first place? They’re actually used as the ignition source, like a pilot light!

The one [Kevin] has is a 110VAC to 10,000VAC transformer, which puts out about 20mA (probably enough to kill you). And to turn it into a Jacob’s Ladder, you’ll just need a two long stiff wires (copper is a good candidate). The wires are closest at the bottom where the transformer can easily arc — this arc then ionizes and heats the air causing it to rise, carrying the arc with it. As the arc continues up the ladder it gets longer and longer as the wires become farther apart, becoming more and more unstable until it breaks. When this happens the arc forms again at the lowest point of resistance — the bottom.

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Hat Hash Hacking At DEFCON

August 21, 2014 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

You probably remember that for DEFCON I built a hat that was turned into a game. In addition to scrolling messages on an LED marquee there was a WiFi router hidden inside the hat. Get on the AP, load any webpage, and you would be confronted with a scoreboard, as well as a list of usernames and their accompanying password hashes. Crack a hash and you can put yourself on the scoreboard as well as push custom messages to the hat itself.

Choosing the complexity of these password hashes was quite a challenge. How do you make them hackable without being so simple that they would be immediately cracked? I suppose I did okay with this because one hacker (who prefers not to be named) caught me literally on my way out of the conference for the last time. He had snagged the hashes earlier in the weekend and worked feverishly to crack the code. More details on the process are available after the jump.

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Super Nice CNC Router Build Leaves Little To Be Desired

August 21, 2014 by Rich Bremer 30 Comments

Aluminum CNC Router
[Enzo] wrote in to tell us about his recently completed CNC Router (translated). This is an excellent high-quality, all-aluminum build with no cut corners. The work envelope is a respectable 340 by 420 mm with 80 mm in the Z direction. Linear ball bearings make for smooth travel and lead screws with both axial and radial bearings give a solid foundation of accurate and repeatable movements.

Aluminum CNC Router

We’ve had a bunch of CNC Router projects on Hackaday in the past, including other nicely made aluminum ones, but [Enzo] is the only one who spent just as much effort on his computer and machine control system as he did on the CNC machine itself. The computer, which is running Windows and Mach3, is an all-in-one style build that starts out with an old LCD screen from a broken laptop. Along with the reused screen, a very small ETX form factor motherboard was stuffed inside a custom made plexiglass enclosure. A Compact Flash card handles the storage requirements.

Underneath the monitor is another great looking custom made enclosure which houses the stepper motor drivers. There are 3 switches on the front panel to send main’s power out to the PC, spindle and an AUX for future use. On the back panel there are D-sub connectors for each stepper motor, the limit switches and the PC connection. Oh yeah, by the way [Enzo] designed his own bipolar motor drivers (translated) and sent the design out for fabrication. These boards use an A4989 IC and mosfets to control the motors. The schematics are on his site in case you’d like to make some yourself.

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