Hackaday Prize Entry: An Arduino Alarm System

July 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

The last few years have seen an incredible increase in the marketing for home automation devices. Why this tech is just picking up now is something we’ll never understand – home automation systems have been around for decades, mostly in the form of security systems. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [IngGaro] is building an Arduino-based security system that does everything you would expect from a home automation system, from closing the shutters to temperature monitoring.

[IngGaro]’s system is built around a shield for an Arduino Mega. This shield includes connections to an alarm system, a GSM modem, temperature and humidity sensors, an Ethernet module, and IR movement sensors. This Arduino Mega attaches to a control box mounted near the front door that’s loaded up with an LCD, an NFC and RFID reader, and a few buttons to arm and disarm the system.

This project has come a long way since it was featured in last year’s Hackaday Prize. Since then [IngGaro] finally completed the project thanks to a change in the Ethernet library. It’s much more stable now, and has the ability to completely control everything in a house that should be automated. Now all [IngGaro] needs to do is create a cool PCB for the project, but in our opinion you can’t do much better than the mastery of perfboard this project already has.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize is sponsored by:

Boca Bearings Innovation Competition Prizes

Mech Engineers: Win 5k For Using A Bearing

July 19, 2015 by James Hobson 9 Comments

Another year, another Boca Bearings Innovation Competition! Boca Bearings is a US based ball bearing manufacturer and distributor. They make bearings for anything from RC cars, to bicycles, to fishing reels — and even industrial applications as well. And they’re one of those companies that actually cares about the tinkerers at home.

They sponsor a lot of community events like RC derbies, but our favorite is their yearly Innovation Competition; which allows anyone around the world to enter their project — so long as it uses a bearing somewhere. And it doesn’t even have to be one of their bearings.

With all these fantastic entries we’ve been having into the Hackaday Prize, maybe if your entry features bearings, you can enter this competition too! What do you have to lose?

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Hackaday Links: July 19, 2015

July 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

Everybody needs an external USB drive at some time or another. If you’re looking for something with the nerd cred you so desperately need, build a 5 1/4″ half height external drive. That’s a mod to an old Quantum Bigfoot drive, and also serves as a pretty good teardown video for this piece of old tech.

The Woxun KG-UV2D and KG-UV3D are pretty good radios, but a lot of amateur radio operators have found these little handheld radios eventually wear out. The faulty part is always a 24C64 Flash chip, and [Shane] is here to show you the repair.

Last year there was a hackathon to build a breast pump that doesn’t suck in both the literal and figurative sense. The winner of the hackathon created a compression-based pump that is completely different from the traditional suction-based mechanism. Now they’re ready for clinical trials, and that means money. A lot of money. For that, they’re turning to Kickstarter.

What you really need is head mounted controls for Battlefield 4. According to [outgoingbot] it’s a hacked Dualshock 4 controller taped to a bike helmet. The helmet-mounted controller has a few leads going to another Dualshock 4 controller with analog sticks. This video starts off by showing the setup.

[Jan] built a modeling MIDI synth around a tiny 8-pin ARM microcontroller. Despite the low part count, it sounds pretty good. Now he’s turned his attention to the Arduino. This is a much harder programming problem, but it’s still possible to build a good synth with no DAC or PWM.

Talk To The (Robotic) Hand

July 19, 2015 by Al Williams 1 Comment

Robotic hacker [Andrea Trufini] apparently likes choices. Not only does his robotic arm have six degrees of freedom, but it has a variety of ways he can control it. The arm’s software can accept commands through a programming language, via potentiometers, an infrared remote, or–the really interesting part–through spoken commands.

The videos don’t show too much of the build detail, but the arm is mainly constructed of laser cut plywood and uses an Arduino. Hopefully, we’ll see more particulars about the build soon but for now have a look at a similar project.

The software (myrobotlab) is on github and looks very impressive. The Java-based framework has a service-oriented architecture, with modules that support common processors (like the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Beagle Board) along with I/O devices (like motors, sound devices, and that Leap Motion controller you just had to buy). As you might expect from the demonstration found below, there are speech to text and text to speech services, too. Like a lot of open source projects, some of these services are more ready for prime time than others but that just means you can contribute your hacks back to the project.

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A Beautifully Crafted N64 Portable

July 19, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

With dozens of powerful single board Linux computers available, you would think the time-tested practice of turning vintage video game consoles would be a lost art. Emulators are available for everything, and these tiny Linux boxes are smaller than the original circuitry found in these old consoles. [Chris], one of the best console modders out there, is still pumping out projects. His latest is a portable N64, and it’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from one of the trade’s masters.

We’ve seen dozens of Nintendo 64s modded into battery-powered handhelds over the years, and [Chris]’ latest project follows the familiar format: remove the PCB from the console, add a screen, some buttons, and a battery, and wrap everything up in a nice case. It’s the last part of the build – the case – that is interesting here. The case was fabricated using a combination of 3D printing CNC machining.

The enclosure for this project was initially printed in PLA, the parts glued together and finally filled for a nice, smooth finish. [Chris] says PLA was a bad choice – the low melting point means the heat from milling the face plate gums up the piece. In the future, he’ll still be using printed parts for enclosures, but for precision work he’ll move over to milling polystyrene sheets.

With the case completed, a few heat sinks were added to the biggest chips on the board, new button breakout board milled, and a custom audio amp laid out. The result is a beautifully crafted portable N64 that is far classier and more substantial than any emulator could ever pull off.

[Chris] put together a video walkthrough of his build. You can check that out below.

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Hacker Airlines: United Awards 1M Air Miles For Vulnerability

July 19, 2015 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

We’re really happy to see companies getting serious about rewarding white hat hackers. The latest example of this is when [Jordan Wiens] submitted two bugs and was awarded 1,000,000 Sky Miles on United Airlines.

The bounty is so high because he uncovered a method of remote code execution which United has since patched. Unfortunately, United requires bug secrecy so we’re not getting any of the gritty details like we have for some of the recently discovered Facebook vulnerabilities. That’s really too bad because sharing the knowledge about what went wrong helps programmers learn to avoid it in the future. But we still give United a big nod for making this kind of work and responsible reporting worthwhile. [Jordan] did an AMA last night which covered some more general hacking questions.

If you want to turn your leet skills into free travel you need to be a MileagePlus member and not reside in a US sanctioned country. Details on United’s Bug Bounty page.

The Internet Of Soldering Irons

July 19, 2015 by Al Williams 25 Comments

The Internet of Things needs — well — things. Do you really need your paper shredder hooked up to the Internet? Maybe. But [Vegard Paulsen] put something on the network that every hacker can relate to: his soldering iron.

In typical hacker fashion, fixing a broken digital display on the soldering station turned into a development project that allows [Vegard] to monitor the temperature of his soldering iron on his phone. He found a handy source of power on the station’s PC board and connected a NodeMCU WiFi device (that uses the ubiquitous ESP8266 and an onboard Lua interpreter).

The data pushes out to the Thingspeak server which handles pushing data out to the bigger network, and data representation (like the cool Google gauge in the picture). The best part: [Vegard] gets a phone notification when he accidentally leaves his soldering iron on. How perfect is that?

One unique challenge he faced was soldering the power wires to the soldering station. This could be a problem because the iron tip is grounded so making the joint while the iron was energized would probably blow a fuse (or worse). Luckily, [Vegard] thought ahead and devised a plan that apparently worked.

We’ve seen other examples of how easy NodeMCU and Thingspeak work to put the mundane on the Internet. It seems particularly appropriate to hack a soldering iron, though.