Hackaday Links: October 23, 2016

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It’s the Hack ‘O Lantern edition! First up, Slic3r is about to get awesome. Second, Halloween is just around the corner, and that means a few Hackaday-branded pumpkins are already carved. Here’s a few of them, from [Mike] and [yeltrow]:

The latest edition of PoC||GTFO has been released. Holds Stones From The Ivory Tower, But Only As Ballast (PDF and steganography warning). This edition has a reverse engineering of Atari’s Star Raiders, [Micah Elisabeth Scott]’s recent efforts on USB glitching and Wacom tablets, info on the LoRa PHY, and other good stuff. Thanks go to Pastor Manul Laphroaig.

Oh cool, we can be outraged about something. The Freetronics Experimenters Kit is a neat little Arduino-based ‘Getting Started In Microcontrollers’ kit. This kit was sold by Jaycar. Recently, Jaycar ripped off the kit and sold it under the Duiniotech name. The box was copied, the instruction manual was copied, and there’s a lot of IP being violated here. Can Freetronix do anything? Legally, yes, but it’s not worth it.

[Oscar] broke his phone, but it still works great as an SMD soldering camera/microscope thing.

Pobody’s Nerfect in Australia so here’s a 3D printed didgeridoo. What’s a didgeridoo? It’s an ancient instrument only slightly less annoying than bagpipes. It’s just a tube, really, and easily manufactured on any 3D printer. The real trick is the technique that requires circular breathing. That’s a little harder to master than throwing some Gcode at a printer.

[Chris Downing] is the master of mashed up, condensed, and handheld game consoles. His latest is another N64 portable, and it’s a masterpiece. It incorporates full multiplayer capability, uses an HDMI connector for charging and to connect the external breakout box/battery, and has RCA output for full-size TV gameplay. Of note is the breakout board for the custom N64 chip that puts pads for the memory card and a controller on a tiny board.

18 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: October 23, 2016

  1. Can confirm Jaycar are gross in many different ways. Sadly very few alternatives in Australia; Aztronics are great but aren’t open long hours.

    Seriously though, avoid them at all costs. Spent $6 on some TRS connectors to hook up to my UHF handheld. Very overpriced. Then one of them broke off inside my radio, causing me to have to attempt open heart surgery on the thing to push all the little broken parts out. Nearly bricked a $120 radio! Always, always avoid Jaycar.

    1. Yep, I’ve given up on them. Once upon a time, they were good, but over the last 10 years they’ve gotten more and more distracted with the off-the-shelf Chinese junk the same way that Dick Smiths did.

      It’ll only be a matter of time before they’ve forgotten about the parts business, moved into the shopping centres, and get crushed by the likes of JB Hi Fi and Harvey Normans.

      Last thing I bought from Jaycar was some printed circuit board stock… if I want parts, it’s places like RS and Mouser these days.

      1. Jaycar is really overpriced and Altronics is too far for me to go to pick up a couple of components, even though they have better rates than JayCrap. That being said, its really LOW to rip of a kit like that.

        Just looked it up, JayCrap’s dooinotech kit is A$ 89.95 and the Freetronics kit is A$89

        1. I’ve switched to just ordering everything online from electrical suppliers and eBay/aliexpress. Our component stores are all so expensive and far enough away that you might as well just buy from somewhere that’ll ship it to you overnight. A stunt like this just makes sure I’m never tempted to go back.

  2. BTW…
    $ unzip -l pocorgtfo13.pdf
    Archive: pocorgtfo13.pdf
    Length Date Time Name
    ——– —- —- —-
    5170872 08-13-16 19:04 AIM-239.pdf
    42858 08-13-16 19:04 Atari6502Assembler.zip
    413615 09-27-16 08:05 PE6-5000.m4a
    1195 10-15-16 13:20 SerialDOS.java
    95671 10-15-16 13:20 SerialDOS.jpeg
    3798 10-15-16 13:20 SerialDOS.txt
    0 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/
    0 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/extras/
    250327 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/extras/ColorSheets.pdf
    237177 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/extras/DisplayListSheets.pdf
    1409 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/README.md
    643687 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/StarRaiders.source.asm.txt
    825509 08-19-16 14:54 StarRaiders/StarRaiders.source.txt
    776889 09-27-16 08:05 StarRaiders.zip
    157840 09-27-16 08:05 StarRaiders_001-112.txt
    234210 08-16-16 19:45 Sugihara.pdf
    20843 06-27-16 12:34 WriteProcessMemory.txt
    439765 08-15-16 07:44 aarch64shellcode.pdf
    5268 10-04-16 07:33 aard.txt
    766273 10-04-16 07:33 atrisk.pdf
    207850 08-15-16 13:29 backyardwireantennaes.pdf
    1093375 08-16-16 19:45 caninjection.pdf
    1189077 10-03-16 08:38 cte450-homebrew.tar.bz2
    0 08-05-16 14:29 da_667/
    2106 08-05-16 14:29 da_667/Bohemian_hacksody.txt
    1165 08-05-16 14:29 da_667/Cyberia.txt
    3339 08-05-16 14:29 da_667/L0s3_Urs3lf.txt
    3600 08-05-16 14:29 da_667/My_ident_is.txt
    366017 10-03-16 08:38 facewhisperer.tar.bz2
    1934 10-15-16 13:20 fingerprint.html
    599345 10-04-16 07:33 freudenthal.pdf
    97753 09-27-16 08:05 gr-lora.tar.bz2
    28370 09-27-16 08:05 hamburgers.txt
    2366 10-17-16 10:32 index.txt
    34578 10-12-16 10:00 issues.bib
    15785 10-12-16 09:58 issues.txt
    4740 10-03-16 08:38 meat.txt
    27898 08-13-16 19:04 mudge_buffer_overflow_tutorial.html
    17239 09-27-16 08:05 object_manager_lookup_poc.cs
    111739 08-16-16 19:45 scn-final.pdf
    841 09-27-16 08:05 seafever.txt
    769628 10-04-16 07:33 selfies.pdf
    19490 10-15-16 13:42 spinlock.py
    21831 10-15-16 13:31 spinlock.py~
    245948 06-27-16 12:34 subversiveld.pdf
    1817 10-15-16 13:42 trie.py~
    5071447 09-27-16 08:05 wcc.tar.bz2
    184470 10-04-16 10:47 wu-preparing-teachers.pdf
    3718504 09-27-16 08:05 http://www.geoffchappell.com.tar.bz2
    5632830 09-27-16 08:05 years.pdf
    48 09-27-16 08:05 zllkey.txt

  3. I dropped into Jaycar this morning, they are selling the Freetronics set for $139AUD and right next to it is their clone for $89AUD. I asked the guys behind the counter, their response was “we are not sure, the manager isn’t here right now”

    1. The Star Raiders disassembly was a great read. Can’t believe the guy a) wrote his own 6502 assembler for it, and 2) set up a toolchain to produce documentation (?!). It helps if you’ve played the game though. Really brilliant bit of work for an 8k cartridge.

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