Let’s stop for a moment and pause to consider the smart bulb. Imagine going back 20 years and telling yourself that people will be putting computers capable of acting as web servers into light bulbs just so they can control them from their telephone instead of hitting the switch. The whole thing seems crazy — but its great, because it enables hacks like this one where [RickOOOOOO] takes a commercially-available ESP32 smart bulb, and hacks it into a local file server and digital library for banned books.
The word “banned” gets bandied about a lot — but assured, there’s nothing getting served up by [RickOOOOOO]’s bulb that’s going to help somebody will ill-intent build an improvised explosive device.Β No, at least as conceived here, it appears to be full of easily-available e-books that were pulled from school libraries in the USA, which may-or-may not meet your personal definition of ‘banned’. Whatever you want to call them, we appreciate the idea that a student could hypothetically replace one of the bulbs at school with a hacked version serving up that sort of content. a bulb in such a school with a bulb hacked to host that sort of content–in minecraft, naturally.
In any case, the hardest part of the hack was carving the ESP32C3 in the bulb out of the IoToreo bulb enough to access it. Unfortunately having done so, [Rick] wasn’t able to get an SDcard interface soldered on, so he’s stuck with just 4MB for books and webserver. That means only a few epubs can fit on the bulb, but it’s better than those books being unavailable.
Like the solarpunk message board we featured recently, which also ran on an ESP32, the bulb broadcasts a public network that uses a captive portal to take you to the web interface of the library. From there, users can browse books– including learning from where they were banned and why–and admins can access a password-protected control panel. One neat work-in-progress feature on the control panel is that the bulb can still be used as a smart bulb, so you can try and match the light to its surroundings. In Minecraft, because of course we would never encourage kids to change light bulbs. Perish the thought!
Speaking of Minecraft, you can run a server on a lightbulb, too. Or DOOM, because of course even the light bulbs run DOOM now. What a time to be alive!
I really like this a lot. I can imagine a lot of good uses for something like this. Well, fun and interesting uses.. maybe thought provoking.. might not be “good” by everyone’s definition.
I just thought of a fun use!
This is the perfect eLittleFreeLibrary! We just need to add uploading and an algorithm to manage the storage limitation.
I was thinking you can get around the storage limitation by soldering the pads of a micro-sd directly to the spi pins of the ESP32. That’d give plenty of cheap storage in a very compact footprint.
reading the article, they were playing with the (very good) idea of multiple lightbulbs making a distributed meshnet.
Forgot the LFL link for context:
https://littlefreelibrary.org/
There are some in Germany too !, and in France ! Thanks for the link !!!
Local cynic checking in. These are the types of projects that seem to struggle to justify themselves. It is frankly, not interesting that a lightbulb or other piece of future e-junk can host a webserver these days, so the content creator slaps on a LARP about banned books or fighting the government or whatever.
I agree that the interesting part isn’t that it’s a lightbulb/ejunk. The interesting part is that it is a hiding in plain sight wireless version of those USB storage devices that people would cement into walls around hacker spaces.
Yeah, and the books aren’t even banned, just taking out of stock from libraries which happens daily (I used to work for one), or it’s books that shouldn’t be read by children for obvious reasons. These aren’t banned books, you can go to the book store or amazon and buy them. It’s smut books.
Agree, I laughed when a school board had a meeting and somebody read a section from a banned book and was kicked out for explicit content. (It was an article)
They didn’t think it was appropriate but thought it was appropriate for young school kids. The irony was lost on them.
I tell you what, kids today with their hula hoops, rock’n’roll “music” and skirts without any petticoats underneath! Back in my day, we had prayer and paddlings but NO dirty books in the schools, and we came up right!
The way the boomers act, maybe there’s something there about how they should’ve been raised with paddles and prayers instead…
Nah, don’t let people bullshit you into thinking that the “Greatest Generation” was anything like the name implies. Not only did white US infantrymen have to get their shit stove in by the British when they tried to make UK businesses segregated, a full half of the casualties from the Italian front were syphilis. The amount that sequential generational cohorts actually differ from one another is very limited.
So why is Penthouse banned in school libraries then? Why only outrage when its an alt lifestyle book discussing minors engaged in sexual acts?
Fact is neither have a place in schools.
It doesn’t matter if they’re cook books. It’s still one person declaring that something that is legal should not be available for other people to read. It’s blatantly anti-American.
It is available….Through Amazon/other retailer/Public library….just not in an elementary/middle/high school library.
Same way I can go buy Penthouse, but those are also not in school libraries. Almost like nuance doesn’t exist for you.
I agree, I don’t mind anyone making whatever they want but that doesn’t mean everyone and their dog should post a video or write a blogpost about how they made an LED blink using arduino
It’s a simpler Pirate Box. Which is fine.
I don’t get it. You take issue with someone learning about something interesting and then writing about it? Is that not what this site is about?
I have no issues with people tinkering with things and posting about it, my issue is in pretending there is some further meaning to it by hosting a “banned book library”. I think it is fine to do things just as a fun hobby with zero utility, having to pretend that its useful is silly. Kind of like amateur radio, fun hobby and lots to tinker, LARPing about post-apocalyptic or government-proof comms is dumb.
How long before someone makes a transparent smart lightbulb virus that keeps the bulb functionality for the user bur propagates itself with any bulb within WiFi range and acts as a mesh network, gradually growing in total storage capacity, eventually acting like a massive dead drop for anything you’d like to upload. Maybe the same for camera doorbells. Now there’s a scary thought.
Ah, the real question is – how would we know? How do we know it hasn’t happened already?
seems like a fun infrastructure for an internet replacement
It should be possible to make them communicate on a mesh and track any Bluetooth device that comes near. Maybe even monitor WiFi communications.
A light bulb is the sort of thing you don’t pay much attention to unless it looks wrong or stops working, so you could probably get away with replacing lightbulbs at say a library with smart bulbs. Given how secure IOT devices are your virus or worm like idea would probably work well too for places that already have smart bulbs.
The adventures of tom sawyer? How stupid is the US to ban a book from Mark Twain. Pathetic.
It wasn’t banned in the US. A school library out of umpteen thousands pulled it (temporarily) because some busybody didn’t want their precious little darling reading the N-word. That is why you can now buy censored editions.
There aren’t any “banned” books in the USA in the sense that it is illegal to sell or posses them like it is in much of the rest of the world. For some reason that makes USians jealous and they LARP like they’re passing around samizdat in the USSR.
Oh, that’s a hoot.
There may not be a federal “bans” on specific books, but there sure are local restrictions. The American Library Association keeps score: https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data
There are also lots of federally prohibited items, especially if you want to import them or carry them across the border into the USA.
e.g.: 19 U.S. Code Β§ 1305: It’s illegal to carry something as immoral as a lottery ticket into the USA; forget about pron. And something like an insurrection instruction manual will land you a one-way trip to a dark hole. (A few hundred border crossings have taught me to RTFM.)
Shouldn’t it be called The Banned Book Lightbrary?
I see what you did there.
More accurate to call it the “porn books removed from grade schools” library
Are the porn books removed from grade schools in the room with us?
Or we could call it the “diverse experiences of people who exist in the United States but are not cisgender, straight, or white” library
I want to see a hack on a network connected laser printer where if you print a specifically formatted string the printer will consult a public AI and print out the question and the answer for you.
I can totaly see something else – a network connected laser printer reports certain combinations of certain keywords to the authorities and calls the police while at it.
Currently, this design for the bulb broadcasts its SSID. What if it didn’t? You go in, replace a lightbulb in a lamp with your payload bulb, and nobody has any reason to suspect that there was a switch as long as the color is generally right. The inability to readily add an SD card or other nonvolatile storage is a bit of a limitation, but using the bulbserver as a dead-drop for short messages meant to stay in place for a limited time seems perfect.
Additionally, even with the default bulb – why not store the books in .zipped HTML or .txt?
How long before police raid someone’s home and “taking electronic items” means all the smartbulbs seized in case they are a Wi-Fi storage?
IMHO, we in the US may see the venerable “1984” being banned, while “mein kampf” freely sells everywhere. Priorities are elsewhere, I am afraid.
Mein Kampf is little more than incoherent ramblings of a failed man who was so high on so many drugs all the time, he makes Tony Montana look like an example of SxE movement. If H*tler had 1/10th talent of Patton he’d easily reach Japan by 1942 and D-Day would end on the beaches.