Author: Brian Benchoff

5252 Articles

Hackaday Links Column Banner

Hackaday Links: October 30, 2016

October 30, 2016 by 60 Comments

Diablo. Mech Warrior. Every LucasArts game. There are reasons to build an old PC, and no, emulation cannot completely capture the experience of playing these old games. [Drygol] set out to create a retro PC and succeeded brilliantly. The built features an old desktop AT case (when is the last time you saw one of them?), a 233MHz Pentium with MMX technology, an ancient PCI video card, and an old ISA Ethernet card (with AUI connector). Incoming upgrades will be an ATI 3D Rage PRO, PCI SoundBlaster, and hopefully Windows 98SE.

Right now, we’re gearing up for the Hackaday Superconference next weekend. It’s going to be awesome, and we’re going to announce the winner of the Hackaday Prize. We have another contest going on right now – the Enlightened Raspberry Pi Contest. The name of the game here is documentation. Build something, document it on hackaday.io, and you get some cool prizes.

Continue reading “Hackaday Links: October 30, 2016” →

Hackaday Prize Entry: Humidifeyes

October 28, 2016 by 8 Comments

Most of the entries in the Hackaday Prize Assistive Technology challenge solve an obvious problem. 3D printed prosthetics, a computer mouse for the mouth, and text to speech systems all have obvious uses. For his Hackaday Prize entry, [spandana] decided on something a little less obvious. He’s going after the scourge of dry eyes with Humidifeyes.

The problem of dry eyes seems a bit esoteric at first glance, but [spandana] is specifically designing this device for people with Steven Johnson’s Syndrome. It’s been mentioned that LASIK patients have dry eyes for months. There is, apparently, an opportunity here.

The mechanics of the device are pretty simple. The current prototype uses off the shelf safety glasses with a little foam around the edges as a chassis. Moisture is delivered from a reservoir to an ultrasonic vibrator. This is a very effective way to atomize liquids, and is small enough to fit on the frame of a pair of glasses.

Although this is the sort of project that’s just a bit weird and allows for too many puns, there’s the glimmer of something useful in here. Dry eyes are a problem, and short of a bottle of Visine, there’s not much to do about it.

The HackadayPrize2016 is Sponsored by:

Apple Sucks Now, Here’s A ThinkPad Buyer’s Guide

October 28, 2016 by 247 Comments

For the last decade, Macs have been running a UNIX-ish operating system on x86 processors. They’ve been fantastic developer’s machines, and the MacBook Pro is the de facto standard laptop issued to all developers, all hackathon attendees, and arguably, anyone who does real work with a computer.

This week, Apple unveiled the latest MacBook Pro and provided more evidence Steve Jobs actually knew what he was doing. Fifteen hundred bones will get you a MacBook Pro with a last-gen processor, an Escape key, a headphone jack, and two Thunderbolt 3 ports (with one port required for charging). The next model up costs $1800, ditches the Escape key for a dedicated emoji bar, and includes four Thunderbolt 3 ports.

In the past, I have defended people who choose MacBooks as their laptop of choice. A MacBook is a business-class laptop, and of course carries a higher price tag. However, Apple’s latest hardware release was underwhelming and overpriced. If you’re looking for a new laptop, you would do well to consider other brands. To that end, here’s a buyer’s guide to ThinkPads, currently the second most popular laptop I’ve seen with the dev/hacker/code cracker crowd.

Continue reading “Apple Sucks Now, Here’s A ThinkPad Buyer’s Guide” →

Duckhunting – Stopping Rubber Ducky Attacks

October 28, 2016 by 51 Comments

One morning, a balaclava-wearing hacker walks into your office. You assume it’s a coworker, because he’s wearing a balaclava. The hacker sticks a USB drive into a computer in the cube next door. Strange command line tools show up on the screen. Minutes later, your entire company is compromised. The rogue makes a quick retreat carrying a thumb drive in hand.

This is the scenario imagined by purveyors of balaclavas and USB Rubber Duckys, tiny USB devices able to inject code, run programs, and extract data from any system. The best way — and the most common — to prevent this sort of attack is by filling the USB ports with epoxy. [pmsosa] thought there should be a software method of defense against these Rubber Duckys, so he’s created Duckhunter, a small, efficient daemon that can catch and prevent these exploits.

The Rubber Ducky attack is simply opening up a command line and spewing an attack from an emulated USB HID keyboard. If the attacker can’t open up cmd or PowerShell, the attack breaks. That’s simple enough to code, but [pmsosa] has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Duckhunter has a ‘sneaky’ countermeasure feature, where one out of every 5-7 keystrokes is blocked. To the attacker, the ‘sneaky’ countermeasure makes it look like the attack worked, where in fact it failed spectacularly.

There are a number of different attacks similar to what the Rubber Ducky can accomplish. Mousejack performs the same attack over Bluetooth. BadUSB is a little more technical, allowing anyone with access to a device’s firmware to turn your own keyboard against you. Because of the nature of the attack, Duckhunter shuts them all down.

Right now the build is only for Windows, but according to [pmsosa]’s GitHub there will be Linux and OS X versions coming.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Bilateral Brain Stimulator

October 27, 2016 by 28 Comments

In 1987, an American psychologist found voluntary eye movements reduced the intensity of negative thoughts. This is the basis of EMDR, or Eye Movement and Reprocessing Desensibilization, and if it sounds too oogie-boogie to be real, I assure you there are even oogier and boogier techniques in psychology that actually work.

[David]’s entry to the Hackaday Prize is a device that helps psychologists apply EMDR for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders. To do this, the psychologist asks the patient to describe a traumatic incident while the patient makes eye movement. According to the literature, this facilitates the connection between the cerebral hemispheres and decreases the emotional burden.

If simply moving your eyes back and forth while reliving your greatest horrors is enough, what’s with the hardware? [David]’s project is just a few LEDs that help enable eye movement. With a linear array of LEDs controlled by a shift register and a PIC microcontroller, this device is just enough to make a patient glance from left to right to left over and over again.

It’s a good project, made even better by the fact that [David]’s sister, a psychotherapist and EMDR practitioner, asked [David] to create an electronic device for this technique. [David]’s already produced a video on his device, and you can check that out below.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Entry: Bilateral Brain Stimulator” →

Qualcomm Buys NXP In Largest Ever Semiconductor Deal

October 27, 2016 by 30 Comments

Reuters has reported that Qualcomm will purchase NXP for $38 Billion in the largest semiconductor deal ever.

This deal was rumored last month in a deal worth about $30 Billion. Qualcomm’s name should be familiar to all Hackaday readers – they have an immense portfolio of mobile processors, automotive chips, and a ton of connectivity solutions for WiFi, Bluetooth, and every other bit of the EM spectrum. NXP should also be familiar for their hundreds of ARM devices, automotive devices, and Freescale’s entire portfolio.

The deal for $38 Billion is just a bit larger than the previous largest semiconductor deal, Avago’s purchase of Broadcom for $37 Billion.

This latest acquisition has followed acquisitions of ARM Holdings by Japan’s Softbank, On and Fairchild, Avago and Broadcom, NXP and Freescale, Microchip and Atmel, Intel and Altera, and a few dozen we’re forgetting right now. The good news is this immense industry consolidation won’t result in a single gigantic chip maker; there will probably be two or three gigantic chip companies in the future. If I may dredge up an observation from a Mergers and Acquisition post from this summer, this trend didn’t go well for Hughes, Fairchild, Convair, Douglas, McDonnell Douglas, North American, Grumman, Northrop, Northrop Grumman, Bell, Cessna, Schweizer or Sikorsky. It went very well for Lockheed, Boeing, and Textron.

Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart Bed Lighting

October 26, 2016 by 23 Comments

[Scott] is building motion-activated lights for under the bed for his Hackaday Prize entry. Admittedly, there are fancier projects for the ‘Assistive Technology’ portion of the prize, but this project helps anyone who would otherwise stumble around in the dark. And as [Scott] jokes, that includes a number of underserved demographics including accident prone people, children afraid of the dark, drunks, and, “drunk accident prone children who are afraid of the dark”.

Although the idea of mounting LEDs under a bed is simple, the devil is in the details. [Scott] is using a PIR sensor to turn these hidden lights on and off when getting into or out of bed. An RTC ensures the LED strip will only be on during the desired hours. In [Scott]’s case, this means from 9PM to 7AM. When movement is detected at the foot of the bed, the lights remain on for about two minutes.

This is a fairly simple project compared to some of the entries we’ve seen in the Hackaday Prize, but it does have a purpose. It’s a great way to scare a child into believing there are monsters under a bed, and it every so slightly reduces the chances of a drunk stubbing their toe. [Scott] produced a video for this project, you can check that out below.

Continue reading “Hackaday Prize Entry: Smart Bed Lighting” →