Author: Jenny List

3311 Articles

Getting Data Out Of Air-Gapped Networks Through The Power Cable

August 1, 2017 by 28 Comments

If you are an organisation that is custodian of sensitive information or infrastructure, it would be foolhardy of you to place it directly on the public Internet. No matter how good your security might be, there is always the risk that a miscreant could circumvent it, and perform all sorts of mischief. The solution employed therefore is to physically isolate such sensitive equipment from the rest of the world, creating an air gap. Nothing can come in and nothing can go out, or so goes the theory.

Well, that’s the theory, anyway. [Davidl] sends us some work that punches a hole in some air-gapped networks, allowing low-speed data to escape the air gap even if it doesn’t allow the reverse.

So how is this seemingly impossible task performed? The answer comes through the mains electrical infrastructure, if the air gap is bridged by a mains cable then the load on that mains cable can be modulated by altering the work undertaken by a computer connected to it. This modulation can then be detected with a current transformer, or even by compromising a UPS or electricity meter outside the air gap.

Of course, the Hackaday readership are all upstanding and law-abiding citizens of good standing, to whom such matters are of purely academic interest. Notwithstanding that, the article goes into the subject in great detail, and makes for a fascinating read.

We’ve touched on this subject before with such various techniques as broadcast radio interference and the noise from a fan,  as well as with an in-depth feature.

Amateur Radio Just Isn’t Exciting

August 1, 2017 by 171 Comments

As ARRL president, [Rick Roderick, K5UR] spends a significant amount of time proselytising the hobby. He has a standard talk about amateur radio that involves tales gleaned from his many decades as a licence holder, and features QSL cards from rare DX contacts to show how radio amateurs talk all over the world.

He’s delivered this talk countless times, and is used to a good reception from audiences impressed with what can be done with radio. But when he delivered it to a group of young people, as Southgate ARC reports, he was surprised to see a lack of interest from his audience, to whom DX or contesting just don’t cut it when they have grown up with the pervasive Internet. Writing in the 2016 ARRL Annual Report, he said:

“Change generally doesn’t come easy to us. But when I looked out at that group of young faces and saw their disinterest in traditional ham pursuits, I realized that I had to change. We have to change. It won’t come easy, but it’s essential that we get to work on it now.”

If you were to profile a typical group of radio amateurs, it would not be difficult to see why [K5UR] found himself in this position. It might be an unflattering portrait for some amateurs, but it’s fair to say that amateur radio is a hobby pursued predominantly by older more well-off men with the means to spend thousands of dollars on commercial radios. It is also fair to say that this is hardly a prospect that would energize all but the most dedicated of youthful radio enthusiasts. This is not a new phenomenon, where this is being written it was definitely the case back in the days when they were issuing G7 callsigns, for instance.

Were Hackaday to find ourselves in the position of advising the ARRL on such matters, we’d probably suggest a return to the roots of amateur radio, a time in the early 20th century when it was the technology that mattered rather than the collecting of DXCC entities or grid squares, and an amateur had first to build their own equipment rather than simply order a shiny radio before they could make a contact. Give a room full of kids a kit-building session, have them make a little radio. And lobby for construction to be an integral part of the licensing process, it is very sad indeed that where this is being written at least, the lowest tier of amateur radio licence precludes home-made radio equipment. Given all that, why should it be a surprise that for kids, amateur radio just isn’t exciting?

We’ve shown you some fantastic amateur radio builds over the years. If you have a youngster with an interest in radio, show them a BitX transceiver, or the world of QRP.

Header image: enixii. [CC BY 2.0]. We hope these snoozing kids aren’t in the middle of a lecture on amateur radio.

Beautiful Rocketeer Jetpack Replica Boasts Impressive Metalwork

July 31, 2017 by 8 Comments

Fans of the Rocketeer comic book and movie franchise will be familiar with its hero’s 1930s-styled rocket backpack.  It’s an intricate construction of complex streamlined curves, that has inspired many recreations over the years.

Most Rocketeer jetpacks are made from plastic, foam, and other lightweight materials that will be familiar to cosplayers and costumers. But [David Guyton]’s one is different, he’s made it from sheet steel.

The attraction in his video is not so much the finished pack, though that is an impressive build. Instead it’s the workmanship, nay, the craftsmanship, as he documents every stage of the metalwork involved. The panel beating tools of a sheet metalworker’s trade are surprisingly simple, and it’s tempting to think as you watch: “I could do that!”. But behind the short video clips and apparent speed of the build lies many hours of painstaking work and a huge amount of skill. Some of us will have tried this kind of sheet work, few of us will have taken it to this level.

The video is below the break, it takes us through the constituent parts of the build, including at the end some of the engine details which are cast in resin. Watch it with a sense of awe!

Continue reading “Beautiful Rocketeer Jetpack Replica Boasts Impressive Metalwork” →

Listen To Your Fermentation To Monitor Its Progress

July 31, 2017 by 9 Comments

If you are a wine, beer, or cider maker, you’ll know the ritual of checking for fermentation. As the yeast does its work of turning sugar into alcohol, carbon dioxide bubbles froth on the surface of your developing brew, and if your fermentation container has an airlock, large bubbles pass through the water within it on a regular basis. Your ears become attuned to the regular “Plop… plop… plop” sound they make, and from their interval you can tell what stage you have reached.

[Chris] automated this listening for fermentation bubbles, placing a microphone next to his airlock and detecting amplitude spikes through two techniques: one using an FFT algorithm and the other a bandpass filter. Both techniques yielded similar graphs for fermentation activity over time.

He has a few ideas for improvement, but notes that his system is vulnerable to external noises. There is also an admission that using light to detect bubbles might be a more practical solution as we have shown you more than once with other projects, but as with so many projects on these pages, it is the joy of the tech as much as the practicality that matters.

Looking Forward To SHA2017

July 30, 2017 by 17 Comments

We’re at the start of August, which can only mean one thing. Europe’s hackers and makers are about to converge in a field somewhere for a long weekend of sitting around drinking beer and Club-Mate, eating unhealthy street food, being assaulted by some of the most underground chiptune electronic dance music on the planet, sharing the fruits of their labours with their peers, and gazing lovingly upon other people’s hacks. This year it’s the turn of the Netherlands, for over the first full weekend in August that country will host the SHA2017 outdoor hacker camp in a scouting camp on the polders. It promises to be quite an event, with just short of 4000 attendees spread over several fields, arenas, and social areas, and we’re going to be there. Tent and power lead with Schuko plug sorted, massive pile of stickers secured, DECT phone charged, emergency supplies of PG Tips packed.

There is so much to take in at these events that it can sometimes be difficult to catch everything. One can do the rounds as diligently as possible and still miss some of the cool stuff, so this is where you come in. Are you going to SHA? Are you bringing anything you consider cool to the event? Tell us about it in the comments, we’d love to hear about it as would we’re sure the rest of our readers.

Meanwhile, if you think you’ve missed the boat, don’t panic! At the time of writing, there are about 180 tickets still unsold, but they’ll be going fast! Head over to the SHA2017 tickets site to get yours.

(The stripey header, in case you were wondering, is SHA2017’s branding using as you might have guessed, the SHA algorithm to generate HTML colours. What you see are the colours for “Hackaday”.)

Unholy Mashup Of SpaceMouse And Sculpt Keyboard Is Rather Well Done

July 27, 2017 by 9 Comments

What do you do if you have a pair of input device peripherals for your computer, but they are from different manufacturers and thus not available as a single unit? If you are [Marco van Nieuwenhoven], you combine the two to make a mashup single peripheral.

[Marco]’s two peripherals were a 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Wireless, and a Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard. His mashup isn’t featured here because it simply is a mashup, after all anyone with a hot glue gun could combine the two, instead he’s created a single peripheral that almost looks as though it could have been manufactured that way. It’s not complexity we’re looking at here, but elegance!

The Sculpt keyboard fortunately has a large palm rest in which the electronics and batteries sit, and he’s carefully measured the footprint of the top half of the SpaceMouse before hand cutting a very neat aperture to take it. The SpaceMouse PCB is attached below the aperture, and the bottom of the palm rest is attached with a little bit of padding to ensure a snug fit. The result: a combined input device to be proud of!

Of course, if this keyboard isn’t special enough for you, how about a typewriter?

Fail Of The Week: How Not To Use Pushbuttons

July 25, 2017 by 48 Comments

If you are a regular at creating printed circuit boards, it is likely that somewhere in your shop there will be a discard pile of boards on which you placed a component in the wrong orientation such that it would not work. It’s easily done, and don’t be shy to admit it if it’s happened to you.

[Bill] was making his own ARM developer board, taking inspiration from the ARM Pro Mini. He produced his PCB design and sent it off to the board house, and in due course received and reflow soldered a batch of beautiful dev boards. On power-up though, something was wrong! No USB device detected on his computer, a disaster. A lot of studying board and schematic led to the discovery that his push-button switches had been placed at 90 degrees to the orientation it should have had, leaving them in a permanently “on” position.

The PCB bug makes this is a Fail Of The Week post, but he transformed into a win with some experimentation with the switch outline in KiCAD before finding a way to mount the switches on the pads at 45 degrees, covering three of the pads. Well done, and well done for admitting the error.

[Editor’s note: been there, done that. One way to prevent the error is to only connect to diagonally opposite pins of the tact switch, so the rotation doesn’t matter.]

Having earlier asked others to come clean with their PCB mistakes, it’s probably appropriate to admit that Hackaday scribes are just as fallible as [Bill] when it comes to PCB layouts. Somewhere there may still be a board on this bench with a QFN microcontroller bodged on at 90 degrees to its original orientation, with cut tracks and tiny wire runs.

Whether you are a seasoned PCB pro or a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, our Creating a PCB In Everything series should be of interest.