Wireless Sniffing And Jamming Of Chronos And Iclicker

January 25, 2011 by Joseph Thibodeau 1 Comment

The ubiquitous presence of wireless devices combined with easy access to powerful RF development platforms makes the everyday world around us a wireless hacker’s playground. Yesterday [Travis Goodspeed] posted an article showing how goodfet.cc can be used to sniff wireless traffic and also to jam a given frequency. We’ve previously covered the work of [Travis] in pulling raw data from the IM-ME spectrum analyzer, which also uses goodfet.cc.

The Texas Instruments Chronos watch dev platform contains a C1110 chip, which among other things can provide accelerometer data from the watch to an interested sniffer. The i>clicker classroom response device (which houses a XE1203F chip) is also wide open to this, yielding juicy info about your classmates’ voting behaviour. There is still some work to be done to improve goodfet.cc, and [Travis] pays in beer–not in advance, mind you.

With products like the Chronos representing a move towards personal-area wireless networks, this sort of security hole might eventually have implications to individual privacy of, for example, biometric data–although how that might be exploited is another topic. Related to this idea is that of sniffable RFID card data. How does the increasing adoption of short-range wireless technologies affects us, both for good and bad? We invite you to share your ideas in the comments.

Phosphorescent Laser Painting

January 18, 2011 by Joseph Thibodeau 23 Comments

Here’s a simple and interesting idea that increases the visual persistence of a laser scanner image. Using glow-in-the-dark paint, [Daito Manabe] prepares a surface so that the intense light of a laser leaves a trace that fades slowly over time. He’s using the idea to print monochromatic images onto the treated surface, starting with the darkest areas and ending with the lightest. The effect is quite interesting, as the image starts out seeming quite abstract but reveals its self with more detail over time.

As evidenced in the test videos, the bursts of laser scanning are matched to the fade rate of the paint. Therefore it would seem that the time taken to “write” an image is directly proportional to the desired visual persistence of the final image. We wonder, by combining clever timing and variable laser intensity could you write images much more quickly? How hard would it be to use this for moving pictures? With the ability to create your own tiny laser projector, and even an RGB scanner, there must be a lot of potential in this idea for mind-blowing visual effects. Add portability by using a phosphor-treated projection screen!

Share your ideas and check out the test videos after the break.

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Intro To Circuit Bending

January 11, 2011 by Joseph Thibodeau 54 Comments

Electronic musical instruments are a lot of fun for a hacker because, with a small palette of tools, know-how and curiosity, they are easily modified. As with any hack, there is always the chance that the subject will be ruined, so it’s not necessarily worth the risk to muck about inside your thousand-dollar pro synthesizer. Luckily for all of us, there are shovel-fulls of old electronic musical toys littering the curbs and second-hand shops of the world. These fun little devices provide ample opportunity to get familiar with audio electronics and circuit bending techniques.

A note on definitions: the term “circuit bending” can be synonymous with “hardware hacking” in the world of audio electronics, and we have seen some debate as to which term is better suited to a given project. We welcome you to share your viewpoints in the comments.

Keep reading to get started.
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Quiet Dust Extractor From Scavenged Materials

January 5, 2011 by Joseph Thibodeau 11 Comments

As with many of the projects covered on hackaday, [bongodrummer]’s Dust Sniper came about because of a lack of effective commercial solutions, in this case to the problem of quiet dust extraction.

Workshops are generally full of dust and noise, both of which take their toll on the human body. This is why safety regulations exist for noisy and dusty workplaces and–as [bongodrummer] rightly points out–we have to take precautions in our own home and community workshops. Hearing protectors, dust masks and safety goggles are integral, but reducing the amount of dust and noise in the fist place is paramount.

Using mostly scavenged materials [bongodrummer] did a quality job building the Dust Sniper–and all for a bill of materials totaling £20. It has an integrated work surface, automatic switches on 2 vacuum lines to sync up with power tools, a cyclonic air filter that prevents clogging the HEPA filter and reducing suction power, inlet and outlet soundproofing, and a plain old power outlet for good measure.

Whether or not you’re interested in building an integrated workbench/extractor system like this one, we recommend you check out the details of the cyclone filter and the sound reducing components. Not only are they an interesting read, but they could be useful to apply in other projects, for example a soldering station with fume hood.

We think it would be really neat to include more cyclones in our projects. Stick around after the break to see [bongodrummer]’s prototype cyclone filter in action.

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Tape Delay Made From Recycled Cassette Decks

December 20, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 25 Comments

Professional tape delay units are great fun, but often expensive. You’d think that with so many derelict cassette decks filling the world’s dumpsters someone must have figured out a way to make a cheap tape delay… not only in the interest of saving money (sometimes quality is worth paying for) but also in the interest of re-using otherwise wasted resources.

Forosdeelectronica forum user [Dano] has made just such a device from used cassette decks and miscellaneous parts (translated). First he investigated the operation of the playback, erase, and record mechanisms and broke out the tape heads. The playback head is on a plastic rail so that the delay time can be changed, while the record head is fixed. [Dano] encountered some difficulties in ensuring good quality for the recording and erasure, which is an important consideration when working with magnetic tape.

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If You’re Photographing And You Know It Clap Your Hands

December 18, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 9 Comments

If you’ve ever tried to take pictures of yourself you’ll know that it can be a pain. It’s especially hard to get that perfect shot of your godly features when you’re out of breath from sprinting across the room. OK, yes, they have remote controls for that. But what if you lost your remote or you just don’t want to have to carry it? [LucidScience] put together a sweet, um, “hands free” alternative.

Essentially this hack emulates the IR signals sent by a Nikon remote, either to take a picture right away or to take time lapse photographs at regular intervals. We’ve seen a similar time lapse remote using an arduino before and a really thorough one using an AVR, but they don’t take the same approach as [LucidScience]’s design in terms of monitoring a microphone input for triggering. The project includes several status LEDs and adjustments for ambient noise and triggering, and it can be mounted to the camera body. We wonder how many of the Nikon’s features could be controlled using clap encoding, and how detailed your timing would need to be to have a kind of hand-made (get it?) pulsetrain syntax. You’d probably need to have world record clap skills.

Check out the demo vid after the break.

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Rich Decibel’s Kequencer

December 17, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 14 Comments

It’s totally excellent when a simple concept results in something inspiring and fun. [Rich Decibel]’s Kequencer is a good example, starting off as many projects do: “I had an idea the other day and I couldn’t decide if it was good or not so I just built it to find out.” Be still our hackable hearts!

[Rich] built this sleek little sequencer from scratch and while the design may not seem very novel to begin with–eight square wave oscillators with on/off switches and pitch knobs, played in sequence–but the beauty of it is in the nuances of interaction and the potential for further hacking. From watching the video you can see how the controls can be used in very interesting ways to create and mutate adorable chippy tone patterns. Check it out after the crossfade.

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