Hacking Meta’s Smart Glasses

November 12, 2026 by No comments

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses have attracted plenty of controversy in the relatively short time they have been available, given their potential for covert and unvanted surveillance. But given the chance to examine one it would be churlish to pass up on the opportunity to test its defences. Which is what [p0pcycle] did when the opportunity came her way.

Given that hardware-probing was not an option, she followed the course of intercepting a software update. A little app decompilation led her to the full firmware, and she was able to probe its secrets. There’s a developer mode allowing applications to be written for the glasses, and it takes the form of an APK that loads the application code. An early firmware version would trust self-signed apps, so she could get arbitrary code on the device. From there after some trial and error she was able to expose a network listener, and there she had it.

The write-up is an interesting walkthrough of the process, and ends with her reporting it through their bug bounty program. So sadly the steps outlined above won’t work on newer firmwares, but we’re guessing that won’t stop others probing this device further.

Watch That Sound: Your Own Chladni Plate

November 12, 2026 by 5 Comments

What if you could see sound? A Chladni plate uses a speaker and small particles, like sand, to give you a visual representation of sound, and [CrazyScience] shows you how to make one. The plate dates back to 1787, created by the eponymous physicist. Of course, back then, there were no speakers, so the original plate was metal with a violin bow raked across the edges.

The modern version uses an ESP32, a speaker, and salt. The patterns depend on the resonance points of the plate. The device has a rotary encoder to tune different frequencies. Check it out in the video below.

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Upgrade Your CoCo The Modern Way

November 12, 2026 by 3 Comments

The Radio Shack TRS-80 Colour Computer may never have achieved the sales volume of its competitors from Commodore or Apple, but it offered a surprisingly capable set of hardware. There were three versions, with the final one being a significant upgrade in many ways. There was no upgrade path for owners of version 1 and 2 machines to have a version 3 back in the day, but now thanks to [Felipe Antoniosi] such an upgrade is possible. How? With a Tang Nano 20K FPGA board, of course!

The CoCo 3 had a paged memory system for expansion up to 512k, as well as a significantly more capable graphics chip which while compatible with the original Motorola part offered enhanced graphics. The upgrade emulates these, and connects to the CoCo via a set of daughter boards that connect to where the various motherboard chips sat. it offers an HDMI output as well as analog video and enhanced sound capability, bringing the machine firmly into the 21st century.

As mods go to classic hardware, this is quite an invasive one. Whether or not you’d prefer to do this to your CoCo is up to you, but ask yourself this, would you have done this had this board been available in the 1980s? Of course you would.

Meanwhile should you become bored with the CoCo, it can also be persuaded to emulate an Apple ][.

Baochip-1x: A Mostly-Open, 22nm SoC For High Assurance Applications

November 12, 2026 by 6 Comments

For most people, just getting any old microcontroller or system on chip (SoC) from our favorite – or cheapest – vendor is more than good enough. But if you’re really into high assurance computing where every transistor has to be accounted for, you got a bit of a problem. This is basically why [Andrew “Bunnie” Huang] pitched in and had the Baochip-1x produced.

This SoC’s design is based heavily on the FPGA-based CPU in the Precursor device, which itself is claimed to be a fully verifiable communicator design. Since it does have an MMU, you can run any software on it that supports the RV32IMAC RISC-V instruction set, with a Coder’s Guide available for those who might feel interested in this SoC, along with the SystemVerilog and Verilog-based sources.

In addition to the DIY assembly process, you can even get a physical hardware version, including the ‘Dabao’ evaluation board with a very Raspberry Pi Pico-shaped form factor. Inside this SoC is a single-core, 350 MHz VexRISC-V core, 4 MB resistive RAM (RRAM) and 2 MB of SRAM, along with a whole heap of security-related features.

An INA219 board with a QWIIC connector and "female barrel jack to male barrel jack" cable soldered on. the qwiic end is plugged into the side of the Blepis PDA, with the screen showing a device found on the 0x40 address

Just Use QWIIC Already

November 12, 2026 by 13 Comments

Years ago, I wrote an article describing different I2C-on-a-connector ecosystems, explaining their strengths, weaknesses, and implementation details, as well as piling on a heap of fun stories. Looking back at it, it’s a great reference article, if I do say so myself. In particular, I highlighted QWIIC, which is a Sparkfun-borne standard for putting 3.3 V I2C on a JST-SH (or compatible) 4-pin connector.

I’ve since implemented a fair bit of QWIIC, and grew to like it so much more. I’m here to explain to you why you ought to be putting those JST-SH connectors in everything you design that touches I2C, all the cool things they let you do, where to buy a lot of cheap cables at once, and all the references you could need. I will also tell you about my USB pinout for QWIIC, something you should definitely know about.

In2ispensable Interconnect

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USB-C Hub Or Nintendo Switch 2 Dock? Relax, It’s Both!

November 12, 2026 by 2 Comments

[Nozomi] travels with a Nintendo Switch 2, but the official dock is bulky and doesn’t seem to be made for travel. USB-C hubs with displays are common, but they won’t work with the Switch. Not without a little hacking, anyway.

It was obvious that the hub wasn’t too far off. It will charge the Switch, so Power Delivery was working. A sniffer showed that even the DisplayPort initialization happened. A little flashing on the hub allowed it to complete the proprietary protocol, and that made TV mode work, but HDR was washed out. [Nozomi] theorized it was a mismatched color space, so that required a patch for a different chip. Another flash forces the right color tag for HDR TV, but there would have to be another patch for HDR DP.

That patch doesn’t exist. Variable refresh rate also does not work. We didn’t find the actual code for the patches, but we still thought the detective work was worth the read. Some people don’t want a more portable dock, but a less portable one.

The Sextant: Navigating The Old Way

November 12, 2026 by 23 Comments

Navigation is easy these days, as we’ve entire complex computerized mapping systems and radio-based positioning systems to find ourselves anywhere on Earth. It might seem simple to use GPS these days, even trivial, but billions of dollars are what it took to make that happen.

Back in the day, navigation was simpler, and cheaper, using a handheld device and natural objects in space instead of artificial satellites with atomic clocks. Let’s learn about the sextant, and how it did its job.

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